Illllf II Hill fill &*• &$<***** •88* S3& A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY A SHORT HISTOKY OF ITALY (476-1900) BY HENRY DWIGHT SEDGWICK BOSTON \M> NKW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY Cbc OitorrfliDr prrsa, CnmbriDoe L906 COPVRIOH1 n/>5 H\ RENR1 DWIOH1 BBDOWICK All. RIORTfl UMRVBD Publisktd Novtmbtr jqos TO H. D. S., C. D. S., R. M. S., W. E. S., A. C. S., F. M. S., and T. S. passi graviova . . . . . . forsan et ha>c olim meminisse juvabit. PREFACE This volume is a mere sketch in outline; it makes no pretence to original investigation, or even to an extended examination of the voluminous literature which deals with every part of its subject. It is an attempt to give a correct impression of Italian history as a whole, and employs details only here and there, and then merely for the sake of giving greater clearness to the general outline. So hrief a narrative is mainly a work of selection ; and perhaps no two persons would agree upon what to put in and what to leave out. I have laid emphasis upon the matters of greatest general interest, the Papacy, the Renaissance, and the Risorgimento ; and my special ohject has been to put in high relief those achieve- ments which make Italy so charming and so interest- ing to the world, and to give what space was possible to the great men to whom these achievements are due. II. D. S. Nkw York, October 1, 1905. CONTENTS CHAPTEB FAOB I. The Fall of the Empire in the West (476 a. d.) 1 II. The Ostrogoths (489-553) 12 III. The Lombard Invasion (568) ... 23 IV. The Church (568-700) 31 V. The Coming of the Franks (726-768) . . 40 VI. Charlemagne (768-814) 49 VII. From Charlemagne to Nicholas I (814-867) 57 VIII. The Degradation of Italy (867-962) . . 67 IX. The Revival of the Papacy (962-1056) . 79 X. The Struggle over Investitures (1059-1123) 89 XI. Trade against Feudalism (1152-1190) . . 102 XII. Triumph of the Papacy (1198-1216) . . 114 XIII. St. Francis (1182-1226) 125 XIV. The Fall of the Empire (1216-1250) . . 133 XV. The Fall of the Medieval Papacy (1303) 145 XVI. Last Flicker of the Empire (1309-1313) . 152 XVII. A Review of the States of Italy (about 1300) 161 XVIII. The Transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance 175 XIX. The Intellectual Dawn after the Middle Ages (1260-1336) 182 XX. The Despotisms (1250-1350) . . . .192 XXI. The Classical Revival (1350) ... 201 XXII. Tiik Ills of the Fourteenth Century . . 209 XXIII. A Kikd's-Kye View (1350-1450) ... 218 XXIV. The Early Renaissance (1400-1450) . . 231 XXV. Tim. Kin\I"any Stagnation, tiik Arts (1580- 1789) 348 XXXIV. Tiik Napoleonic Era (1789-1820) . . . 361 XXXV. rm Ki awakening (1820-1821) . . . 3<;<> XXXVI PXBTDBBBO Inactivity (1821 1847) . . 377 XXXVII. Tumultuous Years (1848-1849) ... 386 XXXVIII. Tiik Unity OF Italy (1849-1871) . . . 395 XXXIX COHOXUMOM (1872-1900) .... 109 APPENDIX I. Chronological Table of Popes and Emperors . 421 II. GENEALOGY OF THE MKOICI 428 III. Skeleton Table of the Kings of tiik. Two Sicilies 429 IV. I.im ok Books for General Reading . . . 430 QTDEX 433 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY CHAPTER I THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE IN THE WEST (476 A. D.) In the year 476 an unfortunate young man, mocked with the great names of the founders of the City and of the Empire, Romulus Augustus, nicknamed Augustulus, was deposed from the throne of the Caesars by a Barbarian general in the Imperial ser- vice, and the Roman Empire in Italy came to its end. This act was but the outward sign that the power of Italy was utterly gone, and that in the West at least the Barbarians were indisputably con- querors in the long struggle which they had carried on for centuries with the Roman Empire. That Empire, at the period of its greatness, em- braced all the countries around the Mediterranean Sea ; it was the political embodiment of the Medi- terranean civilization. In Europe, to the northeast, it reached as far as the Rhine and the Danube ; it included England. Beyond the Rhine and the Dan- ube dwelt the Barbarians. Europe was thus divided into two parts, the civilized and the Barbarian : one, a great Latin empire which rested upon slavery, and was governed by a highly centralized bureau- cracy ; the other, a collection of tribes of Teutonic blood, bound together in a very simple form of soci- ety, and essentially democratic in character. 8 \ SHORT HISTOBY OF ITALY T| 1( . Empire, composed o£ many races, Etruscan, Ligurian, Iberian, Celtic Basque, Greek, Egyptian, and divers others, bad been created and maintained U the military and administrative genius of Rome. Over all these people Roman law and Roman or- der prevailed. All enjoyed the Pax Romana. From Cadiz to Milan, from Milan to Byzantium, from Byzantium to Palmyra, stretched the great Roman roads. Coins, weights, and measures were every- where the same. The inhabitants of Africa, Asia, and Europe, enfranchised by an Imperial edict, were thankful to be Roman citizens. To this day Roman law, the Romance languages, and the Roman Catb- olic Church testify to the vigour and solidity of Roman dominion. The city of Rome was, and had been for centuries, the head of the world. From east and west, from north and south, booty, spoils, i, tribute had Ho wed into Rome. Even after the seal of government had been removed to Con- stantinople (a. u. 330), visitors from the new capi- t il were astounded to behold the Roman temples, baths, amphitheatres, forums, circuses, and palaces, all glittering with marble and bronze. But the riches acquired by conquest and tribute had brought seeds of evil with them. Society was divided into the very rich and the very poor; the simple labo- rious life of the freemen of ancient Rome was gone; the regular occupations of production had been aban- doned to serf's and slaves; moderate incomes and plaio living had disappeared. The middle class had been thrust down to the level of the plebs. In the country the small proprietors had been reduced to FALL OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE 3 a position little better than that of the serfs, while the great landlords had got vast tracts of land into their hands. Nearly half the population were slaves. Taxes had become heavier and heavier as the exi- gencies of the Empire grew ; great numbers of offi- cials were maintained, and great mercenary armies. The rich controlled the government, and shifted almost the whole burden of taxation from their own shoulders to those of the poor. In the cities, each imitating Rome so far as it could, had grown up a vicious unemployed class, living on the distribution of bread which was paid for out of the public revenues. On the farther side of the Rhine and the Danube, in marked contrast with this society, the Teutonic Barbarians tilled their lands and herded their flocks. They dwelt in little communities which were banded together into tribes ; and these in turn were united in a sort of loose confederation, which assumed the semblance of a nation only when under the neces- sity of military action, and then the adult male population constituted the army. Their buildings were of the humblest character, their clothes rude, tlitir arts primitive ; they could neither read nor write, and their men cared for little besides hunt- ing and lighting. They were, however, a free, self- rosp feting, self-governing people, electing their king, and meeting in one great assembly to enact their laws. Oil tin- Roman borders the Barbarians had become Christians, unfortunately not Trinitarians, but mere Axians, heretics in the eyes of the ortho- dox Catholics; bo their Christianity hardly served to smooth their relations with the Romans. 4 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY The differences between these two divisions of Europe were about as great as between ourselves and the I > < > 1 1 Cossacks. A Roman gentleman living in Gaul, for example, would have a villa in Auvergne, built high upou the hills in order to get the breezes and the view. Here was a bath-house, a fish-pond, separate apartments for the women, a pillared por- tico that overlooked a lake, a winter drawing-room, a Bummei parlour, etc. In this agreeable place, in his times of leisure, the ow T ner would stroll about his grounds, play tennis, cultivate his garden, read Virgil and Claudian, compose epigrams, write letters to his Friends in the vein of Horace's Satires, gossip about the doings at the Imperial court or talk phi- losophy. The pleasant, luxurious life of Roman gen- tlemen was not very different from luxurious life in America to-day. The Barbarians in their native forests were hardly aware of Roman civilization ; and those on the border made a marked contrast with the Romans. The young kin^s were superb athletes, sparing at table, and at- tentive to their kingly duties. The Barbarian eld- ers admired Roman civilization, but w r ere " stiff and lumpish in body and mind." The young men, six Peel or more in height, with long, yellow hair, were great eaters of garlic and indelicate viands; they went alio ut bare-legged, booted with rough ox-leather, and wore short-sleeved garments of divers colours, belted tight, with swords dangling at their backs, shields at side, and battle-axes in their hands. Tt would be a mistake, however, to draw a very sharp line between these two opposing divisions of FALL OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE 5 Europe. The Teutons were called Barbarians because they were not Romans, but many of them had been trained in the Roman armies and had lived in Con- stantinople, Trier, or Milan, and were well accus- tomed to Roman military arts and discipline ; in fact, the Roman army was recruited mainly from among the Barbarians. Roman traders dealt with them regularly. In one way and another the Barbarians, especially their leaders, had come under the educating influence of Roman civilization, and they regarded that civilization with an amazement and a respect that at times deepened into awe. But though a sharp line cannot be drawn, yet at bottom Romans and Barbarians were far apart. It was impossible that two societies of such divergent civilization should exist side by side in peace ; one must conquer the other. The struggle between the Empire and its enemies had been almost continuous since the days of Julius Caesar, and for several cen- turies the Empire had prevailed ; but social disin- tegration within had proceeded rapidly, and by the beginning of the fifth century the Empire's doom had come. Rome herself, the original home of empire, It v u nerveless, dead, unsceptred," open to any takers ; and takers came. The Visigoths, under Alaric, cap- tured the city in -110 and were merciful ; the Vandals. nndei Genseric, captured it in 455 and were cruel. The fall of Rome, which we now see to have been inevitable, came, however, with a terrible shock to tin- civilized world. St. Jerome, who had gone to the irilderneas Dear Bethlehem in order to meditate upon the prophets, wrote: "My voice is choked and my A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY sobfl interrupt the words which I write; the city is subdued which subdued the world. . . . Who could believe that Rome, which was built of the spoils of the whole earth, would fall, that the city could, at the -aim- time, be the cradle and grave of her people; i hat all the coasts of Asia, Egypt, and Africa should In- tilled with the slaves and maidens of Rome? That holy Bethlehem should daily receive, as beggars, men and women who formerly were conspicuous for their wealth and luxury? " 1 The < itv of Rome had been deemed immortal; it had become almost sacred from long veneration ; and when Rome fell, the Empire in the West had not a prop to rest upon. Spain was taken by the Suevi and the Visigoths, Gaul by the Franks, Burgundians, and Alenianni, England by Angles and Saxons, Africa 1))' the Vandals ; and, with the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, Italy, too, became the prize of a Bar- barian general. The succeeding period of European history, in Gaul, Spain, Africa, and Italy, is the mingling or attempted mingling of the old populations of the Empire with the Barbarian conquerors. The pro- cess had, indeed, as I have intimated, begun before the fall of the Empire. For several generations Bar- barians had not only been received as colonists and taken as soldiers, but even whole tribes had been admitted within the Roman boundaries. Imperial Btatesmeu had realized that the Empire could only be upheld by an infusion of Barbarian virility, and they had favoured the process. But assimilation 1 Rome in the Middle Ages, Gregorovius, vol. i, pp. 1(37, 1G8. FALL OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE 7 had not taken place, and now that the Empire had passed into the hands of the Barbarians there were two social strata, — the rude martial conquerors on top, and the civilized, feeble, subject race, ten times as numerous, underneath. It was obvious to the wiser Barbarian chiefs, trained as they were in Roman ways, that if they were to get stable domin- ion and civilized government, they must adopt the complicated Imperial machinery. They saw that unless the Barbarians learned Roman civilization, they would need hundreds of years to create any such civilization of their own. This was especially true in Italy. Odoacer, the general who deposed Romulus Augustulus, well knew that a state which had its military service all Barbarian and its civil service all Roman could not stand firm. Barbarian sovereignty needed support, especially legal support, in the eyes of the subject population. Such legiti- macy could only come from the Empire. Odoacer and other intelligent Barbarians turned instinctively to Constantinople for recognition. They did not think that they had overturned or suppressed the Empire. Nobody thought that there were two Em- pires, one Eastern and one Western, one enduring and one destroyed in 476. To the Roman world the Empire had always been single, had always been a unit. The division into eastern and western parts had been made for convenience of administration : the Empire itself had never been divided. Even after tin- western countries of Europe had been overrun by the Barbarians, the Emperor at Constan- tinople remained the supreme and sole source of 8 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY authority and law. The very Barbarians could not free themselves from this theory, however little heed tin \ paid to it in practice. Odoacer acknowledged the sovereignty of the Empire without question. He merely wished to control the civil and military administration in Italy. Before beginning a sketch of the attempts to found a permanent Barbarian government in Italy and to combine Barbarians and Romans in one people, it is asary to speak of a rising power which already constituted the most important element in the situ- ation. The Church was not only the one vigorous body in Italy, but it had already begun to fore- shadow its future greatness. In the time of Constan- tinc (323 337) and his immediate successors, the bishops of Home had no primacy over other bishops, but they had claims to precedence, which they soon put to good use. Their city was the cradle and home of Roman dominion. St. Paul had lived and died there. Above all, as was universally acknowledged, tlu- apostle Peter had founded their bishopric. Theirs, in an especial sense, was the Church to which Christ referred when He said to the apostle, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." The bishops of Rome also derived immense advan- Erom the absence of a temporal prince ; whereas their chief rivals, the patriarchs of Constantinople, were w holly eclipsed by the presence of the Emperor. The removal of the great offices of government to Constantinople and the absence of any real civil life, had left Rome even then a mere ecclesiastical FALL OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE 9 city, and the head of the Church became the most important personage there. It was so generally ac- knowledged that Roman bishops were entitled to that precedence in rank over other bishops, which Rome enjoyed over other cities, that in 344 an Ecu- menical Council submitted a most important question to the decision of the Roman See. One hundred years later the great pope, Leo I, merely gave utter- ance to the general opinion when he said : " St. Peter and St. Paul are the Romulus and Remus of the new Rome, as much superior to the old as truth is to error. If ancient Rome was at the head of the pagan world, St. Peter, prince of the Apostles, came to teach in the new Rome, so that from her the light of Chris- tianity should be shed over the world." The Roman Church gathered to herself whatever remained of the administrative ability of ancient Rome. With acute practical sense she condemned those subtle doctrines that kept springing up in the E ist, late flashes of Greek metaphysics ; and though she may have cut herself off from certain spiritual Neoplatonic thought, and have set her heart too much upon domination, yet by her very adherence to dogma, by her very insistence upon uniform law and obedience, by steadfastly maintaining the purity and the unity of the Faith, she became the great cohesive force in Europe, and by creating Christen- dom contributed immensely to the cause of Euro- pean civilization. Partly by good fortune, partly by h> i Buccess in making her cause prevail, Rome was always orthodox. She remained Btaunchly Trini- tarian. She fought the Aiians, who believed that 10 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY the Son, created bj the Father, could not be identi- cal with Him and could not have existed from the beginning. She Bought the Nestorians, who alleged that the Virgin was the mother of Christ only in so far as He was man. She fought the Monophysites, who denied that Christ had two distinct natures, human and divine. She fought always gallantly, and always, or almost always, in the end triumphantly. In those davs ecclesiastical affairs were inseparable from political a Hairs ; no man dreamed of severing them either in fact or in theory; the State and the Church were one fabric under a double aspect. The idea of the State apart from the Church, or the Church apart from the State, was no more imagined than the Darwinian theory. If we now go back to Odoacer, and to his Barba- rian successors, we shall find that in their endeavours to establish an Italian kingdom they were confronted by a threefold task, — to blend the Barbarian con- querors and the subject Latins, to establish friendly relations with the Empire, and to win the confidence and support of the Orthodox Church. In all the long period of Barbarian dominion, each Barbarian chief in turn had to face the imminent danger that these three political powers, the subject people, the Church, and the Empire, should make common cause against him. The Barbarians, in fact, were always unsuccessful. They never were able to make Italy into one kingdom. These three enemies were too strong for them. The inherent difficulties of the situation appear at once on the deposition of Rom- ulus Angustulus, and give whatever interest there is FALL OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE 11 to Odoacer's brief career. Over that career, which bridges the years 476 to 489, we need not pause, for Odoacer's attempt to establish a permanent gov- ernment over all Italy was so ephemeral, and also so similar in all essential features to that of the Ostrogoths, his successors, that an account of their attempt may serve for his as well. CHAPTER II THE OSTROGOTHS (489-553) The Ostrogoths were a fine people; and historians bave speculated sadly on the immense advantage, the vast saving of ills, that would have accrued to Italy had they succeeded in their attempt to establish a kingdom. Such a union of strength and vigour with the gifted Italian nature might well have produced a happy result. But my business is merely to indi- cate why and how the attempt failed. The Ostrogoths (East Goths), one branch of the great Gothic nation, of which the Visigoths (West Goths) were the other, immediately prior to their invasion of Italy inhabited Pannonia (now Austria) on the south side of the Danube. They were a war- like people, and had given much trouble to the East- cm Emperors, who had been obliged not only to bestow upon them territory, but also to pay tribute. The reigning Emperor eagerly seized the first oppor- tunity to rid himself of them. He suggested to their king, Theodoric, — hunter, soldier, statesman, a big- limbed, heroic man, passionate but just, — that he should lead his people into Italy, conquer Odoacer, and rule as Imperial lieutenant. As Italy was far pleasanter than Pannonia, Theodoric gladly accepted the suggestion. The Goths, not more than two or three hundred THE OSTROGOTHS 13 thousand persons all told, effected their tedious emi- gration in -iSS— 189. It was an easy matter to defeat the unstable Odoacer, and the Latins made no resist- ance. Theodoric, now master of Italy, both by right of conquest and by Imperial commission, set himself, in his turn, to the task of uniting Barbarians and Romans throughout the peninsula under one sta- ble government. His difficulties were great. In the first place the immigrating people whom he led, though mainly Goths, were a medley of various tribes, and constituted an alien army of occupation in the midst of an unfriendly population, perhaps ten times their number. This Roman population, which had completely given up the use of arms, and never took part in any fight more formidable than a riot, was largely urban and lived in the cities which were scattered over Italy, almost the same that exist to this day. In the north were Turin, Pavia, Fer- rara, Milan. Bergamo, Verona, Aquileia ; on the east coast, Ravenna, Rimini, Ancona ; on the west coast and in the centre, Genoa, Pisa, Lucca, Perugia, Spo- leto, Rome, Benevento, Naples, Salerno, Amain ; and in the south, the old Greek cities. All the ordinary business of life was in Roman hands; lawyers, phy- sicians, weavers, spinners, carpenters, masons, cob- blers, were Roman. Many of the workmen on great estates were also Roman. The Goths were primarily men-at-arms, and only exercised such rude crafts as were required in village communities. The leaders became military landowners. Naturally each race looked upon the other with suspicion, dislike, and Contempt. It is obvious that there was need of !