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 solely on the money of foreigners.  Their senators at this time were Richard Anibaldi of the Colosseum, from which the Anibaldi had already expelled the Frangipani, and Gentile Orsini, whose name may still be read on an inscription in the Capitol.  These gentlemen did not permit the pious enthusiasm of the pilgrimage to prevent them from making war in the neighborhood.  They allowed the pilgrims to pray at the altars, but they themselves advanced with the Roman banners against Toscanella, which they subjugated to the Capitol.

We may imagine on how vast a scale Rome sold relics, amulets, and images of saints, and at the same time how many remains of antiquity, coins, gems, rings, statues, marble remains, and also manuscripts were carried back by the pilgrims to their homes.  When they had sufficiently satisfied their religious instincts, these pilgrims turned with astonished gaze to the monuments of the past.

Ancient Rome, through which they wandered, the book of the Mirabilia in their hand, exercised its profound spell upon them.  Besides the recollections of antiquity other memories of the deeds of popes and emperors, from the time of Charles the Great, animated this classic theatre of the world in the year 1300.  Every mind, alive to the language of history, must have felt deeply the influence of the city at this time, when troops of pilgrims from every country, wandering in this world of majestic ruins, bore living testimony to the eternal ties which bound Rome to mankind.  It can scarcely be doubted that Dante beheld the city in these days, and that a ray from them fell on his immortal poem which begins with Easter week of the year 1300.

The sight of the capital of the world inspired the soul of another Florentine.  “I also found myself,” writes Giovanni Villani, “in that blessed pilgrimage to the holy city of Rome, and as I beheld the great and ancient things within her, and read the histories and the great deeds of the Romans—­which Vergil, Sallust, Lucan, Titus Livius, Valerius, Paul Orosius, and other great masters of history have described—­I took style and form from them, although as a pupil I was not worthy to do so great a work.  And thus in 1300, returned from Rome, I began to write this book to the honor of God and St. John and to the commendation of our city of Florence.”  The fruit of Villani’s creative enthusiasm was his history of Florence, the greatest and most naive chronicle that has been produced in the beautiful Italian tongue; and it is possible that many other talented men may have received fruitful impressions from Rome at this time.