A Fountain Funded by an unpopular tax on bread
At last I’ve nearly finished with the four rivers fountain and, apart from reading this section of garden-fountains.com, it’s only fair that you should do something for yourself, so if any criticisms or enthusiastic remarks remain to be made I shall leave them to you; but there is just one more thing I must tell you before I close. This story will illustrate how little times change and how much people think and react in the same way. When Innocent X decided to find the money for the four rivers fountain, officials were, as usual, sent to measure all the houses of the city, evidently with the aim of increasing property tax; however, unlike his predecessors Paul V and Urban VIII, Pope Innocent did not feel like laying a heavy hand on the ordinary citizens by raising the price of wine to fund the four rivers fountain. He raised the price of bread instead. I’ve no need to tell you what a poor reception this got, since the common people could not or more likely, would not, appreciate how magnificent a fountain the four rivers was.
However, the authorities had to pay heed to such a lack of enthusiasm in some way and, indeed, it was said that a penny loaf soon lost an ounce in weight, but at least it must have been good because it was black and stinking; and again, despite the Pope issuing orders to the bakers of common white bread a decina to make the loaves as they used to, of ten ounces each, the bread was not so white, smelled bad and was full of earth and bits of rubble stuck together. The protests grew angrier and more daring so that, while insulting comments were published against Lady Olimpia (the Pope’s sister-in-law), the pieces of the obelisk being dragged with so much sweat and tears through the squares and streets of Rome were found plastered with handbills and one in particular that read: We don’t want your ol’ Fountains and Towers. It’s good Bread we need and it should be Ours. The same fountain of the four rivers also gave us another very clever jibe (based on a verse from the Gospels) which was also stuck on the obelisk: Let these stones be bread. Which makes me think of a more recent prank that happened during the war in Africa in 1936 when [we] had to eat bread that smelled bad and was decidedly black and stinking: one morning one of those loaves was found in the hand of the bronze statue of Caesar in Via dell’Impero, with a verse worthy of the greatest Pasquino:
Caesar,
you’re the one whose belly’s lined with lead,
so you can eat this Empire bread!
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