>«>tli [4 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY time and statesmanship before the two races would understand each other, share occupations, inter- marry, and t'cel themselves countrymen. Theodoric's policy falls under three heads, — rela- tions with the subject population, with the Emperor, and with the Church. With the Romans Theodoric was just and considerate ; he limited the division of lands among his followers, so far as he could, to those lands which Odoacer's followers had had; he left civil administration chiefly in Roman hands ; he let Romans live under Roman law and Goths un- der Gothic law. He employed as his chief counsel- lor Cassiodorus, a great Roman noble of wealth and Learning; he issued a code compiled from the Imperial codes; he reduced the taxation. Following the custom of the late Western Emperors, he dwelt in Ravenna, where S. Apollinare Nuovo, S. Sjnrito,^ baptistery, and a mausoleum still testify to his pre- sence. When the State had been put in order, Theo- doric made a royal progress to Rome (500), where he was welcomed with Imperial honours. He promised to uphold all the institutions established by Roman Emperors, and showed himself as much interested in the city as if he had been a Roman. He provided carefully for the preservation of all the monuments of antiquity, repaired the walls, the aqueducts, the cloacae, and drained the Pontine Marshes. He spoke of Rome as " the city which is indifferent to none, since she is foreign to none ; the fruitful mother of eloquence, the spacious temple of every virtue, com- prising within herself all the cherished marvels of the universe, so that it may in truth be said, Rome THE OSTROGOTHS 15 is herself one great marvel." ! He renewed the dis- tribution of bread, celebrated games in the circus, and treated the Senate with great distinction. In fact, until his breach with the Church, which turned all the orthodox population against him, he walked closely in the Imperial footsteps and was very suc- cessful in his relations with the Latin people. Dealings with the Emperor were more difficult. Immediately after his victory over Odoacer, Theo- doric had asked the Emperor for the regalia (the crown jewels and Imperial vestments) of the West, which had been sent to Constantinople upon the de- position of Romulus Augustulus. This embassy had been at first fobbed off, but finally the regalia were sent him in token of full recognition of his authority. In the mean time Theodoric's army without waiting for permission from the Emperor had proclaimed him king ; and in practice Theodoric always acted as an independent king. In theory, however, he accepted the inclusion of Italy in the Empire as a fundamen- tal principle, and acknowledged that his position was merely that of ruler of one of the Imperial provinces. The Emperors, compelled by impotence to acquiesce in Theodoric's lieutenancy of Italy, wished him in their hearts all possible bad luck, and bided their time to make trouble for him. But this ill will was con- cealed beneath the surface, and for about thirty years his relations with the Empire, with some inter- ruptions, were amicable enough. Before speaking of Theodoric's relations with the Church, which were a matter of politics, and had to 1 Rome in the Middle Ages, Grcgorovius, vol. i, p. 'J9T>. L6 A SHORT BISTORY OF ITALY be considered by him on general grounds of policy, it i- necessary to speak of the relations between the Church and tlic Emperor, for the latter affected the former. There were always difficulties, active or latent, between the Roman ('lunch and the Empire. There was jealousy between old Rome and new Constantinople. There was misunderstanding be- tween the Latin and Greek mind. There was fric- tion between Papal and Imperial authority. These troubles will appear more clearly as we proceed. At this time it is only necessary to say that during the firsl thirty years of Theodoric's reign, his period of success and prosperity, there was discord between Pope and Emperor, a kind of schism. The Byzan- tine Emperors, often men of cultivation, living in the most civilized city of the world, interested them- selves in theology, and liked nothing better than to tinker with the Faith. To this, also, they were pushed by political needs. Their subjects were di- vided into the orthodox and the heterodox ; and this diversity of belief was always a menace to political unity. To heal the breach, the reigning Emperor devised a scheme of compromise, a via media, on which he hoped all would unite. The Papacy, in- censed by this trifling with orthodoxy, and by the assumption of an Imperial right to interfere in mat- ters of faith, denounced the compromise. A schism was the consequence, which lasted until the reign of the Emperor Justin (518-527), when the crafty statesman who guided Justin's policy, his nephew, the famous Justinian, effected a reconciliation. For Justinian already cherished an ambition to win back THE OSTROGOTHS 17 Italy for the Empire ; and he knew that that could not be done without the support of the Papacy. In 519 a papal embassy bearing the olive branch was warmly welcomed at Constantinople; both Emperor and nephew condemned the compromise and accepted the orthodox Catholic faith. Thus the breach was healed. During 1 the period of this breach between Empire and Papacy, the Gothic king had managed his rela- tions with the Church very prudently. Although an Arian (like all Barbarians except the Franks), he was exceedingly just to the Catholics. He carefully re- frained from taking part in the domestic affairs of the Church, until he was compelled to do so in the in- terest of order. While in Rome he maintained a most correct attitude. But though he acted with great moderation and only followed Imperial precedents, the Church resented his interference. Do what Theo- doric would, the Papacy was his natural enemy. It felt instinctively that a king of Italy must always overshadow the Pope, just as at Constantinople the Emperor eclipsed the Patriarch, and that only upon condition of keeping Italy without a strong government within its borders could the Church at- tain its full stature. The ecclesiastical power was already inimical to civil authority. The attitude of the Church toward Theodoric presaged the history of the Holy Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, and the kingdom of Italy in our day. Nevertheless, until the reconciliation of Emperor and Pope, Theo- doric had do serious trouble. About the year 524 the crafty Justinian, strong L8 \ SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY in bis complete reconciliation with the Papacy, felt the time ripe to Bet about the recovery of the lost provinces of the West, and made the first hostile move. Perhaps, however, it is unjust to assign a purely political motive to Justinian's action, for in his active Byzantine brain, policy, theology, law, art, and ambition were curiously blended. An Imperial edict was issued, persecuting Arians in various ways, and in particular commanding that all Arian churches throughout the Empire should be handed over to Catholics. This action of course received the ap- proval of the Pope, and was most effective in alien- ating the Arian Goths from the Catholic Latins. Theodoric, who had been consistently tolerant to Catholics, was very angry and threatened to retali- ate by suppressing the Catholic ritual throughout [taly. This threat threw the Papacy into closer al- liance with the Emperor, and aggrieved the Latin people. A new generation had grown up in peace and comparative prosperity under Theodoric's rule, and. forgetful that for these blessings it was indebted to the Goths, began to give free play to its Latin prejudices. Thus the three natural enemies of Gothic mil' gradually drewtogether : the Empire, from desire to recover Italy ; the Papacy, to be rid of a ruler; and the Latins, out of national prejudice. Intrigues were started between Constantinople and some leading men in Rome. How far the conspiracy went nobody knew. The king was in no mood to act judicially. Several senators were arrested on the charge of high treason, tried before partial or irregular tribunals, and put to death. Of THE OSTROGOTHS 19 these senators the most famous was Boethius, who stands at the end of Roman civilization, as Dante stands at the beginning of modern civilization. The long" centuries between the two constitute the Middle Ages. It is interesting to note that Dante in his desolation after the death of Beatrice took to con- sole him the book which Boethius wrote in prison, the " Consolations of Philosophy." Boethius came of the most distinguished family in Rome. He and both his sons had been consuls. He was a student of Plato, Aristotle, and of the Neoplatonists ; he had translated treatises on mathe- matics from the Greek, and had written on philo- sophv and theology. He was an encyclopedia of knowledge ; when a hydraulic watch was wanted, or an especially magnificent sundial, or a test to detect counterfeit money, or a musician to be sent to a foreign potentate, he was the man to be con- sulted. His " Consolations of Philosophy," which had immense vogue all through the Middle Ages in every language, furnishes his apology, his case against Theodoric, and gives the Latin view of the Barbarians. He says : " The hatred against me was incurred while I was in office, because I opposed the acta of oppression to which the Romans were sub- jected. Tin- greed of the Barbarians for the lands of the Romans, always unpunished, grew greater day by day; they sought men's lives in order to gel their goods. How often have I protected and defended wretches from the innumerable calumnies of the Barbarians who wished to devour them." ' 1 /.l' Romulus Augustulus. An attempt was made to keep civil and military affairs separate, but the pres- sure of constant war threw all the power into military hands. The peninsula, or such part of it as remained Imperial after the Lombard invasion, was divided for administrative and military purposes into dukedoms and counties, which were governed by dukes and gen- erals. The Byzantine officials were usually Greeks, bred in Constantinople and trained in the Imperial system ; they regarded themselves as foreigners, and had neither the will nor the skill to be of use to Italy. Their public business was to raise money for the Empire, their private business to raise money for themselves. In spite of these oppressions the Latin people pre- ferred the Greeks to the Lombards, partly because of their common Greco-Roman civilization, partly be- cause the Empire was still the Roman Empire ; and this popular support stood the Empire in good stead in the long war which it waged with the Lombards. The Latin people did not fight, but they gave food and information. The Empire, however, was ill pre- pared for a contest. The recall of Narses removed from Italy the last bulwark against Barbarian inva- sion. The Imperial army was weak, cities were poorly garrisoned, fortifications badly constructed ; and, but for the control of the sea which enabled the Empire to hold the towns on the sea-coast, the whole of Italy THE LOMBARD INVASION 27 would have fallen, like a ripe apple, into the hands of the invaders. The Empire, in fact, was exhausted by the effort of reconquest and had neither moral nor material strength to spare from its home needs. The Lombards, if inferior in dignity to the Empire, played a far more active part in this historic drama. They came originally from the mysterious North, and after wandering about eastern Europe had at last settled near the Danube, where part of them were converted to Arian Christianity. Discontented with their habitation, and pressed by wilder Barbarians behind them, they were glad to take advantage of the defenceless condition of Italy. They knew how plea- sant a land it was, for many of them had served as mercenaries under Narses. The whole nation, with a motley following from various tribes, amounted to about two or three hundred thousand persons. They crossed the Alps in 568. There were many points of difference between these invaders and the Goths. The Lombards had had little intercourse with the Empire, and were far less civilized than their predecessors, and far inferior in both military and administrative capacity. Their leader, AJboin, cannot be compared in any respect with Theodoric Moreover, Theodoric came, nomi- nally, 'it least, as lieutenant of the Emperor, and affected to deem his sovereignty the continuation of Imperial rule; whereas the Lombards regarded only the title of the sword and invariably fought the Empire as an enemy. The invaders met little active resistance ; if they had had control of the sea, they would readily have 28 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY conquered the whole peninsula. They overran the Nmtli and strips of territory down the centre within a i'tw years, and afterwards gradually spread little by little; but they never conquered the South, the ducli\ <»1 Rome, or the Adriatic coast. For the greater part of the two hundred years during which t he Lombard dominion existed, the map of Italy bore the following aspect: the Empire retained the little peninsula of Istria ; the long strip of coast from the lowlands of Venetia to Ancona, protected by its maritime cities, Ravenna, Rimini, Pesaro, Sini- gaglia ; and the duchy of Rome, which spread along the Tyrrhene shore from Civita Vecchia to Gaeta ; Naples and Amalfi ; the territories of the heel and toe; and also Sicily and Sardinia. The boundaries were never fixed. Of the Lombard kingdom all one need remember is that it was a loose confeder- ation of three dozen duchies; and that of these duchies, Spoleto, a little north of Rome, and Bene- vento, a little northeast of Naples, were the most important, as well as the most detached from the kingdom. In fact, these two were independent duchies, and rarely if ever took commands from Pavia, the king's capital, except upon compulsion. At the time of the invasion the Lombards were barbarians ; and they did not make rapid progress in civilization. Fond of their native ways, of hunt- ing and brawling, they were loath to adopt the arts of peace, and left most forms of craft and industry to the conquered Latins. Nevertheless, it was im- possible to avoid the consequences of daily contact with a far more developed people, and their manners THE LOMBARD INVASION 29 became more civilized with each generation. The royal house affords an indication of the change which was wrought during the two hundred years. Alboin, the original invader (died 573), killed an- other Barbarian king, married his daughter, and forced her to drink from a cup made of her father's skull. The last Lombard king, Desiderius (died about 7S0), cultivated the society of scholars, and his daughter learned by heart " the golden maxims of philosophy and the gems of poetry." Each advance of the Lombards in civilization was a gain to the Latins, who, especially in the country where they worked on farms, were little better than serfs. The two races drew together slowly. The conversion of the Lombards from Arian to Catholic Christianity (600-700) diminished the distance between them. Intermarriage must soon have begun ; but not until the conquest by the Franks does there seem to have been any real blending of the races. The most conspicuous trait in the Lombard char- acter was political incompetence. It would have required but a little steadiness of puqiose, a little political foresight, a little spurt of energy, to con- quer Ravenna, Rome, Naples and the other cities held by the Byzantines, and make Italy into one kingdom. Failure was due to the weakness of the central government, which was unable to weld the petty dukedoms together. This cutting up of Italy into many divisions left deep sears. Each city, with tin- territory immediately around it, began to regard itself as a Beparate Btate, with no sense of duty to- wards a common country; each cultivated indi- 30 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY vidualitv and jealousy of its neighbours, until these qualities, gradually growing during two hundred vt.us. presented insuperable difficulties to the for- mation of an Italian national kingdom. In spite of their political incompetence the Lom- bards left their mark on Italy, especially on Lom- bardy and the regions occupied by the strong duchies of Spoleto and Benevento. For centuries Lombard blood appears in men of vigorous character ; and Lombard names, softened to suit Italian ears, linger on among the nobility. In fact, the aristocracy of Italy from Milan to Naples was mainly Teutonic, and the principal element of the Teutonic strain was Lombard. CHAPTER IV THE CHURCH (56S-700) Oxe great political effect of the Lombard conquest was the opportunity which it gave the Papacy, while Lombard and Byzantine were buffeting each other, to grow strong and independent. Had Italy remained a Greek province the Pope would have been a mere provincial bishop, barely taking ceremonial prece- dence of the metropolitans of Ravenna, Aquileia, and Milan ; had Italy become a Lombard kingdom, the Pope would have been a royal appointee ; but with the Lombard kings fighting the Byzantine Exarchs, each side needing papal aid and sometimes bidding for it, the Pope was enabled to become master of the city and of the duchy of Rome, and the real head of the Latin people as well as of the Latin clergy. In fact, the growth of the Roman Catholic Church is the most interesting development in this period. The Lombards gave it the opportunity to grow strong and independent, but the power to take advantage of the opportunity came from within. This power irascompacl of many elements, secular and spiritual. From the ills of the world men betook themselves with southern impulsiveness to things religious ; they Boughl refuge, order, security in the Church. In the greater interests of life among the Latins the ris- ing i cclesiastica] Eabric had do competitor. Paganism 32 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY had vanished before Christianity, philosophy before theology, literature, art, science had perished. Italy ha«l ceased to he a country. The ancient Empire of Rome had faded into a far-away