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Mendicant ways

Michael McMahon

Wednesday, 5th March 2008

Michael McMahon visits Rome

The Gospel according to St Matthew teaches, ‘Give to him who begs from you’, but St Matthew didn’t take his holidays in Rome. If that’s where you plan to spend yours, brace yourself: there are enough beggars there to try the patience of the whole calendar of saints. I last visited the place out of season, imagining things might be better, but they were worse: the number of tourists had dropped, but the number of beggars had remained constant. There were no crowds to melt into to get away from them. The beggeration factor was unbearable.

Every church door was guarded by a beggar-woman dandling a baby, or a doubled-up crone clutching a stick. Every piazza was worked by mendicants operating as methodically as gun-dogs quartering a field for dead pheasants after a drive. Buses, Tube trains and station concourses were commandeered as venues for impromptu entertainments imposed by dirty-haired youths thrusting paper cups and ghetto blasters at passengers and passers-by. On one metro journey I found myself trapped between stations in a concert of fortissimo, coloratura arias performed in an unidentifiable language by a contralto accompanied by the rippling of her bosom and the rattling of a collecting cup wielded by a dwarf. I didn’t know where to look.

Romans are totally hardened to such carry-ons. Begging has been part of city life for as long as anyone can remember. Centuries ago, the army of Roman beggars included saints such as Benedict Joseph Labre, who gave what little was given to him to those who were even less fortunate; today, begging is less associated with sanctity or even with poverty than with irritation, deception and crime. Some city-dwellers deal with the problem by adopting one bona fide beggar — say, the fellow who is a fixture outside their apartment building — and giving him a coin as they pass him on their way to and from work. But once they get to tourist country, if they are accosted by a beggar, they do as all Romans do: adopt an expressionless countenance and turn away.

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