Well, forward he went to Rome, which lay, and doth yet lie, on the river Tibris, the which divideth the city into two parts. Over the river are four great stone bridges, and upon the one bridge, called Ponte St. Angelo, is the Castle of St. Angelo, wherein are so many great cast pieces as there are days in the year, and such pieces as will shoot seven bullets off with one fire. To this castle cometh a privy vault from the church and the palace of St. Peter, through the which the pope (if any danger be) passeth from his palace to the castle for safeguard. The city hath eleven gates, and a hill called Vaticinium, whereupon St. Peter's church is built. In that church the holy fathers will hear no confessions without the penitent bring money in his hand. Adjoining to the church is the Campo Santo, the which Carolus Magnus built, where every day thirteen pilgrims have their dinners served of the best; that is to say, Christ and his twelve apostles. Hard by this he visited the churchyard of St. Peter, where he saw that pyramid that Julius Cæsar brought forth of Africa; it stood in Faustus's time leaning against the church-wall of St. Peter's; but Pope Sixtus hath erected it in the middle of St. Peter's churchyard. It is fourteen fathom long, and at the lower end five fathom four square, and so forth smaller upwards. On the top is a crucifix of beaten gold, the stone standing on four lions of brass. Then he visited the seven churches of Rome, that were St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Sebastian, St. John Lateran, St. Laurence, St. Mary Magdalen, and St. Mary Majora. Then went he without the town, where he saw the conduits of water that run level through hill and dale, bringing water into the town fifteen Italian miles off. Other mountains he saw, too many to recite.
But amongst the rest he was desirous to see the pope's court, and his manner of service at his table, wherefore he and his spirit made themselves invisible, and came to the pope's court and privy-chamber, where he was; there saw he many servants attending on his holiness, with many a flattering sycophant carrying his meat; and there he marked the pope, and the manner of his service, which he seeing to be so unmeasurable and sumptuous: "Fie," quoth Faustus, "why had not the devil made a pope of me?" Faustus saw there notwithstanding such as were like to himself, proud, stout, wilful gluttons, drunkards, whoremongers, breakers of wedlock, and followers of all manner of ungodly excess; wherefore he said to his spirit, "I thought that I had been alone a hog or pork of the devil's, but he must bear with me a little longer; for these hogs of Rome are ready fatted, and fitted to make him roast meat; the devil might do well to spit them all, and have them to the fire, and let him summon the nuns to turn the spits; for as none must confess the nun but the friar, so none should turn the roasting friar but the nun." Thus continued Faustus three days in the pope's palace, and yet had no lust to his meat, but stood still in the pope's chamber, and saw everything whatsoever it was.