memory. The wreck of the old nobility left the ecclesiastical hierarchy without a rival. In the midst of the general ruin of Roman civilization the Church stood stable, offering: peace to the timid, comfort to the afflicted, refinement to the gentle, a home to the homeless, a career to the ambitious, power to the strong. By a hundred strings the Church drew men to her; in a hundred modes she sowed the prolific seeds of ecclesiastical patriot- ism. She was essentially Roman, and gathered to herself whatever was left of life and vigour in the Roman people. With a structure and organization framed on the Imperial pattern, she slowly assumed in men's minds an Imperial image ; and Rome, a pro- vincial town whose civil magistrates busied themselves with sewers and aqueducts, again began to inspire men with a strange confidence in a new Imperial power. In addition to the strength derived from her im- mense moral and spiritual services, the Church had the support of two potent forces, ignorance and su- perstition. The general break-up of the old order had lowered the common level of knowledge. Everybody was ignorant, everybody was superstitious. The laws of nature were wholly unknown. Every ill that happened, whether a man tripped over his threshold, or a thunderbolt hit his roof, was ascribed to diabolic agencies. The old pagan personification of natural forces, without its poetry, was revived. The only THE CHURCH 33 help lay in the priest, a kind of magical protector, who with beads, relics, bones, incense, and incantation defended poor humanity from the assaults of devils. Thus, while all civil society suffered from ignorance, while every individual suffered from the awful daily, hourly, presence of fear, the Church profited by both. Beside these intangible resources, the Church, or to speak more precisely the Papacy, had others of a material kind. For centuries pious men, especially when death drew near, had made great gifts of land to the bishops of Rome, until these bishops had become the greatest landed proprietors in Italy. Most of their estates were in Sicily, but others were scattered all over Italy, and even in Gaul, Illyria, Sardinia, and Cor- sica. In extent they covered as much as eighteen hundred square miles, and yielded an enormous in- come. This income enabled the Popes to maintain churches and monasteries, schools and missionaries, to buy off raiding armies of Lombards, and also to equip soldiers of their own. These estates the Church owned as a mere private landlord. During the Gothic dominion and the restoration of Imperial rule, she had no rights of sovereignty. But later on, during the disturbed period of border war between Lom- bards and Greeks, we find the Popes actually ruling the duchy of Borne. The corner-stone of the great papal power, how- ever, was laid by the genius <»t' one man, who organ- ized the monastic senthnenl of the sixth century and put it to the Bupporl of the Papacy. There had Keen monk-, in Italy long before St. Benedict I \80-54 1 1, 84 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY but as civil .society disintegrated, men in ever greater numbers fled from the world, and sought peace in solitude and in monastic communities. St. Benedict perceived that the monastic rules and customs de- rived from the East were ill suited to the West ; so he devised a monastic system, and formulated his celebrated Rule, which became the pattern for all other monastic rules in Europe. He founded a monastery at Subiaco, a little village near Rome, and afterwards the famous abbey on Monte Cassino, a high hill midway between Rome and Naples, which became the mother of all Benedictine monasteries and shone like a light in the Dark Ages. Benedict's ideal was to help men shut themselves off' from the temptations of life and realize, as far as they could, the prayer " Thy kingdom come ... on earth as it is in Heaven." He ordained community of property, and required a novitiate. Most strictly he forbade idleness, and with special insistence exhorted his brethren to till the ground with their ow r n hands. Intellectual interests followed ; and Benedictine monks became the teachers not only of agriculture, but of handicraft, of art and learning. His Order spread fast over Italy and Gaul, and in time over Spain, England, and Germany. Its . communities, like the old castra romana, upheld the authority of Rome and enforced her dominion. The attractions of the monastic life at Monte Cassino are well set out in a letter written (after St. Benedict's day) to one of the abbots, by a man of the world who had once lived there : " Though great spaces separate me from your company, I am THE CHURCH 35 bound to you by a clinging affection that can never be loosed, nor are these short pages enough to tell you of the love that torments me all the time for you, for the superiors and for the brethren. So much so that when I think about those leisure days spent in holy duties, the pleasant rest in my cell, your sweet religious affection, and the blessed company of those soldiers of Christ, bent on holy worship, each brother setting a shining example of a differ- ent virtue, and the gracious talks on the perfections of our heavenly home, I am overcome, all my strength goes, and I cannot keep tears from mingling with the sighs that burst from me. Here I go about among Catholics, men devoted to Christian worship ; everybody receives me well, everybody is kind to me from love of our father Benedict, and for the sake of your merits ; but compared with your mon- astery the palace is a prison ; compared with the quiet there this life is a tempest." 1 What Benedict did for the monastic orders, another great man, St. Gregory (540-G04) , did for the Papacy itself. Gregory the Great, the most commanding figure in the history of Europe between Theodoric and Charlemagne, was a Roman, made -of the same stuff as Scipio and Cato, and presented the interest- ing character of a Christian and an antique Roman combined. Born of a noble Roman family, Gregory was educated in Rome, and entered the service of the state, iii which lie rose to the high office of prefect of the city; but, dissatisfied with civil life, he aban- 1 Le armache italiane del medio >'vo dexcritte, Ugo Baliani (trans btod). 3G A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY cloned it and became a monk. He wanted to give him- self up wholly to a monastic life, but deemed it his dut\ to accept office in the papal service, and filled the distinguished position of papal ambassador (to use a modern term) at the Imperial court at Constantinople. In 5! K) he was elected Pope, half against his will, for he desired to be either a monk or a missionary ; but he felt that the hopes of civilization and the future of re- ligion lay in the Papacy, and he applied himself with energy to his new task. This task was as complex and multifarious as possible. It concerned all Europe, from Sicily to England. Rome itself was in a deplorable condition, left undefended by the Exarch, and threat- ened by the Lombards of Spoleto, who harried the country to the very gates, murdering some Romans and carrying others off as slaves. Gregory had to take complete control of the city, military and civil. He wrote : " I do not know any more whether I now fill the office of priest or of temporal prince ; I must look to our defence and everything else. I am pay- master of the soldiers." He kept up the courage of the Romans, and tried to draw spiritual good out of their plight. It w r as impossible for a contemporary eye to see that under present wretchedness lay ger- minating the seeds of empire ; yet Gregory acted as if he beheld them. In spite of apprehensions of the end of the world he organized the Church to endure for centuries. Both at home and abroad he displayed a tireless activity. Among the foreign events of his pontificate are the conversion of England by Augustine (597) and the ministry of St. Columbanus (543-615) among THE CHURCH 37 the Franks, Alemanni, and Lombards. It was Gregory who saw the handsome fairhaired boys from Eng- land standing in the market-place and said, " Non Angli sed augeli." He had the true imperial instinct, and always encouraged the clergy in distant parts of Europe to visit Rome and to apply to Rome for counsel and aid. The respect in which he was held may be inferred from the titles given him by Co- luinbanus : " To the holy lord and father in Christ, the most comely ornament of the Roman Church, the most august flower, so to speak, of all this lan- guishing Europe, the illustrious overseer, to him who is skilled to inquire into the theory of the Divine causality, I, a mean dove (Columbanus), send Greeting in Christ." Gregory also maintained close relations with the clergy in Africa, and received homage from the Spanish bishops, for Spain had recently been converted from Arianism to Catholicism. He was by no means content to confine his dealings to the clergy, but was in frequent correspondence with kings and queens of western Europe, as well as with the Em- peror and Empress in Constantinople. His immense energy made itself felt everywhere. He made rules for the liturgy ; and mass is still celebrated partly according to his directions. He reformed church music and founded schools for the Gregorian chant. He administered the papal revenues, superintend- ing the managemenl of farms, stables, and orchards. lie founded monasteries, he supported hospitals and asylums. Benedict and Gregory arc the two great figures of thifl period, and, though no worthy successor I'ol- 38 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY lowed for Beveral generations, they did their work so well that tlu' Papacy, like a great growing oak, con- tinued to Bpread its power conspicuously in the eyes of the world, and also, out of sight, in the hearts and habits of men. The relations between the Papacy and the Empire were difficult. The Popes were subjects of the Em- peror. The whole ecclesiastical organization through- out the Empire was subject to the Imperial will, just as the civil or military service was. The Papacy did ma like this position of subordination and resented any interference in papal affairs. Though Odoacer, Theodoric, and Justinian had always asserted their right to exercise a supervision over papal elections, the Popes had never acquiesced willingly, and even in those early days showed a marked disposition to take exclusive control of what they deemed their own affairs. It might be supposed that the Papacy, mindful of the great danger of a Lombard conquest of Rome, would have clung to the Empire ; but after the Lombards had become Catholics the gap between the Romans and the Greco-Oriental Empire was nearly as wide as that between them and the Lombards. There was a fundamental difference be- tween the Greek mind, floating over metaphysics and speculative theology, and the Roman mind, bound to. political conceptions and practical ends. A theology which would satisfy a congregation in St. Sophia would not suit the worshippers in St. Peter's. The Empire, obliged to adapt theological niceties to political necessities, favoured any creed of compromise, which should promote political con- THE CHURCH 39 cord and unity. Rome, with its despotic, imperial instincts, felt that orthodoxy was its strength, and maintained an inflexible creed. The two were an ill-yoked pair, and quarrels were inevitable. The relations between the Papacy and the Lom- bards were more simple. They varied between war, and friendship real or feigned. In the beginning, and even, as we have seen, in Gregory's time, there was war ; but then began the conversion of the Lom- bards to Christianity, and intervals of peace fol- lowed, during which the Lombard king saluted the Pope as "Most Holy Father," and the Pope replied " My well-beloved Son." CHAPTER V THE COMING OF THE FRANKS (726-768) We now come to the separation of the Latin world from the Greek world in both political and ecclesias- tical affairs, and to the reconstruction of Europe by the alliance of the Franks and the Papacy. The plot continues to be very simple. The Empire, pressed by dangerous enemies, tried once more to gain polit- ical strength by ecclesiastical legislation ; the effect of this legislation on the Imperial provinces in Italy was to cause rebellion. The Papacy broke the ties that bound it to the Empire ; then, finding itself de- fenceless before the Lombards, made an alliance with the Franks, who invaded Italy and overthrew the Lombards. In order to elaborate this plot, we must begin with the great Asiatic movement of the seventh century ; for this movement acted as a cause of causes to split the Latins from the Greeks, to exalt the Papacy, and to form the Holy Roman Empire. In one of the tribes of Arabia, without heralding, appeared a man, who at the age of forty became a religions prophet, and by the force of genius con- structed one of the great religions of the world. Mohammed's religion worked on the ardent Arabian temperament like magic, and engendered a fierce passion for conquest and proselytizing. Tribes co- THE COMING OF THE FRANKS 41 hered, became both a sect and a nation, and swept like wildfire over the west of Asia and the north of Africa. Mohammed died in 632, but his successors, the Caliphs, carried on his work ; under the inspira- tion of the slogan, " Before } 7 ou is Paradise, behind you the devil and the fire of hell," they advanced from conquest to conquest. Cities and provinces were torn from the Empire. Damascus, Syria, Jeru- salem, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Egypt, Rhodes fell in rapid succession ; next Africa, bit by bit. Persia was beaten to her knees. Sicily was raided. Twice Constantinople had to fight for life. Naturally Byzantine statesmen felt that some radical step must be taken, or all the remnants of the Empire would be reduced to slavery. A vigor- ous Emperor, Leo the Isaurian (717-741), took the radical step. It was necessarily religious, for, in Constantinople, political action always took a re- ligious complexion. Leo issued a decree forbidding the use of images in churches and in Christian wor- ship (726). Those in place he ordered broken. He acted no doubt from high motives, thinking to en- noble religion and to arouse patriotism; but his people disagreed with him. In the East riots and civil war broke out. These were suppressed, but discontent and persistent opposition remained. In Italy also the excitement was intense. The coun- try had already been irritated by severe taxation, and when the decree of iconoclasm was published, the image-loving Italians rose in a body. The Pope, U mosi hurt in conscience by the decree, and in pocket by the taxation, was the natural head <>t' 12 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY resistance. The Exarch attempted to arrest him, luit both Latins and Lombards rallied to his defence. In BOme places open revolt broke out, and a plot was started to set up another Emperor in place of the wicked iconoclast who polluted the Imperial throne. But the Pope, Gregory II (715-731), was a prudent man, and was not ready to take a step which would deprive Rome of its single defence from the Lombards. He opposed the rebellious plan, but int the matter of maintaining the images he stood like a rock. His successor, Gregory III i 7: 11-741), went farther, and took decisive action. He convoked a synod, which expelled every image- breaker from the Church (731). This was tanta- mount to a direct excommunication of the Emperor, and a declaration of papal independence. The Em- peror was powerless to compel obedience. Thus began the great split between the Papacy and the Byzantine Empire, between western and eastern Europe, between the Latin Church and the Greek. Some of the western provinces, Calabria, Sicily, and Illyria, which were practically Greek, remained faith- ful to the Empire and shared its fortunes for several hundred years more. Ecclesiastically they were re- moved from the jurisdiction of the Popes to that of the Patriarchs of Constantinople. This breach between the Papacy and the Empire led inevitably to an alliance between the Papacy and the Franks, which is of such great historical conse- quence that it must be recounted in some detail. "\\ bile the Empire and the Papacy were quarrelling over ecclesiastical matters, western Europe had been THE COMING OF THE FRANKS 43 changing. The Frankish kingdom had been estab- lished in what is now Belgium, Holland, and large parts of France and Germany, and was the one great Christian power in Europe. Therefore, when the Pa- pacy had cut loose from the Empire and saw itself defenceless against the Lombards, it had no alterna- tive but to seek help from the Franks. There were also two special reasons for friendship between the Franks and the Papacy. First, the Franks, alone of Barbarians, had been converted to Catholic Christian- ity. Secondly, in their endeavours to enlarge their eastern borders, the Franks had been greatly assisted by the missionaries, who — in the normal course, missionaries, merchants, soldiers — had prepared the way for Frankish conquest, and had strength- ened the Frankish power when established. These missionaries were absolutely devoted to the Roman See ; they spread papal loyalty wherever they went, and wrought a strong bond of union between the Frankish kingdom and the Papacy. This union of sympathy and interest was an excellent basis for a political union ; and the time soon came for such a development. When the iconoclastic revolts occurred in Italy, and the Popes broke with the Empire, the Lombard kings thought that their opportunity to conquer all Italy had come. But instead of making one bold campaign against Rome and the South, they merely laid hands on a few border cities. The Popes turned with frantic appeals for help to the only powei thai could help them, tin* Franks. Kvcry time the Lom- bard king made a hostile move, the Pope cried aloud 44 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY for aid. For some time the Franks deemed that the balance of political considerations was against intervention and refused to take part in Italian affairs. Charles Martel, mayor of the palace and ruler of the Franks in all hut name, stood firm on the policy of non-interference ; but his son and successor, Pippin the Short, took a different view. Pippin judged that the time had come to depose the royal Merovingian family and to exalt his own, the Carlovingian, in its stead. As the Merovingians had reigned for two hundred and fifty years, the step was revolutionary, and Pippin washed to strengthen his position by the support of the Papacy. He sent messengers to the Pope, Zacharias, to ask advice ; and the Pope, ac- cording to the chronicler, "in the exercise of his apostolical authority replied to their question, that it seemed to him better and more expedient that the man who held power in the kingdom should be called king and be king, rather than he who falsely bore that name. Therefore the Pope commanded the king and the people of the Franks, that Pippin, who was using royal power, should be called king and should be settled on the throne." The last Merovingian, therefore, was tonsured and stowed away in a mon- astery, and Pippin became king of the Franks (751). Without accepting the monkish chronicler's state- ment, that the Pope commanded Pippin to be king, there can be little doubt that the papal sanction was of very real value to Pippin, and that Pippin let it appear that he was acting rather in conformity with the Pope's will than with his own. Thus the Pope laid Pippin under a great obliga- THE COMING OF THE FRANKS 45 tion ; it now remained for Pippin to discharge that obligation. It was not long; before the time came. The Lombard king felt that his opportunity was slipping- by. and acted with some vigour. He captured Ravenna and threatened Rome. The Pope hurried across the Alps. He anointed and crowned Pippin ; he likewise anointed arid blessed his son Charles (Charlemagne), and forbade the Franks under pain of excommunication ever to choose their king from any other family. These three great favours, the transfer of the royal title, the coronation rite, and the perpetual confirmation of the Carlovingian sov- ereignty, called for a great return. Pippin promised that the Adriatic provinces, taken by the Lombards from the Byzantines, should be ceded