that I escaped the same fate myself."

The way that led from the city across the bridge of St. Angelo to St.
Peter's was too narrow; a new street was therefore opened in the walls
along the river, not far from the ancient tomb known as Meta Romuli.
The bridge was covered with booths, which divided it in two, and in
order to prevent accidents it was enacted that those going to St.
Peter's should keep to one side of the bridge; those returning, to the
other. Processions went incessantly to St. Paul's without the walls
and to St. Peter's, where the already renowned relic, the handkerchief
of Veronica, was exhibited. Every pilgrim laid an offering on the
altar of the apostle, and the same chronicler of Asti assures us, as
an eye-witness, that two clerics stood by the altar of St. Paul's, day
and night, who with rakes in their hands gathered in untold money.

The marvellous sight of priests, who smilingly shovelled up gold like
hay, caused malicious Ghibellines to assert that the Pope had
appointed the jubilee solely for the sake of gain. Boniface in truth
stood in need of money to defray the expenses of the war with Sicily,
which swallowed up incalculable sums. If instead of copper, the monks
in St. Paul's had lighted on gold florins, they would necessarily have
collected fabulous wealth, but the heaps of money, both in St. Peter's
and St. Paul's, consisted mainly of small coins, the gifts of poor
pilgrims.

Cardinal Jacopo Stefaneschi pointedly comments on the fact, and
laments the change of times, when only the poor gave offerings, and
when kings no longer, like the three magi, brought gifts to the
Saviour. The receipts of the jubilee, which the Pope was able to
devote to the two basilicas for the purchase of estates, were
sufficiently considerable. If in ordinary years the gifts of pilgrims
to St. Peter's amounted to thirty thousand four hundred gold florins,
we may conclude how much greater must have been the gains of the year
of jubilee. "The gifts of pilgrims," wrote the chronicler of Florence,
"yield treasures to the Church, and the Romans all grow wealthy by the
sale of their goods."

The year of jubilee was for them indeed a year of wealth. The Romans,
therefore, treated the pilgrims with kindness, and nothing is heard of
any act of violence. If the fall of the house of Colonna had aroused
enemies to the Pope in Rome, he disarmed them by the immense profits
which accrued to the Romans who have always lived sole