by the Lom- bards to the Pope. This promise Pippin fulfilled. He crossed the Alps, defeated the Lombard king, and forced him to cede the Exarchate of Ravenna and the five cities below it on the coast, to the Pope, who thereby became an actual sovereign. Thus Pippin discharged his obligation to the Papacy. This beginning of the Papal monarchy is so important that the theoretic origin may as well be mentioned here. There was a legend, universally believed, that an early Pope, Silvester (314-335) healed the Emperor Constantine of leprosy, and that the Emperor, in gratitude, made a great grant of territory to the Pope. The fact appears to have been that Constantine, although not cured of the leprosy, did L;iv<- to Silvester the Lateral) palace ami a plot of ground around it. This little donation grew in legend like a grain of mustard seed, ami 46 A SHOET HISTORY OF ITALY served the purpose of the Roman clergy. No good Roman would have been content with a title derived from the Lombards or the Franks. In Roman eyes these Barbarians never had any title to Italian ter- ritory ; they could give none. The only possible source of legal title was the Empire. In the gift by Constantine to Silvester papal adherents had a foun- dation of fact. That was enough. It is quite un- necessary to imagine false dealing. People in those days believed that what they wished true was true. This legend was accepted and embodied in concrete form in a document known as the Donation of Constantine, which is so important in explaining the attitude of the Papacy throughout the Middle Ages, that it may be quoted : — " In the name of the holy and undivided Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the Emperor Caesar Flavius Constantine ... to the most holy and blessed Father of Fathers, Silvester, bishop of Rome and Pope, and to all his successors in the seat of St. Peter to the end of the world. . . ." Here comes, interspersed with snatches of Christian dogma, a rambling narrative of his leprosy, of the advice of his physicians to bathe in a font on the Capitol filled with the warm blood of babies ; how he refused, how Peter and Paul appeared in a dream and sent him to Silvester, how he then abjured paganism, accepted the creed, was baptized and healed, and how he then recognized that heathen gods were demons and that Peter and his successors had all power on earth and in heaven. After this long preamble comes the grant : " We, together with all our Satraps and the whole THE COMING OF THE FRANKS 47 Senate, Nobles and People . . . have thought it desirable that even as St. Peter is on earth the appointed Vicar of God, so also the Pontiffs his viceregents should receive from us and from our Empire, power and principality greater than belongs to us . . . and to the extent of our earthly Impe- rial power we decree that the Sacrosanct Church of Rome shall be honoured and venerated, and that higher than our terrestrial throne shall the most sacred seat of St. Peter be gloriously exalted. " Let him who for the time shall be pontiff over the holy Church of Rome ... be sovereign of all the priests in the whole world ; and by his judgment let all things which pertain to the worship of God or the faith of Christians be regulated. . . . We hand over and relinquish our palace, the city of Borne, i, ml nil the provinces, places, and cities of Italy awl the icestem regions, to the most blessed Pon- tiffand universal Pope, Silvester ; and we ordain by our pragmatic constitution that they shall be gov- erned by him and his successors, and we grant that they shall remain under the authority of the holy Roman Church." 1 The -date of this document and many statements in it an* anachronisms and errors. It was composed about the time of Pippin's Donation, probably by somebody connected with the papal ehancery, and may be considered to be a pious forgery represent- ing tli*- facts as the writer deemed they were or else 1 Italy and her Invaders, T. Rodgkin, vol. vii, pp, l r.» 151 ; Se- • // torietd Jjormn- WiddU Ages, Erneel K. Henderson, pp. 319 329. 4s A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY should be. It was officially referred to for the first time in 777, but did not receive its full celebrity until the eleventh century, when the relations of the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire became the centre of European history. CHAPTER VI CHARLEMAGNE (768-814) The papal theory embodied in the Donation of Gonstantine was obviously crammed with seeds of future strife ; for the present, however, the fortuues of the House of Pippin and of the Papacy were bound together in amity. The constant accession of strength to the former and of prestige to the latter made them the central figures of European politics. The new political form to which their union gave birth slowly shaped itself. In Italy the first step was to get rid of the Lombards. On the death of the Lombard King, Aistulf, there were two claimants for the throne. One of the two, De- siderius, secured the Pope's help by the promise of ceding more cities, and became king. The Pope, writing to Pippin, says: "Now that Aistulf, that disciple of the devil, that devourer of Christian blood is dead ; and that by your aid and that of the Franks [a complimentary phrase, for Pippin seems to have done nothing] he is succeeded by Desiderius, a most gentle and good man, we pray you to urge him to continue in the right way." But the "most gentle and good" Desiderius Btrayed from the right Way, and < 1 i < 1 not cede the promised cities. So the Pope besought Pippin to use force ; but Pippin thought that lie had done enough, and the Tope 50 A SHOET HISTORY OF ITALY was obliged to rest content. Pippin died in 768. One can imagine the consternation at Rome on Pippin's death to learn that the dowager queen of the Franks was arranging- a marriage between her son Charlemagne and a daughter of Desiderius, and another marriage between her daughter and a son of Desiderius. The Pope wrote in terror that the plan was of the devil, and forbade it under the pains of everlasting damnation ; nevertheless, Charlemagne married the daughter of Desiderius (770). The Pope's anticipations, however, were not justi- fied ; the horrible union of the House of Pippin with the " unspeakable " Lombards came to an abrupt end. Charlemagne, probably from personal dislike, put away his wife, and sent her ignominiously back to her father. Desiderius, angry at the insult, rushed upon his fate ; he not only intrigued in Frankish affairs against Charlemagne, but he also seized many of the cities given to the Pope by the Donation of Pippin. He invaded the duchy of Rome, and ad- vanced within fifty miles of the city. This time Charlemagne acted in conformity with the papal entreaties. He crossed the Alps, routed the Lombard armv, captured Pavia, took Desiderius prisoner and assumed the title of King of the Lombards (773-774) . He went on to Rome, and solemnly confirmed the Donation of Pippin, and also made a further Dona- tion. This latter Donation, which led to disputes between the Papacy and Charlemagne's successors, is a matter of great uncertainty. Subsequent papal advocates claimed that it embraced two thirds of Italy. Probably Charlemagne only intended to re- CHARLEMAGNE 51 store to the Papacy its private property scattered throughout northern and central Italy, which had been seized by the Lombards. Charlemagne, having disposed of the Lombards, continued his conquests ; across the Pyrenees he annexed the Spanish March, in North Germany he subdued the Saxons and pushed his frontier to the Elbe, to the southeast he subjugated the country as far as the upper Danube. His monarchy now included Franks, Celts, Visigoths, Burgundians, Saxons, Lom- bards, Romans. How were such widespread terri- tories and such diverse peoples to be united in permanent union ? The far-seeing Papacy, in answer to this question, propounded the revival of the Roman Empire of the CaBsars. Reasons were numerous. The Frankish monarchy, with its conquests, in bulk at least was not unworthy to succeed to Imperial Rome. Throughout this wide territory there was a great net- work of ligaments ; from Gascony to Bavaria, from Lombardy to Frisia, divine service was celebrated in the Latin tongue and with the Roman ritual ; bishops, priests, monks, and missionaries acknowledged their dependence upon the Pope and looked to Rome, with its holy basilicas and apostolic tradition, as the centre of Christendom. This Christian unity was a constant argument for political unity. A second argument was tlir stall vigorous Roman tradition. The idea of nationality was as vei undeveloped ; Europe had known no other political system than common sub- jection to the Roman Empire, and all notions of civilization were of a civilization on the Roman pattern. When the Roman Empire in the Wesl had 52 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY decayed, the Church had adopted the Imperial organ- ization and kept remembrance of the old system fresh in men's minds. The old Empire, moreover, had early lost the notion of dependence on the city of Koine, for the seat of government had been set at Constantinople, at Milan, and at Ravenna ; and since the days of the early Caesars, it had not been neces- sary for an Emperor to be a native Roman. There was no theoretical difficulty to bar a Frank from the Imperial throne or forbid the seat of government to a Frankish city. In fact, nobody could conceive of the Empire as other than Roman, and the Frankish kingdom could only become an empire by becoming the Roman Empire. The Papacy had special reasons for these views. Under the Empire Christianity had grown up; under the Empire it had obtained power and dominion, and had become the state religion. The Church might quarrel with Emperors, but it regarded the Empire — the source of secular law and order — as its joint tenant in the world. The one represented religious unity, the other represented civil unity. In addition to these large arguments, local reasons affected the Papacy. Shortly before the expulsion of the Lombards from Italy, the lack of a strong govern- ment had been wofully felt. One usurper and then another had been put in St. Peter's chair in riot and bloodshed. It had become plain as day that the Papacy of itself, without the support of a potent secular power, was not able to maintain its dignity, nor even to enforce order in the very city of Rome. The Papacy could not endure without the Empire. CHARLEMAGNE 53 The very titles which the Frankisk kings had gradu- ally received led up to the Imperial title. Gregory II had called Charles Martel "Patrician," a vague title of honour held by the Exarchs ; Gregory III had offered to him the titles both of Patrician and of Consul ; Stephen II bestowed upon Pippin the title of Patrician of the Romans ; Charlemagne's own titles were King of the Franks, King of the Lom- bards, Patrician of the Romans ; and his son had been crowned by the Pope, King of Italy (781). The title next in order was undoubtedly Emperor of the Romans. Charlemagne himself was a man of gigantic stature and great strength, indefatigable in action, and delighting in hunting, swimming, and martial exercise. His mind also was mighty, rest- lessly pondering questions of state, of church, of war, of social improvement. He was the greatest of Barbarians, cast by Nature in an imperial mould. On the other hand there was one conspicuous diffi- culty in the way of reviving the Roman Empire ; this difficulty was that the Roman Empire still existed, and that there was a living Emperor, the legitimate suc- cessor of Caesar Augustus. But that Empire was vir- tually Greek, and the Emperor no more like Caesar Augustus than like Hercules. The city by the Tiber had as good title fco l»e the Imperial city as her younger rival by the Bosphorus j the Roman Republic (what- ever that ill-defined title may mean), represented by the Pope, had as fair a claim to elecl the Emperor, as the army and office-holders at Constantinople. In i.n't, to Papal and Roman eyes, the rights of Rome were much greater than tho.se of Constantinople. 54 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY To us, as we look back, nothing seems more natural than that the great Frankish king, after the conquest of Italy, should have brushed aside the theoretical dif- ficulty of an existing Roman Empire and assumed the Imperial title, Emperor of the Romans. History moves more slowly. Charlemagne was a Frank, ac- customed to Frankish usages and ideas ; he hesitated to adopt formally a wholly different conception of sovereignty and society. His nobles probably agreed with the advice given by Pope Zacharias to Pippin, that the man who held the power should receive the corresponding title, but being Franks they thought the dignity of Frankish king sufficient. So matters stood with nothing between Charlemagne and the Imperial crown but a theoretic difficulty, and a cer- tain reluctance. Unexpectedly and in quick succes- sion, events in Constantinople swept away the theo- retic difficulty, and events in Rome gave the Pope sufficient energy to overcome the reluctance. At Constantinople, the dowager Empress blinded and deposed her son the Emperor (797), and assumed to rule as sole Augusta. This wickedness, and the ancient doctrine that, though a woman might lawfully share the Imperial throne, she might not reign alone, combined to render plausible a theory readily adopted in the West, that the Imperial throne had become vacant. The event in Rome was this. A savage gang of nobles and ecclesiasts attacked Pope Leo III in the street, beat him, half-blinded him, cut his tongue, and imprisoned him in a monastery (799). He es- caped and fled to Charlemagne in Germany. His enemies followed and charged him with various CHARLEMAGNE 55 crimes. Charlemagne sent him back to Rome in the company of some great nobles, who were commis- sioned to investigate the charges, and went himself also. There, in St. Peter's basilica, in the presence of Frankish nobles and Roman ecclesiasts, with Charlemagne presiding, the Pope took a solemn oath of innocence (December 4, 800). Such an oath ac- cording to the jurisprudence of the time was neces- sarily followed by acquittal ; and the Pope's inno- cence necessarily proved the guilt of his accusers, who were punished. Such crimes, east and west, were insufferable. Something had to be done. Everybody looked to Charlemagne. His position as head of Christen- dom was acknowledged even beyond the bounds of western Europe. The Patriarch of Jerusalem, a subject of the Caliph Haroun al Raschid, sent to Charlemagne the keys of Calvary and of the Holy Sepulchre and the banner of the Holy City. Obvi- ously it was time for the Imperial dignity to be added to Imperial power. On Christinas day in the year 800, Charlemagne and a great procession of Frankish nobles and Roman citizens made their way through the streets of Rome towards the basilica of St. Peter's, whose gilt bronze, roof, taken from a pagan temple, shone conspicuous on tlit- Vatican lull. They walked through the Aure- lian gate ami across the bridge over the Tiber, then turning to the left, followed the colonnade which extended all the way from Hadrian's .Mausoleum to tin; atrium of the basilica. There they mounted the broad flight of marble steps, at the top of which 56 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY the Pope and his court awaited the king. Then Pope and king, followed by the procession, crossed the great atrium paved with white marble, past the fir- cone fountain and papal tombs, to the central door of the basilica, which swung its thousand-weight of silver open wide ; then, up the long nave, screened by rows of antique columns from double aisles on either side, all rich with tapestries of purple and gold, they proceeded with slow and solemn steps to the tomb of the apostle. Thirteen hundred and sev- enty candles in the great candelabrum glowed on the silver floor of the shrine, and glittered on the gold and silver statues around it. In the great apse behind the high altar sat the clergy, row upon row, beneath the Pontiff's throne ; above, the Byzantine mosaics looked down in sad severity. Here Charle- magne knelt at the tomb, and prayed. As he rose from his knees, the Pope lifted an Imperial crown of gold and placed it on his head, while all the congregation shouted, " Life and Victory to Charles, Augustus, crowned by God, the great and peaceful Emperor ! " Thus was accomplished that restoration of the Roman Empire, which by its attempt to combine Teu- ton and Roman in political union so powerfully affected the history of mediaeval Europe. Charle- magne is reported to have said that the Imperial coronation took him by surprise. However that may be, this great enterprise of a Christian Empire must be regarded, in its final completion, as the joint work of Frankish king and Roman Pope. CHAPTER VII FROM CHARLEMAGNE TO NICHOLAS I (814-867) The period from the death of Charlemagne (814) to the coronation of Otto the Great (962) is a long dismal stretch, tenanted by discord and ignorance. At the beginning stands the commanding figure of Charlemagne, With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear The weight of mightiest monarchies. But his descendants were unequal to their inherit- ance, and under them his Empire crumbled away and resolved itself into incipient nations. That Em- pire, in theory the restored Roman Empire, was in fact strictly Teutonic, though buttressed by the Ro- man Church. Charlemagne deemed himself head of both Empire and Church. In his eyes the Pope was his subject, and he legislated, as a matter of course, upon ecclesiastical affairs. In secular matters he en- deavoured to maintain local administration without detriment to a strong central government. For this purpose he divided the Empire into three divisions, of which he made his three sons nominally kings, really his lieutenants. I Inder these sons he appointed counts and bishops, as local governors. Be maintained his centra] authority by means of deputies (missi do- minici), who traversed the whole Empire, two by two, a bishop and a count together. The mainte- 58 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY nance of such a political unity, however, required either the organic strength and momentum of the old Roman Empire, or a breed of Charlemagnes. On the great Emperor's death the forces of disruption made themselves felt at once. His son, Louis the Pious, indeed succeeded to the whole sovereignty of the Empire; but Louis's sons demanded division. They rebelled ; and civil war lasted most of Louis's life. After his death the sons fought one another, and finally agreed on a division of the territory, though the Imperial title was kept. One brother took the territory to the east, destined to become Germany ; another, that to the west, destined to become France ; and Lothair, the eldest, who also received the Imperial title, took Italy and a long heterogeneous strip between the territories of his brothers. This division was fatal to the Empire. On Lothair's death the Imperial crown descended to his son Louis II (855-875), and afterwards to two other degenerate members of a degenerate family. The last made himself unendurable and was deposed (887). With him ended Charlemagne's legitimate male line, and also the first revival of the Roman Empire. This Empire had been a civilizing power. It had supported the Papacy, as an oak supports the creeper that clings to it ; and in its decline and fall it pulled the Papacy down with it. Without such support the Papacy could maintain neither dignity abroad nor order at home. This lesson the Church learned once through the outrages inflicted upon Pope Leo, but forgot it ; and required the experience of a FROM CHARLEMAGNE TO NICHOLAS 59 hundred and fifty years to learn it a second time. In theory Papacy and Empire were co-equal powers, religious and secular, together carrying on the noble task of God's government on earth. In practice, as their respective rights and powers had not been defi- nitely set off, they could not agree; each wished to be master. The relations between the two constitute the great axis on which mediaeval politics revolve, and for a long time must serve as the main motive of our story. The contest between them for mastery resembles a fencing match, in which the Pope thrusts at the Emperor's crown, the Emperor parries, and lunges back at the papal tiara. For convenience we divide the match into two bouts, and first take the Pope's attack. At the famous coronation on Christmas day, 800, Charlemagne and Leo stood side by side, co-labour- ers in the great task of reconstructing Europe. But once the coronation over, the two undefined author- ities jostled each other. Charlemagne, to whom gov- ernment was as much a religious as a secular mat- ter, though he had accepted his Imperial crown at the bands of the Pope, did not regard papal partici- pation accessary for the continuance of the Imperial dignity. At Aachen, 813, he crowned his son Louis the Pious co-Emperor, without the help of Pope or priest. This thrust must have carried discomfiture to the banks «»i the Tiber. But with Charlemagne's weak successors the astute Papacy scored hit after hit. Louis the Pious submitted to lit- recrowned by the Pope, bo did his Bon, Lothair, and his grandson Louis 11 ; and their two successors wvw also now oed 60 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY by the Pope. This sequence of palpable hits won this bout and secured for the Papacy beyond dis- pute the prerogative of crowning the Emperors. If we now turn to that part of the game where Emperor lunged and Pope parried, we find a more complicated situation. A third player takes a hand, to the confusion of the game and to the great detri- ment of the papal defence. This third player is the Roman people, who believed that the Senatus Popu- 1 usque llomanns still possessed their ancient pre- rogatives, and had the right to appoint both Emperor and Pope. Their claim to elect the Emperor was flimsy enough, being merely the memory of an empty form, and is not of enough consequence to stop for ; but their claim to interfere in the papal election was of the highest importance. It arose from the anom- alous nature of the Papacy. The Pope was bishop of Rome, and as such his election lay in the hands of the clergy and people of Rome ; he was also the ruler of central Italy, and as such the barons there were interested in his election ; and, in addition, he was head of all the Christian Churches in the West, and so all western Christendom, and the Em- peror as its temporal lord, was likewise concerned. The fact was that no definite method of papal elec- tion and confirmation had been settled upon during these disturbed centuries. The original practice had been for the Roman churches, priests, and laymen together assembled, to make the election ; subse- quently the senate, or the army, or the nobles, had represented the lay body of electors ; but whoever represented the laymen, they and the clergy made FROM CHARLEMAGNE TO NICHOLAS 61 the election ; which was then submitted to the Em- peror, or his representative, for scrutiny and confirma- tion. The submission of the Roman election to the examination of a Byzantine Emperor had never been acceptable in Rome, and after the breach over icon- oclasm, the practice ceased. Naturally, on the re- vival of the Roman Empire in the West, the new Emperors claimed the old Imperial right of super- vision ; naturally, also, the papal party resisted the fresh exercise of the old prerogative. Here was a situation for a scrimmage, but any clear account of the papal elections in Rome, supposing such were possible, would be too minute ; this narrative must confine itself to the main passes between the papal party and the Emperors. After the death of Charlemagne (no papal elec- tion occurred during his lifetime) several Popes were elected and consecrated without previously consulting the Emperor. On the other hand, in the next reign the Imperial deputy made the Romans take oath that no Pope should be consecrated without the ap- proval of the Emperor. What was done at the fol- lowing election is not known, but at the second the Pope was Dot consecrated until the Emperor had ratified the proceedings. Thereafter the Imperial right was acknowledged in theory, though in practice the elected Pontiles did not always wait for Imperial confirmation. With the Call of the Carlovingian Empire the fencing match ceased l'<»r lack of an Imperial Con- testant. The SCOre Stood thus : each had succeeded in the attack, the Papacy bad won its right to bestow 62 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY the Imperial crown, and the Empire had won, though not so definitely, its right to supervise the election of a Pope. We must now pass to this Imperial in- terregnum knowing- that when the Empire shall be revived, the match will begin anew, and the combat- ants, with foils unbated and envenomed, will tight to a finish. The Imperial interregnum, nominally interrupted by one German and several Italian make-believe Emperors, lasted for three generations ; no Imperial power was exercised from 875 to 962. It is a murky period in which shadows wander about ; but before taking our candle and descending into the gloom, we will turn to the one bright spot, the career of a great Pope, Nicholas I (858-867). This Pope, in spite of the decadence of the Pa- pacy, won immense prestige for it by two successful assertions of cosmopolitan authority. The King of Lorraine, brother to Louis II, the Emperor, wished to put away his wife and marry another woman. The innocent queen, with the sanction of the clergy of the kingdom, was divorced and forced to enter a convent ; and, with the consent of his clergy, the king married the other woman. The wronged queen appealed to the Pope, who sent his legates to in* vestigate the affair ; but the king bribed the legates and succeeded in getting a decision from the local synod in his favour, although, in fact, the whole matter had been a shocking scandal. Thereupon the king sent the archbishops of Cologne and of Trier, the two great ecclesiastical dignitaries of the kingdom, to announce this verdict of acquittal. FROM CHARLEMAGNE TO NICHOLAS 63 The Pope, " professing," as his enemies said, " to be imperator of the whole world," seized his opportu- nity ; he espoused the cause of the innocent queen, annulled the fraudulent proceedings, and excommu- nicated and deposed the two archbishops. The king applied to the Emperor for help, and the Emperor went to Rome, but could obtain no concession. The Pope stood like a rock. He allied himself with France and Germany, and threatened to excommunicate the sinning husband and all his bishops. The king was obliged to submit. The usurping wife was excom- municated and banished, and the papal legate con- ducted the divorced queen back to the royal palace. Thus the Papacy not only established a great pre- cedent for the supremacy of the spiritual over the temporal power, but also stood conspicuous before the world as the champion of the weak and oppressed and the defender of morality and justice. It would be difficult to overrate the effect of this papal achievement. It may be that the Papacy stood forth as champion of innocence when policy coin- cided with righteousness ; but it was the righteous- 0688 and not the policy which gave the Papacy strength. One can imagine, in days when brutal barons, scattered in strongholds all over the country, were the normal forms of power and authority, what effect such news had upon the people. A pilgrim from across the Alps, a peddler, or some poor va- grant, enters a village hnddled at the fool of a hill, on which stands a great castle where a drunken lord revels with his mistresses, and recounts to the as- sembled peasant-, serf's, and slaves, how the Holy G4 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY Father, in the name of God, had commanded a greater lord, in a greater castle, to put away his mistress and bring- back his wife, and how that lord had got down on his knees and had done the Holy Father's bidding. The second case was the victory of papal author- ity over the spirit of nationality in the Church. When the incipient nations of France and Germany, having separated from the Empire, had begun to be self-conscious, the spirit of nationality naturally showed itself in ecclesiastical matters as well as in political matters. There was obvious likelihood that the nations would govern themselves ecclesiastically as well as politically. Should they do so, the papal supremacy would fall just as the Imperial supremacy had fallen, and the unity of the Church would be shattered just as the Empire had been. Here was certainly a great danger to the Papacy, and prob- ably a great danger to Christianity and civilization ; at least so Nicholas thought. He resolved to meet it boldly. His opportunity came when a French (West Frankish) bishop appealed to Rome against the action of his metropolitan. The metropolitan objected that there was no precedent for papal ac- tion in such a case ; he did not deny that the Pope had certain appellate functions, but said that if the Pope interfered directly in the discipline of bishops, the power of the metropolitan would be impaired. It is needless to say that this argument did not produce the result that the metropolitan de- sired. There was nothing the Papacy wanted more than that its central government should act directly FROM CHARLEMAGNE TO NICHOLAS 65 everywhere, and that all bishops should be depen- dent upon Rome ; that was the very principle of papal supremacy. The issue would determine whether the Papacy was to be an autocratic power, or a limited court of appeal. Nicholas was able to take advan- tage of the troubled political situation to enforce direct papal authority, and so added an immense prerogative to the papal power. Apart from this imperial ecclesiastical principle the latter episode is especially interesting on account of the character of the evidence produced by the Pope to maintain his position. This evidence consisted of a new compilation of Church law which appeared somewhat mysteriously about this time. Thereto- fore Church law had consisted of a collection of precepts taken from the Bible, from the early Fa- thers, from decrees of Councils, and also of letters, called decretals, written by the bishops of Rome, but none of these decretals was earlier than the time of Constantine. The fact, that there were no papal de- cretals prior to Constantine, seemed to imply, at least to the sceptically minded, that papal authority had really begun at the time of Constantine and not at the time of St. Peter. To the ardent papist such an idea was incredible. Nicholas now produced a new batch of documents. Among these was the Dona- tion of ( 'nisi 1 1 at', in ■, of which I have spoken. Others were papal decretals, which purported to come from Popes of the third and BOCOnd rent lines, and to prove that papal jurisdiction over other bishoprics had been cised almost as Ear bacu as the time of St. Peter. These new appearing documents placed the Pope G1 -SIX)), who belonged to the Imperial faction, went so far as to invite the German king- to come down to Rome and be crowned Emperor. The king actually came and was crowned, but accomplished little or no- thing, except to arouse bitter hostility in his enemies. When Formosus died, his successor was elected from the opposite faction. The new Pope held a synod of cardinals and bishops, and before them, the highest Christian tribunal in the world, he summoned, upon the charge of violating the canons of the Church, the dead Formosus, whose body had lain in its grave for months. The body was dug up, dressed in pon- tifical robes, and propped upon a throne. Counsel was assigned to it. The accusation was formally read, and the Pope himself cross-questioned the accused, who was convicted and deposed. His pontifical acts were pronounced invalid. His robes were torn from him, the three fingers of the right hand, which in life had bestowed the episcopal blessing, were hacked off, and the body was dragged through the streets and flung into the Tiber. This incident sheds light on medieval Rome, and on the character of the people with whom the Popes had to live. All the Popes, good, bad, and indifferent, whether they were struggling with the Empire on great cosmopolitan questions, or were trying to unite Chris- tendom against Islam, always had to keep watch on the brutal, ignorant, bloody Roman people, who took no interest in great questions, and were always ready to rob, burn, and murder with or without a pretext. THE DEGRADATION OF ITALY 69 Now that we have brought the Frankish Empire to its dissolution, and the Papacy to its degradation, we must leave the two wrecks for the moment, and stop in these dark years at the end of the ninth century to see how Italy herself has fared. The Ital- ian world was out of joint, intellectually, morally, politically. There can hardly be said to have been a government. For a generation the poor, shrunken Empire had been but a shadow 7 , and when the last Carlovingian died, its parts tumbled asunder. Local barons ruled everywhere. The Imperial title, which represented nothing, and conveyed no power, seemed, however, to have some vital principle of its own, some ghostly virtue ; at least sundry kings and dukes thought so and fought for it ; but until the coming- of Otto the Great it remained a shadow. North of the Alps duchies and provinces united into kingdoms ; but the peninsula remained split up into discordant parts. The valley of the Po was divided into various duchies, peopled by a mixed race of Latins and Lombards, whom the pressure of the conquering Franks had welded together. South of the Po lay the Imperial marquisate of Tuscany. Across the middle of the peninsula stretched the awkward strip of domain from Ravenna to Koine, inhabited by a race of comparatively pure Latin blood. This domain, included in the Donations of Pippin and of Charlemagne, nominally subjecl to the Papacy under the suzerainty of the Empire, was really in the possession of petty nobles, who knew DO law except Force and craft. South of this so-called papal domain lay the duchy of Spoleto and the Lorn- 70 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY hard duchy of Benevento, and farther south a few principalities, such as Naples, Amain, and Salerno, and finally in the heel and toe of Italy were the last remains of the Greek Empire. To the northeast, on its islands, lay the little fishing and trading city, Venice. The Italians, as we had hetter call them now that Barbarian and Latin blood has well commingled, were in a most unenviable condition. Most of those who tilled the soil were serfs, and went with the land when it was sold ; some were scarce better than slaves, others were only bound to render service of certain kinds or on certain days, either with their own hands or with beasts. Their lot depended on the humours of the overseers of great estates. Slaves were worse off because they had no personal rights, but they were always decreasing in number despite a slave trade, for there was a strong religious sentiment against slavery, and it was common for dying men to liberate their slaves. In the cities people were better off, for the artisans were free men, and by banding together in guilds (which had existed ever since the old Roman days) secured for themselves a more prosperous condition. But the only thriving places were the cities of the coast, Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Amalfi, where trade was already beginning to lay the foundations of future greatness. These glimmerings of commerce were the only lights along the whole horizon. Everything else seemed to share the blight that had fallen on the Em- pire and the Papacy. The clergy, whose duty it was to maintain learning, failed utterly. Even in the hap- THE DEGRADATION OF ITALY 71 piest days of the Carlovingian Empire, Charlemagne had found it necessary to enact blunt rules for their guidance. " Let the priests, according to the Apos- tles' advice, withdraw themselves from revellings and drunkenness ; for some of them are wont to sit up till midnight or later, boozing with their neighbours ; and then these men, who ought to be of a religious and holy deportment, return to their churches drunken and gorged with food, and unable to perform the daily and nightly office of praise to God, while others sink down in a drunken sleep in the place of their revels. . . . Let no priest presume to store pro- visions or hay in the church." 1 Learning, supposed to be committed to their charge, went out like a spent candle. Books were almost forgotten, except perhaps here and there, in Pavia or Verona, where a gramma- rian still invoked Virgil to prosper his muse ; or where in an episcopal city, like Ravenna, some chronicler wrote a history of the bishopric. The theory of his- toric truth on which these chroniclers acted gives an inkling of the mediaeval attitude towards facts. Father Agnello, a priest of Ravenna, one of these chroniclers, Bays himself: "If you, who read this History of our Bishopric, shall come to a passage and say, * Why didn't he narrate the facts about this bishop as lie did about his predecessors,' listen to the mil I, Andrea Agnello, a humble priest of this holy church of Ravenna, have written the history of this Bishopric from the time of St. Apollinaris for eighl hundred yean and more, because niv brethren here have begged me and compelled me. I have 1 Italy and At In9adert t Hixlgkin, vol. viii, p. lisy. 72 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY put down whatever I found the Bishops had undoubt- edly done, and whatever I heard from the oldest men living, hut where I could not find any historical ac- count, nor anything about their lives in any way, then, in order to leave no blanks in the holy succes- sion of bishops, I have made up the missing lives by the help of God, through your prayers, and I believe I have said nothing untrue, because those bishops were pious and pure and charitable and winners of souls for God." 1 The monks were no better than the secular clergy. The monasteries had grown large, for many men had joined in order to escape military service, or to obtain personal security, or an easier life, or greater social consideration ; they had also grown rich, for many sinners on their deathbeds had given large sums, in hope to compound for their sins. Naturally monastic vows were often broken. Moreover, the little good that monks and priests did they undid by their encouragement of superstition. They first frightened the poor peasants out of their wits by portraying the horrors of hell, and then preached the magical properties of the sacraments and of saints' bones, until the ordinary man, feeling him- self the sport of superhuman agencies, abandoned all self-confidence and surrendered himself to priestly control as his sole hope of safety in this world or the next. Oppressed by anarchy, by division, by a degen- erate church, by a gross clergy, and by waxing ignorance, Italy might seem to have had its cup 1 Le cronache ilalianedel medio evo descritte, Balzani (translated). THE DEGRADATION OF ITALY 73 of evil full. There -was but one further ill that could be added, a new Barbarian invasion. It came. The triumphant Saracens, having overrun Spain and raided France in the west, having cooped up the Byzantine Empire in the east, now threatened to plant their victorious banners in the very heart of Christendom. As early as Charlemagne's last years they sacked a coast town scarce forty miles from Rome. In 827 they invaded Sicily, invited by a partisan traitor. Within ten years they had made themselves masters of almost all the island, except a few strongholds which managed to hold out for half a century. The beaten Byzantines retired to the mainland; but they did not get beyond the reach of the victorious Saracens, who raided all the Italian coast as far as the Tiber. Troops of ma- rauders hovered round Rome and harried the coun- tryside, robbing and pillaging at will. One band advanced to the very gates of the city, and sacked St. Peter's and St. Paul's, both outside the walls and undefended (846). All the southern provinces were overrun, half of their towns became Saracen for- tresses. It seemed as if Italy were to undergo the fate of Spain and become a Mohammedan Km irate. The danger to Rome roused the country. A Christian league was effected between the Imperial forces in Italy, the Pope, and the coast cities of the Booth, — Naples, Gaeta, and AmalfL Pope Leo him- self blessed the fleet, and the Christians beat the infidels in a great sea-fight not far from the Tiber's mouth (849). Some of the prisoners were brought to Koine and set to work on the walls which Pope 74 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY Leo was building round the Vatican hill to protect St. Peter's; and Rome, imitating the days of Scipio African us, celebrated another triumph over Africa. The fighting was kept up all over the south. The Greek Emperor made common cause with his fellow Christians, and the immediate danger of conquest was arrested; but throughout this dismal ninth cen- tury, and all the tenth, southern Italy continued to suffer from Saracen marauders. The tales told of their cruelty are fearful, and match our tales of In- dian raids in the old French-English war. Separate villages and lonely monasteries suffered most. Some good came out of the evil, however, for the chroni- clers relate how the abbots and their terrified breth- ren spent days and nights fasting and in prayer. Such was the condition of Italy when the Impe- rial Carlovinffian line came to an end. The omni- presence of anarchy was a permanent argument for the need of an Imperial restoration. But the coun- try did not know how to go to work to restore the Empire. At first various claimants asserted various titles, and Italian dukes and neighbouring kings fought one another like bulls, but none were able to establish any stable power. In the midst of these ineffectual struggles one real effort was made. Ar- nulf, king of the Germans, who regarded himself as the true successor of the great Frankish house and of right Imperial heir, marched down into Italy at the invitation of Pope Formosus, as we have seen, and assumed the Imperial crown (896). The expe- dition was barren of consequences, but it gives us another glimpse of the anomalous nature of the THE DEGRADATION OF ITALY 75 Papacy, and the different views entertained of it on the two sides of the Alps. The German king wished to be Emperor, and felt that an Imperial coronation at Rome by the Pope was essential. To him and to his German subjects the papal invitation was of high authority. When he reached Rome, however, the seat of the Papacy, he found the gates barred and the walls manned by rebellious citizens, who had locked the Pope in the Castle of Sant' Angelo, and had seized the government of the city. Arnulf easily carried the defences by storm and liberated the Pope. The incident illustrates the contrast be- tween Teutonic respect and Roman disobedience, and describes the papal situation as it was half the time throughout the Middle Ages. Honoured and reverenced by the pious ultramontanes, the Popes were insulted, robbed, imprisoned, and deposed by their immediate subjects. This local disobedience, or, as it should be called, Roman republicanism, was often the insignificant cause of papal actions of far-reaching effect. The Popes were never strong enough of themselves to suppress these republican sentiments and ambitions ; they needed support from some power, Italian or foreign. As they would not endure the idea of an Italian kingdom, they adopted tin- alternative «»i calling in a foreign power. This was the constant papal policy. Another instance of Roman republicanism, or disobedience (as "in- chooses), throws Further light on tin? nature of this thorn in the papal side. No1 long alter Arnulfs expedition, two women, Theo- dora and Marozia. mother and daughter, played a 76 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY great part not only in Roman but also in Italian politics. These two women ruled the city and ap- pointed the Popes. They were bold, comely, much- marrying women, choosing eligible husbands almost by force ; both were wholly Roman in the fierceness, vigour, and sensuality of their characters. They were very capable, and, in part directly, in part through their husbands and others, exercised control for some thirty years ; and when the daughter disap- peared from history, her son, Alberic, took the title, Prince and Senator of all the Romans, and ruled in her stead. Thus the last hope of Italians helping themselves perished ; for if the Papacy was powerless, there was no help elsewhere in Italy. The usurpation of these viragoes and of Alberic differs in details from the usurpation of the later republicans, and of the Colon na, Orsini, and other barons, who shall appear hereafter in papal history, but for general effect on papal affairs and through them on European affairs, all these usurpations were very similar. The usurp- ers, in diverse characters, represent that third player in the fencing match, who, though by no means an ally of the Empire, frequently rushed in and struck up the Pope's guard, and continued to interfere for hundreds of years, until the Popes of the Renais- sance finally established their temporal power in the city of Rome. By the middle of the tenth century the disintegra- tion of Italy had become so bad that it caused its own cure. It was obvious that something must be done. The Saracens, strongly established in Sicily, were THE DEGRADATION OF ITALY 77 a standing menace towards the south. From the north wild bands of Hungarians burst across the Alps and harried the land in barbaric raids as far as Rome. Feudal anarchy prevailed everywhere. Monks and clergy were, to say the least, no help. Even the Papacy, the only stable power, had be- come the appanage of a Roman family. There was but one way out of this chaos. The Roman Empire must be restored. The Latin people never believed that it was extinct but merely lying latent, requiring some happy application of might and right to set it going again on its majestic course. Charlemagne, in his day, had supplied the might. That might had faded away. Where was its substitute to be found? Pope Formosus and King Arnulf had already sug- gested the only possible answer, — in the eastern por- tion of the Frankish Empire, the kingdom of Ger- many. That kingdom, composed of the great duchies of Bavaria, Swabia, Franconia, Saxony, and Lorraine, had become tolerably compact ; it was strong at home, and was eager for glory and power abroad. It- ambitious king, Otto, of the Saxon line, was the man to undertake to follow Charlemagne's example. It was too late to hope to restore the Carlo vingian Empire in its former boundaries, but with Germany to give strength and Rome to contribute title, there would be the two necessary elements for a renewal of the Roman Empire. The immediate pretext of Otto's coming down into Italv was highly romantic. A lovely lady, the widow of one Italian pretender to the throne of Italv. was pestered with offers of marriage from an- 7> A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY other pretender. She refused, and was locked up in a tower by the Lake of Garda, where memories of Catullus and Lesbia still faintly lingered. She con- trived to escape, and sent piteous messages for help to the great Otto, then a widower. Discontented fac- tions in the north, and others Buffering from oppres- sion, including the Pope who had been rudely roused to the need of Imperial support, also sent messen- gers asking him to come. Otto came, took Pavia, and acted as King of Italy. He married the lovely widow, and wished to go to Rome to receive the Imperial crown ; but Alberic, lord of Rome, would not give permission. Otto went back to Germany and bided his time. In ten years Alberic died leaving a young son, who, although only seventeen years old, in- herited enough of his father's power to get himself elected Pope, John XII. Pope John, however, found himself encompassed by powerful enemies both in Rome and out. He too was obliged to recognize the absolute necessity of Imperial restoration, and called upon Otto for aid. The German king came, and was crowned by the Pope, Emperor of the Ro- mans, in St. Peter's basilica, on the second day of February, 962. This coronation was the beginning of a new phase in the Roman Empire. In this phase that Empire is known as the Holy Roman Empire, although it was merely a union of Germany, Italy, and Burgundy. CHAPTER IX THE REVIVAL OF THE PAPACY (962-1056) This Roman Empire (it did not receive its full title of Holy Roman Empire until later) deserved the name Roman because it rested on the Roman tra- dition of the political unity of the civilized world. This tradition, by means of the ecclesiastical unity of Europe, had survived the Barbarian invasions, had gained strength through Charlemagne's Empire, and now joined together two nations so fundamentally different as Germany and Italy. The Germans were lug blond men, beer-drinkers, huge eaters, rough, ill-mannered, arrogant, phlegmatic and brave; the Italians were little, dark-skinned men, wine-drinkers, lettuce-eaters, with pleasant manners, gesticulating, excitable, and un warlike. Their union affords the strongest testimony to the strength of the Roman tradition. This ill-assorted pair, married in obedi- ence to the will of dead generations, could not live together in peace. The theory of a world conjointly ruled bya BUpreme secular sovereign and a supreme ecclesiastical sovereign could not be put into success- ful practice. The Empire was German, the Papacy Italian, and by their very natures fchey were antago- nistic. Otto'fl empire was by no means universal, but its suzerainty was acknowledged by Bohemia, Moravia, 80 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY Poland, Denmark, perhaps by Hungary, and some- times by France; and therefore, as eastern Europe was either Greek or barbarian, Britain an island, and Spain practically Mohammedan, it sustained fairly well the idea of a universal (i. e., European) empire. The essential parts were Germany to give strength, and Italy to give title and tradition. In theory the process of royal and Imperial election and coronation was as follows. The German electors (the greater nobles), whose number was not limited to seven for two centuries and more, elected a king, who was crowned with a silver crown at Aachen, and, by virtue of his coronation, received the title, King of the Romans. This king then took the iron crown of Lombardy at Pa via, and became King of Italy ; and, when he received the gold Imperial crown from the Pope at Rome, became Emperor. The election of the son of the late Emperor to succeed was the custom, but was not obligatory. Germany was not a strongly centralized state, but was composed of several dukedoms, which often fell out among them- selves. Italy was still less a political unit. It had no marks of nationality, except its geographical posi- tion, its ancient tradition, and a tardily forming language ; but even this lingua vol gave, which in Otto's time began to have an Italian sound, and to touch the degenerate written Latin with an Italian look, did not prevail throughout the peninsula. In the south Greek was still spoken, and the Holy Roman Empire never had more than the shadow of a title south of Benevento till after Barbarossa's time. The Emperor's authority rested at bottom on THE REVIVAL OF THE PAPACY 81 the German military power ; and as this depended on the obedience of wayward and jealous dukedoms, it was uncertain and intermittent. The Papacy was far more stable, for fundamen- tally it was a moral power, and got its energy from men's consciences. It was far better organized than the Empire. The ecclesiastical system spread all over Europe, into every city, village, hamlet, and monas- tery; countries which reluctantly acknowledged the suzerainty of the Empire, bowed unquestioningly to papal rule. Moreover, the power of the Papacy did not merely consist in spiritual weapons, terrible as the ban of excommunication was in those days, but also in its ability to raise up enemies against its enemy? and to put the cloak of piety over war and rebellion. The ironical element in the situation was that the Empire itself lifted the Papacy to the position in which it was able to turn and defy the Empire, fight it, and finally destroy it. The Emperors, who enter- tained no doubts that the Papacy was subject to them, that they were responsible for its conduct and must secure the election of worthy Popes, took the Papacy out of the hands of the Roman faction, purified it, and appointed honest, capable, upright Popes. A contemporary account of Otto's dealings with that young scamp, Pope John XII, who in morals : mbled bis grandmother, Marozia, gives a good picture of the nature of tin: benefits which the Em- pire conferred on the Papacy: " While these things taking place; the constellation of Cancer, hot 82 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY from the enkindling rays of Phoebus, kept the Em- peror away from the hills around Rome, but when the constellation of Virgo returning brought back the pleasant season he went to Rome upon a secret invitation from the Romans. But why should I say 8< cret when the greater part of the nobility burst into the Castle of St. Paul and invited the holy Emperor, and even gave hostages? The citizens received the holy Emperor and all his men within the city, promised allegiance, and took an oath that they would never elect a Pope, nor consecrate him, without the consent and the sanction of the Lord Emperor Otto, Caesar, Augustus, and of his son, King Otto. " Three days later, at the request of the Roman bishops and people, there was a great meeting in St. Peter's Church, and with the Emperor sat the archbishops of Aquileia, Milan, and Ravenna, the archbishop of Saxony [and many other Italian and German prelates]. When they were seated, and silence made, the holy Emperor got ivp and said : ' How fit it would be that in this distinguished and holy council our lord Pope John should be present! But since he has refused to be of your company, we ask your counsel, holy fathers, for you have the same interest as he.' Then the Roman prelates, cardinals, priests, and deacons, and all the people cried out : ' We are surprised that your reverend prudence should wish to make us investigate that which is not hidden from the Iberians, the Babylo- nians, nor the Indians. He [the Pope] is no longer one of that kind, which come in sheep's clothing but THE REVIVAL OF THE PAPACY 83 inwardly are ravening wolves ; he rages so openly, does his diabolical misdeeds so manifestly, that we need not beat about the bush.' The Emperor an- swered : ' "We deem it just that the accusations should be stated one by one, and after that we will take counsel too-ether of what we ousjht to do.' " Then Cardinal-priest Peter got up, and testified that he had seen the Pope celebrate mass without communion. John, bishop of Narni, and John, car- dinal-deacon, declared that they had seen him ordain a deacon in a stable, and not at the proper hour. Cardinal-deacon Benedict, with other priests and dea- cons, said that they knew that he ordained bishops for money, and that in the city of Todi he had ordained as bishop a boy ten years old. They said it was not necessary to go into his sacrileges because they had seen more such than could be reckoned. They said in regard to his adulteries . . . They said that he had publicly gone a-hunting ; that he had put out the eyes of his spiritual father, Benedict, who died soon after in consequence ; that he had mutilated and killed John, cardinal-subdeacon ; and they tes- tified that he had set buildings on fire, armed with helmet and breastplate, and girt with a sword. All, priests ami laymen, cried out that he had drunk a toast to the devil. They said that while playing dice lie had invoked the aid of Jupiter, Venus, and other demons. Thev declared tli.it he had not celebrated matins, nor observed the canonical hours, and that lie did not cross himself. " When the EmperOI had heard all this, lie bade me, LiutpramL bishop of Cremona, interpret to the 84 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY Romans, because they could not understand his Saxon. Then he got up and said : ' It often happens, and we believe it from our experience, that men in great place are slandered by the envious, for a good man is disliked by bad men just as a bad man is dis- liked by good men. And for this reason we enter- tain some doubts concerning this accusation against the Pope, which Cardinal-deacon Benedict has just read and made before you, uncertain whether it springs from zeal for justice or from envy and im- piety. Therefore with the authority of the dignity granted to me, though unworthy, I beseech you by that God, whom no man can deceive howsoever he may wish, and by His holy mother, the Virgin Mary, and by the most precious body of the prince of the Apostles, in whose Church we now are, that no ac- cusation be cast at our lord the Pope of faults which he has not committed and which have not been seen by the most trustworthy men.' ' The accusers af- firmed their charges on oath. Then the holy Synod said : " If it please the holy Emperor let letters be sent to our lord the Pope, bidding him come and clear himself of these charges." The wary John did not come, but wrote : " I, Bishop John, servant of the servants of God, to all the bishops. We have heard that you propose to elect another Pope. If you do that, I excommunicate you in the name of Almighty God so that you shall not have the right to ordain anybody, nor to celebrate mass." 1 Nevertheless, John was deposed and a good Pope put in his stead. Otto's successors, one after the other, followed his 1 Le cronache italiane del medio evo descritte, Balzaui, p. 123. THE REVIVAL OF THE PAPACT 85 example, and treated the Papacy as if it had been a German bishopric. The Emperors, however, had work to do north of the Alps, and did not spend much time in Rome, except Otto III, a romantic dreamer, who wished to live there ; and during their absence the turbulent Roman anti-imperial faction used to seize the Papacy, just as Alberic had done, and put up worthless Popes. In spite of them the Emperors' Popes raised the Papacy so high that, as a matter of course, it became the head of the great ecclesiastical reform movement which swept over Europe in the eleventh century, and from that move- ment drew in so much force and energy that it became the greatest power in Europe, and was enabled finally to overthrow the Empire. This tide of reform arose at Cluny, a little place in Burgundy, and began as a monastic reform. All over Christendom monasteries had grown rich and prosperous ; many monks had forsaken Benedict's rule, had broken their vows and lived with wives and children upon revenues intended for other purposes. Other monks hated this evil conduct, and burning with a passionate desire to stop it, started a great movement of monastic reform. The reform was ascetic in character, as a moral emotion in those days was hound to be. The first reformers gathered at Cluny, about tin* beginning of t In* tenth century. From there disciples went far and wide, purging old monasteries and founding new. Alter a time the re- formers passed beyond theearly stage of mere moral revolt against godless living, formed a party, and put forward b meed. The party represented antagonism 86 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY to the world, pitted saints against sinners, the Church against the State. The creed had three tenets. No ecclesiasts should marry, and married men upon ordi- nation should live apart from their wives. No bribery, no corrupt bargain, should taint the appointment and installation of clergy, high or low. No layman should meddle with the entry of bishops upon their episcopal office. These three tenets roused bitter opposition. Celibacy of the clergy had been a rule of Church discipline since early days, and from time to time efforts had been made to enforce the practice, but it had fallen into general disregard. A celibate clergy, with no affections or interests nearer or dearer than the Church, would be a tremendous ecclesiastical force, and far-sighted Popes always sought to enforce the rule. Necessarily the married clergy and many clerical bachelors were violent in opposition. The article against simony nobody openly gainsaid ; but many bishops and abbots had obtained their offices by corrupt practices, and many nobles looked forward to rich livings and high ecclesiastical places ; both classes opposed a change. The third article, against lav investiture of bishops, which was to be the cause of deadly war between Empire and Papacy, was a logical conclusion from the article against simony ; for it was hard to suppose that in the appointment of bishops, kings and princes would disregard all worldly motives and appoint men solely for the good of souls. On the other hand, the great bishoprics and abbeys were among the most important fiefs in a king's gift, and carried with them feudal privileges of sovereignty, such as rights of coinage, toll, hold- THE REVIVAL OF THE PAPACY 87 ing courts, etc. ; in short, they were mere secular fiefs with ecclesiastical prerogatives added. It was natural that the German Emperors should claim the right to appoint and invest these spiritual barons, and insist that their episcopal territories should be subject to the same feudal obligations and the same civic duties as the territories granted to lay barons. This third article was a direct attack on the civil poAver. It' all Imperial participation were to be stricken out, and bishops put into possession of their fiefs solely by the Pope, then vast territories, estimated to be nearly half the Empire, would be withdrawn from civic obli- gations, even from military service, and the Pope, ousting the Emperor, would become monarch of half the Imperial domains. According to the canons of the Church, the clergy and the people of the diocese elected the bishop, and the Church bestowed on him ring and staff, the signs of episcopal office. The trouble arose over the fief. In feudal times the kings had enfeoffed bishops with great fiefs in order to counterbalance the insubordinate secular lords, and because, in episcopal hands, these fiefs did not be- ii uiie hereditary. When the reformers took the mat- ter up, they found that in practice the kings did not wait tni' a canonical election of episcopal candidates, bnt invested their henchmen in return for money or BOme service which had no savour of sanctity. The episcopal office, as St. Peter Damian complained, wssgoi " by flattering the king, studying his inclina- tion, obeying hi- beck, applauding every word that fell from his month, hv acting the parasite ami play- ing tin- buffoon." The real difficulty lay in the 88 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY double nature of the episcopal office, half ecclesi- astical and half feudal ; and, like other great political difficulties, would not yield to a peaceful solution, until there had been a trial of strength between the discordant interests. The first consequence, however, of the reforming spirit was to ennoble the whole Church, to purify her members, and animate them with a common zeal, and to uplift her head, the Papacy. It carried on, in a larger way and with a greater sweep, the work of ecclesiastical reformation begun by the intervention of the Emperors in the election of Popes, and gave a loftier tone to European politics. CHAPTER X THE STRUGGLE OVER INVESTITURES (1059-1123) The struggle over the lay investiture of bishops did not arise at first. The Papacy was still a dependent bishopric in the gift of the Emperors, who continued to depose bad Roman Popes and appoint upright Germans. Popes and Emperors worked together to enforce celibacy among the clergy and to put down simony. The Emperors could not see, what is evi- dent in retrospect, that when the spirit of reform should have taken full possession of the Papacy, then the Papacy would not rest content to be a Ger- man bishopric, but, in obedience to the law which links political ambition to political vigour, would even aim so high as to try to reduce the Empire itself to the condition of a papal fief. The spirit of reform, embodied in a man of genius, did take possession of the Papacy and the great struggle bev the passion for religions re- form, took place iii other northern cities, Cremona. Piacenza, Pavia, Padua; on one side was the party of aristocratic privilege, looking- to the Emperor for support ; on the other, the party of the people, look- ing to the Pope. Gregorv's fourth ally was the rebellious nobility 96 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY of Germany. Had Germany been united and loyal, the German king would easily have been able to assert his power in Italy ; but Germany was disloyal and divided. Archbishops of the great archbishop- rics, dukes of the great duchies, bishops, counts, and lords, in fact, all the component parts of the feudal structure of Germany, were jealous of one another ; each grudged the other his possessions, and were in accord only in jealousy of the royal' power. There were always some barons or bishops thankful to have the Pope's name and the Pope's aid in a rebellious design. These animosities the Papacy through its thousand hands diligently fomented. Ranged against Gregory and his allies were the loyal parts of Germany, the Imperial adherents in Italy, the married clergy everywhere, and all whom Gregory's reforms had angered and estranged. At their head was a dissipated young king, of high spirit, headstrong, ignorant, and superstitious, who entertained lofty notions of his royal and Imperial prerogatives. The characters of these two men would have brought them into collision, even if the irrecon- cilable natures of Empire and Papacy had not ren- dered a clash inevitable. Gregory, almost immediately after his elevation to the pontificate, held a council and denounced simony, marriage of the clergy, and lay investiture. The king, who believed in the existing system, continued to exercise what he deemed his royal rights with a view to improving his political position. Gregory held a second council and utterly forbade lay investiture. Henry continued to disobey. Then THE STRUGGLE OVER INVESTITURES 97 Gregory wrote to him that he must renounce the claim of investiture, and humbly present himself in person before the papal presence and beg abso- lution for his sins ; or, if he should fail to obey, Gregory would excommunicate him. Henry and his party, now very angry, retorted by holding a Ger- man synod, which charged Gregory with all sorts of offences, moral, ecclesiastical, and political, absolved both king and bishops from their papal allegiance, and. finally, deposed the Pope. Henry himself wrote Gregory this letter : — " Henry, not by usurpation, but by God's holy will, King, to Hildebrand, no longer Pope, but false monk : — M This greeting you have deserved from the con- fusion you have caused, for in every rank of the Church you have brought confusion instead of hon- our, a curse instead of a blessing. Out of much I shall say but a little ; you have not only not feared to touch the rulers of the Holy Church, archbishops, bishops, priests, God's anointed, but as if they were si tves, you have trampled them down under your feet. By trampling them down you have got favour from the nilgai mouth. You have decided that they know nothing, and that you alone know everything, and you have studied to use your knowledge not to build Up but to troy. . . . We have borne all this and have striven to maintain the honour of the Apostolic Bui you have construed our humiliti as fear, and for that reason you have not feared to rise up our royal power, and have even dared to threaten that you would take it from us; as if we 98 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY had received our kingdom from you, as if kingdom and empire were in your hands and not in God's. Our Lord Jesus Christ has called us to the kingdom, I. in not von t<> the priesthood. You have mounted h\ these Bteps; by craft — abominahle in a monk \mi have come into money, by money to favour, 1>\ favour to the sword, by the sword to the seat of peace, and from the seat of peace you have con- founded peace. You have armed subjects against i hose over them ; you, the unelect, have held our lollops, elect of God, up to contempt. . . . Me, even, who though unworthy am the anointed king, you have touched, and although the holy fathers have taught that a king may be judged by God only, and for no offence except deviation from the faith — which God forbid — you have asserted that I should be deposed; when even Julian the Apostate was left by the wisdom of the holy fathers to be judged and deposed by God only.. That true Pope, blessed Peter, says : ' Fear God, honour the king.' But you do not fear God and you dishonour me appointed by Him. And blessed Paul, who did not spare an angel from heaven who should preach other doctrine, did not except you, here on earth, who now teach other doctrine. For he says, ' But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed/ You therefore by Paul anathema- tized, by the judgment of all our bishops and by mine condemned, come down, leave the apostolic seat which you have usurped; let another mount the throne of blessed Peter, who shall not cloak violence with reli- THE STRUGGLE OVER INVESTITURES 99 gion, but shall teach the sound doctrine of blessed Peter. I, Henry, King by God's grace, and all our bishops, say to you, Down, down, you damned for- " i ever. To the action of the German synod and to this letter there could be but one answer. Gregory held a synod, excommunicated the king, and released his subjects from their allegiance. The Germans rose in rebellion, taking the excommunication as a ground or perhaps as a pretext ; they held a great council in presence of a papal legate, and decided that they would renounce their allegiance unless the king ob- tained absolution. The king, too weak to cope with the rebels, submitted. He crossed the Alps with his wife and one or two servants, in midwinter, and came to the fortress of Canossa, near Parma, a stronghold belonging to the Countess Matilda, whither Gregory had gone. For three days the king stood outside the gates, dressed as a penitent, and begged for leave to present himself before the Pope. At last, owing to the entreaties of Matilda, the king was admitted. He cast himself upon the ground be- fore Gregory, who lifted him up and bade him sub- mit to the ordeal of the eucharist. Gregory took the consecrated wafer and said, " If I am guilty of the crimes charged against me, may God strike me." He limke and ate; then turning to Henry, said, "Do thou, my son, as I have done." The king did not dare to invoke the judgmenl of God ; he humbled himself, resigned his crown into Gregory's hands, and swore to remain a private person until he 1 S>lirt Afediccval Documents, Shatter Mathews, translated. 100 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY Bhould be judged bj a council. He was then ab- solved I L077). Various events followed this terrible humiliation. The German rebels set up an anti-king, and the king's men set up an anti-pope, and there was war and hatred everywhere. The king's energy triumphed tor a time ; he even captured Rome, and had it not been for a Norman army, which came to the Pope's rescue, he would have captured Gregory, too. But, despite royal triumphs the scene at Canossa had struck the majesty of the Empire an irretrievable blow ; the king of the Germans, Emperor except for a coronation, had admitted in a most dramatic way, before all Europe, the inferiority of the temporal to the spiritual power. Gregory died in exile at Salerno, Henry died de- posed by his rebellious son ; and the question of lav investiture still remained unsettled. More deeds of violence were done, more oaths broken, more lives taken ; at last an agreement was reached and the long contest closed. Papacy and Empire made a treaty of peace, known as the Concordat of Worms (1122). The Emperor renounced all claim to invest bishops with ring and staff, and recog- nized the freedom of election and of ordination of the clergy, thus giving up all claim to appoint bishops and other ecclesiastical dignitaries. The Pope agreed that the election of bishops should take place in presence of the Emperor or his repre- sentative, and that bishops should receive their fiefs in a separate ceremony, by touch of the royal scep- tre, in token of holding them from the Empire. THE STRUGGLE OVER INVESTITURES 101 This compromise, which seems absurdly simple, as settled questions often do, was a final adjustment of the immediate quarrel between Empire and Papacy, but left the larger matter of mastery still to be fought out. CHAPTER XI TRADE AGAINST FEUDALISM (1152-1190) The, last chapter dealt with the struggle between the two great mediaeval institutions, the Empire and tlic Papacy. This deals with the contest between the Empire, representing the feudal system, and a new social force, the spirit of trade, represented by the Lombard cities. Naturally the Papacy joined in the fray and sided with the Lombard cities ; and, before the end, all Italy was divided into two great parties designated by terms derived from Germany : Guelfs, which indicated those opposed to the Empire, and Ghibellines, which indicated friends to the Empire. But the particular issue here fought out was that between feudalism and trade, and the triumph of trade indicates the close of the Middle Ages. The Emperor Frederick I (1152-90) of the great house of Hohenstaufen is the hero of this period. He was a noble specimen of the knight of the Middle Ages, such as Sir Walter Scott conceived a knight to be. He had a bright, open countenance, fair hair, that curled a little on his forehead, and a red beard (Barbarossa) which impressed the Ital- ian imagination. Valiant, resolute, energetic, boun- tiful in almsgiving, attentive to religious duties, he was a kind friend and a stern enemy. To his misfortune he was born too late ; he belonged TRADE AGAINST FEUDALISM 103 to a chivalric generation out of place in a world which had begun to deem buying and selling mat- ters of greater consequence than chivalry and cru- sades. He thought himself entitled to all the Im- perial rights that had been exercised by the Ottos ; and, measuring his own prerogatives by their stan- dard, resolved to make good the deficiencies of his immediate predecessors, who for one reason or another had neglected to assert those prerogatives in their plenitude. Barbarossa's situation may be compared to that of Charles I of England, who believed himself lawful heir to all the prerogatives of the Tudors. Opposed to these old-fashioned views was the hard-headed spirit of commercial Italy. Barbarossa's particular enemies were the Lombard cities, but that was because they were nearest to him. The same mercantile spirit animated all the cities of the pen- insula ; in fact, it pervaded the maritime cities before it pervaded the Lombard cities, and can best be de- scribed by means of a description of them. The southern cities bloomed earlier than their northern sisters. Amalfl, now a little fishing 1 village which clings to the steep slopes of the Gulf of Sa- lerno, in the eleventh century was an independent republic of 50,000 inhabitants. She traded with Sicily, Egypt, Syria, and Arabia; she decked her women with the ornaments of the East; she built monasteries at Jerusalem, also a hospital from which the Knights Hospitallers of St. John took their name; Bhe gave a maritime code to the Mediter- ranean and Ionian seas, and circulated coin of her 104 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY own minting throughout the Levant. Salerno, her near neighbour, had already become famous for her knowledge of medicine, acquired from the Arabs. The speculations of her physicians upon the medici- nal properties of herbs went all over Europe. She abounded in attractions. Vineyards, apple orchards, nut trees, flourished round about the city ; within there were handsome palaces; "the women did not lack beauty, nor the men honesty." The Normans must have found themselves very comfortable. Na- ples, Gaeta, and the Greek cities of the heel and toe were also important and prosperous. But these southern cities were soon outdone by their sturdier northern rivals, Pisa, Genoa, Venice. Pisa, which now lies at the mouth of the Arno like a forsaken mermaid on the shore, is said to have been a free commune before the year 900. She traded east and west ; she waged w r ars with the Sara- cens, drove them from Sardinia, captured the Bale- aric Islands (1114), and carried the war into Africa. Rich with booty and commercial gains, she erected (according to a traveller's estimate) ten thousand towers within the city walls, completed her dome- crowned, many-columned, queenly cathedral, and built the attendant baptistery, within whose marble walls musical notes rise and fall, circle and swell, as if angels were singing in mid-air. She received many privileges from the Emperors ; her maritime i's were to be respected; she was to enact her own laws, and to judge her citizens. No Imperial Marquess was to enter Tuscany until he had received approval from twelve men of Pisa, to be elected at TRADE AGAINST FEUDALISM 105 a public meeting, called together by the city's bells (1085). She spread her power in the Levant. Jaffa, Acre, Tripoli, Antioch were in great part under her dominion, and her factories were scattered along: the coasts of Syria and Asia Minor. Further to the north, mounting hillward from her curving bay, lay Genoa the Proud, who for a time was Pisa's ally against the Saracens, and then be- came her rival and enemy. Genoa, too, was devoted to commerce and established settlements in Constan- tinople, in the Crimea, in Cyprus and Syria, in Ma- jorca and Tunis. She, too, had obtained from the Empire a charter of municipal privileges and was a republic, free in all but name. Venice, their greater sister, first rivalled and then surpassed both Pisa and Genoa. She traces her ori- gin to the men who fled from the mainland in fear of Attila and sought refuge on the marshy islands of the coast (452). In later days others fled before the Lombards, and joined the descendants of the earlier refugees. Here, under the nominal government of the Eastern Empire, the Venetians gradually devel- oped strength and independence, and took into their own bands the election of their Doge (097). The city of tin- Rivo Alto, the Venice of to-day, was begun about 800. Thirty years later the body of St. Mark the Evangelist was brought from Alexan- dria, and the foundations of St. Mark's basilica were laid over bis bones. Politically Venice maintained her allegiance, shifting and time-serving though it was, tint- to Constantinople, not from sentiment, but because Constantinople was the first city in the world, 106 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY tin- centre of art, of luxury, of commerce. Indeed, Venice was like a daughter or younger sister to Constantinople ; all her old monuments, her mosaics, her sculpture, her marble columns, show her Byzantine inclinations. She took an active part in the Crusades, furnished transports and supplies, and mixed reli- gion, war, and commerce in one profitable whole. These maritime cities constantly fought one an- other; Pisa destroyed Amalfi, Genoa ruined Pisa, and Venice finally crippled Genoa. The glory they won was by individual effort ; whereas the glory of the Lombard cities is that they effected a union, tardy indeed and imperfect, but successful at last in its purpose of enforcing their liberties against the Imperial claims. These Lombard cities included in their respective dominions the country round about, and were, in fact, except for a negligent Imperial control, little independent republics. It has been a matter of long dispute whether these communes were survivals from old Roman times, or sprung from the love of independence brought in by the Teutonic invaders; whatever their origin they vir- tually began with trade, rested upon trade, and flour- ished with trade. This trade, which, beginning be- tween neighbouring cities, extended northward over the Alps, was greatly aided by the maritime cities. Ships called for cargoes. The stimulus imparted by the energy of Venetian, Genoese, and Pisan seamen to manufactures and transalpine trade was felt in every Lombard city. For instance, the Venetians, eager to carry a wider range of merchandise over- sea to Alexandria or Jaffa, held fairs in the inland TRADE AGAINST FEUDALISM 107 cities, exposed the wares they had fetched home, and stirred mercantile industry. A burgher class of traders and artisans grew up. Men met in the mar- ket-place, talked business, considered ways and means, discussed the conditions of production and exchange, and became a shrewd, capable class. The moment business expanded beyond the city walls, it bumped into feudal rights at every corner ; at every cross- road it found itself enmeshed in feudal prerogatives aud privileges. Trade could not endure a system fitted only for a farming community. Trade took men into politics ; and in those days politics meant war. The citizens of Milan, Pavia, and neighbouring cities were not wholly unused to civic rights, for they had long had a voice in the election of bishops, and they had their trade guilds. These rights they en- larged whenever they got a chance ; and chances came frequently in the quarrels between Emperor and archbishop, or between the greater and lesser nobility. Both sides wanted their support ; and they sold it in exchange for privileges, here a little, there a little, and obtained many concessions. Finally, after the burghers had advanced in wealth and social con- sideration. the petty nobles made common cause with tht'in ; and tin- two combined succeeded in forcing the great lords to join also, and make one general civic union. These great lords, who had been little tyrants in the country roundabout, were compelled to live within the eitv walls tor part of the year and be hos- 3 lor their own good hehaviour, and were thus converted from enemies into leading citizens. The Consequence of these changes was that the former 108 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY government by a bishop, which in course of time had Bupplanted the old Carlovingian system of govern- ment by a count, was superseded in its turn by a much more popular form of government. The bishop's authority was narrowly limited, the execu- tive power was lodged in consuls, two or more, who were elected annually, and the legislative power was placed in a general council of the burghers (in Milan not more than fifteen hundred men), and in a small inner council, which represented the aristo- cratic element. By Barbarossa's time the govern- ment of the cities had ceased to be feudal, and had become communal. There was inevitable antago- nism between Lombardy and the Holy Roman Em- pire. The league of Lombard cities embodied the revolt of trade against the feudal system, of mer- chants against uncertain and excessive taxes, of burghers against foreign princes, in short, general discontent with an outgrown political system. Barbarossa's war with the Lombard cities lasted for twenty-five years, and for convenience may be divided into two periods, — the period before the cities had learnt the lesson of union and the period after. So long as they were divided by mutual dis- trust and jealousy, Barbarossa was victorious ; when they were united they conquered him. Barbarossa made his first expedition across the Alps in answer to appeals that had been made to him from various parts of Italy. Como and Lodi complained of Milan ; the Popes complained of the insubordinate Romans, who had set up a republic and were going crazy over an heretical republican TRADE AGAINST FEUDALISM 109 priest, one Arnold of Brescia ; the lord of the little city of Capua complained of the Norman king. Barbarossa, with his lofty notions of Imperial au- thority and Imperial duty, gathered together an army and descended into Italy to settle all troubles. He began by issuing orders to Milan with regard to her conduct towards Como and Lodi. Milan shut her gates. The proud city and the proud Emperor were at swords' points in a moment. A letter from Barbarossa from his camp near Milan, written to his uncle, Otto of Freysing, briefly narrates the circum- stances : " The Milanese, tricky and proud, came to meet us with a thousand disloyal excuses and rea- sons, and offered us great sums of money if we would grant them sovereignty over Como and Lodi ; and because, without letting ourselves be swayed one jot by their prayers or by their offers, we marched into their territory, they kept us away from their rich lands and made us pass three whole days in the midst of a desert ; until at last, against their wish, we pitched our camp one mile from Milan. Here, after they had refused provisions for which we had offered to pay, we took possession of one of their • castles, defended by five hundred horsemen, and reduced it to ashes; and our cavalry advanced to the gates of Milan and killed many Milanese and took many prisoners. Then open war broke out between OS. Wln-n we crossed the river Ticino in order to go to Novara, we captured two bridges which they had fortified With castles, and alter the army had crossed, destroyed them. Then we dis- mantled three of their fortresses . . . and after we 110 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY had celebrated Christinas with great merriment, we marched by way of Vercelli and Turin to the Po ; we crossed the river and destroyed the strong city of ( liicii. and burned Asti. This done, we laid siege to Tort una. most strongly fortified both by art and nature; and on the third day, having captured the Buburbs, we should easily have carried the citadel, if night and stormy weather had not prevented us. At last, after many assaults, many killed, and a piteous slaughter of citizens, we forced the citadel to sur- render, not without losing a number of our men." ' Such vigour as this reduced Milan and her sister cities to obedience. But Frederick was not content with raids into Italy and spasmodic punishment administered to this rebellious city or to that ; he wished to have the Imperial rights and authority definitely settled on a permanent basis ; so he con- voked a diet on the plain of Roncaglia, not far from Piacenza, to which he summoned bishops, dukes, marquesses, counts, and other nobles of the realm, four famous jurists from Bologna, and two repre- sentatives from each of fourteen Lombard cities. Frederick was a just -man ; he merely wished his legal rights, and proposed to ascertain what those rights were. The determination was left to the law- yers. By this time lawyers had already begun to play a part in public affairs. Roman law had never been lost. For centuries it had remained side by side with the customs of the conquering Barbarians, less as a code of laws than as the tradition of the subject 1 Storia a" Italia, Cappelletti, pp. 99, 100. TKADE AGAINST FEUDALISM 111 Latin people ; and, when the needs of quickening civilization required a more elaborate system of law than custom could supply, there was the Roman law ready for use. It suddenly leaped into general interest, and rivalled the Church as a career for young men. St. Bernard complained that the law of Justinian was ousting the law of God. In 1088 the great law school of Bologna had been founded. Thither students crowded by thousands ; and the opinions of its jurists were received with the deepest respect. At Roncaglia the body of lawyers appointed to determine Imperial rights, decided, doubtless in ac- cordance with Barbarossa's expectation, in favour of the Imperial side. The feudal nobles were de- lighted. The archbishop of Milan, the recognized head of the Lombard nobility, said to the Emperor : "Know that every right in the people to make laws has been granted to you ; your will is law, as it is said, Quod Principi placuit legis habet vigorem [The Emperor's will has the force of law], since the people have granted to you all authority and sov- ereignty." In accordance with the spirit of this principle, the regalia, tolls, taxes, forfeits, and ex- action^ df various kinds, were defined, and the right to appoint the executive magistrates in the communes adjudged to tin- Emperor. In substance the decision of the jurists was the restoratioD of the Imperial rights a- they had been under the Ottos, when the communes were in their infancy. Fred. -lick's Legal triumph was complete, but Buch a decision could only be sustained by force. The 112 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY cities would not accept it; they preferred war. In the course of one campaign Milan was razed to the ground ( 1 L62), BO literally, that Frederick dated his letters post d '< structiom m Mediolani, "after the de- struction of Milan." But the cities at last learned the necessity of union and stood shoulder to shoulder. The Papacy, too, which had been friendly to the Em- peror during- the insurrections in Rome, turned round and joined the cities against him, and Frederick, in retaliation, set up an anti-pope. Nevertheless, the glory of defeating the Emperor belongs to the cities, and not to the Papacy. The decisive battle was fought near Milan on the field of Legnano (1176). The arbitrament of the sword reversed the deci- sion of the lawyers at Roncaglia. Frederick frankly accepted defeat. A ceremonious conference was held at Venice. At the portal of St. Mark's, Pope Alex- ander III, no unworthy successor to Hildebrand, raised up the kneeling Emperor and gave him the kiss of peace. Temporary terms were agreed on, and a few years later the Peace of Constance (1183) defi- nitely closed the war. The Emperor relinquished all but nominal rights of sovereignty over the confed- erate cities. They were to elect their municipal offi- cers, and, with comparatively unimportant excep- tions, to administer justice and manage their own affairs. Trade had conquered feudalism. The Mid- dle Ages were near their setting. No more of Barbarossa's doings need here be chronicled, except what he deemed a brilliant stroke of diplomacy, by which he hoped to unite the crown of the Two Sicilies with the Imperial crown on the TRADE AGAINST FEUDALISM 113 head of his son, Henry, and through him on the heads of a long line of Hohenstaufens. The Empire had always asserted a claim to Southern Italy, but its claim had never been made good except during the tem- porary occupation of an Imperial army ; and since the Normans had established their kinodom, South- ern Italy had not only been lost to the Empire, but had become the chief prop of the Empire's enemy, the Papacy. If the Empire could acquire Southern Italy, it would hem in the Papacy both south and north, and crush it to obedience. Frederick's son Henry was married to the heiress of the Norman kingdom (1186); and the good Emperor, happy in the prospect before his Imperial line, but happier in that he could not foresee truly, took the cross and led his army towards the Holy Land. He died on the way (1190), leaving behind him a reputation for honour and chivalry, inferior to none left by the German Emperors. CHAPTER XII TRIUMPH OF THE PAPACY (1198-1216) Gregory VII was well named the Julius Caesar of the Papacy. His great conception of a sovereign ecclesiastica] power, supreme over Europe, was des- tined to be realized. For in the fulness of time came Innocent III, the Augustus Caesar of the Papacy, who ruled the civilized world of Europe more after the fashion of the old Roman Emperors than any one, except Charlemagne, had done. But in the in- terval between these two famous Popes, there was a period of reaction in which it looked for a time as if the Empire would plant the Ghibelline flag on the papal citadel. The Popes of this period were men of no marked ability, whereas the young king, Henry VI, had inherited the forceful temper of Bar- barossa as well as his theories of Imperial rights, and displayed great vigour, energy, and resolution. Despite the opposition of the Popes, who as feudal suzerains of Sicily were most averse to the alliance, he had married the heiress of the Norman line, and despite the fierce opposition of the Sicilians, — part Arabs, part Greeks, with Italians and Nor- mans mingling in, — he established his authority in the island. Henry was horribly cruel, but he was efficient. He was King of Germany, King of Italy, and King of the Two Sicilies, and had compelled a TRIUMPH OF THE PAPACY 115 reluctant Pope to crown him Emperor. He deter- mined to be Emperor in Italy in fact, and to accom- plish what his father had failed to do. He undertook to check and suppress the communes by reviving the old feudal system. He reinstated old duchies and counties, and enfeoffed his loyal Germans. Mat- ters looked black for the Guelf s, when, to* their great good luck, the fiery young Emperor died, leaving an incompetent widow and a helpless baby (1197). By one of those occurrences, in which Catholics see more than the hand of chance, in the very year after the Emperor's death, a man of political talents of the highest order was elected to the pontifical chair. In the days of Pope Alexander III, the great antagonist of Frederick Barbarossa, a young noble- man, who took holy orders almost in boyhood, had given early promise of an extraordinary career. This handsome, eloquent, imperious boy, named Lothair, inherited through his father, Thrasmund of the Counts of Segni in Latium, the fierce impetuosity of the Lombards, and through his mother, a Roman lady of high birth (from whom he took his mas- ter traits), the tenacity, the adroitness, the political genius of the Romans. He was educated at the uni- versities of Bologna and Paris, where he studied law, theology, and scholastic philosophy. The stormy period of the straggle between Alexander and Bar- barossa brought character- and talents quickly t<> the front. Before he was twenty he had distinguished himself, before he was thirty he had been made B cardinal, and at thirty-seven lie was elected Pope. According to the practice instituted by the deposed L16 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY scamp, John XII, of taking a new name, Lothair assumed fche title of Innocent III. Under the guidance of Innocent III (1198-1216), fche Papacy attained the full meridian of its glory. When this great Pope, lawyer, theologian, states- man, came to the throne, it was demoralized and weak ; before he died, it had set its yoke on the neck of Europe. For the second time in history, orders were issued from Rome to the whole civilized world. A review of his pontificate brings up a panorama of Europe. His task began in Rome. This little city of churches, monasteries, towers, and ruins, which took no pride in great papal affairs, had plunged into one of its fits of republican in- dependence, and, supported by the Emperor, had ousted the Popes from all control. In the course of a few years, by intrigue, tact, and civil war, Inno- cent got into his own hands the appointment of the senate and of the city governor, and thereby con- trol of the city. He next turned his attention to the Patrimony of St. Peter, that central strip from Rome to Ravenna, given or supposed to have been given by Pippin and Charlemagne to the successors of St. Peter. Here the impetuous Emperor, Henry VI, had seated his German barons, setting up fiefs for them, and reestablishing the feudal system under the Imperial suzerainty. These German barons were hated by the people. Innocent put himself at the head of the popular discontent, organized a Guelf, almost a national, party, and either drove the Ger- mans out, or forced them to swear allegiance to the Holy See. TRIUMPH OF THE PAPACY 117 In Tuscany also the Guelfs were successful in breaking up the feudal restoration. In fact, since the days of Countess Matilda feudalism had been doomed. The cities had taken advantage of the wars between Papacy and Empire to secure virtual independence ; and on Henry's death, with the ex- ception of Ghibelline Pisa, they banded together and agreed never to admit an Imperial governor within their territories. Innocent tried to bring these cities under papal dominion, but they were too independent, and he was obliged to rest content with snapping up scattered portions of Matilda's do- mains. Meantime in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies the Emperor's widow had died, and left to Innocent's guardianship her little son, Frederick. Innocent, guardian and suzerain lord, immediately began a struggle with the feudal nobility, just as in Italy, and, after a long and difficult contest, asserted the authority of his royal ward. On the termination of the minority, he handed over the kingdom to Fred- erick, win i. on his part as King of the Two Sicilies, swore fealty to the Pope. Had it not been for his honourable and powerful guardian, Frederick prob- ably would have had no kingdom, and in his oath of fealty be acknowledged his indebtedness: ''Among all the wishes which we carry in the front rank of our desires, this is the chief, to discharge a grateful obedience, to show an honourable devotion, and never to he found ungrateful for your benefits — ( J<»d forbid — since, next to Divine Grace, to your protection we are indebted not only for land but also for life." 118 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY In this way Innocent established the Papacy in Italv : BOVereign, suzerain, protector or ally, he was tin- head of the Italian Guelfs and practically of Italv. Let us now look abroad. In Constantinople, the capital of the Greek Empire, Innocent's legate bestowed the Imperial purple upon an Emperor. An odd whirl of Fortune's wheel brought this to pass. Innocent had preached a crusade in the hope of recovering the Holy Land from the infidels, who had succeeded in expelling the Christians. An army of Frenchmen and Flemings answered his summons. They determined to avoid the deadly route overland and go by sea, and applied to Ven- ice for transportation. When they came to pay the bill they did not have the money, and the Venetians insisted that they should help them re- capture the city of Zara, on the Dalmatian coast, which had once belonged to Venice but had been lost again. Zara was attacked and taken (1202). One deflection from the straight path of duty led to another. To Zara came the son of the Greek Em- peror to say that his father had been deposed, and to beg for help. The Venetians, wishing to wound two commercial rivals at once, Constantinople and Pisa (for the usurping Emperor favoured Pisa), used the suppliant as a stalking-horse, and persuaded the Crusaders once again to divert their immediate purpose and to restore the deposed Emperor to his throne. Again the Crusaders listened to temp- tation, for the Venetians baited their hook with golden promises; they sailed to Constantinople and restored the wronged Emperor. Matters did not TRIUMPH OF THE PAPACY 119 go smoothly, however. Misunderstanding with the Greeks led to disagreements, disagreements to quar- rels, and quarrels to war. The Latin Crusaders assaulted Constantinople, carried it by storm, and plundered houses, palaces, churches, shrines, every- thing ; then, with appetites whetted by petty spoils, seized the frail Empire itself (1204). They di- vided Thrace, Macedonia, Greece, the islands of the iEgean Sea, and all the remnants of the Roman Empire of the East that they could lay hands on. Pious Venice came out best ; she took coast and island, town and country, all along from recaptured Zara round by the shores of Dalmatia, Albania, Peloponnesus, and Thessaly, ending with half of Constantinople itself. The Marquess of Monferrat became King of Thessalonica, and his vassal, a Bur- gundian count, was invested with the lordship of Athens and Thebes. The Count of Flanders was elected Emperor of a Latin Empire. Innocent had been very angry with the deflections to Zara and Constantinople, and had thundered against the polite but inflexible Venetians. When the evil had been done, however, he made the best of it, and behaved with dignity and astuteness. He rebuked the Cru- saders for having preferred the things of earth to those of Heaven, and bade them ask God's pardon for the profanation of holy places j but he admit- ted the advantage that would arise from reconciling the Greeks, schismatics since the days of Leo the Iconoclast, with the Roman See. So his legate be- stowed the purple 00 a suppliant Emperor in the city of ( lonstantinople. 1 120 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY In Germany Innocent also appears as the giver and withholdei of crowns. On the death of Henry V I there was a disputed election. The Hohen- staufen party, dreading a long minority, passed over the baby Frederick, and nominated Philip, Henry's brother ; the rival party, the German Gnelfs, nominated Otto of Brunswick, a nephew of Rich- ard Cceur-de-lion. Civil war followed, and both par- ties appealed to Innocent who, after deliberation, supported Otto, but exacted a high price. Otto was obliged to guarantee to the Pope the strip of terri- tory from Rome to Ravenna, and those portions of Matilda's domains which were not fiefs of the Em- pire, also to acknowledge papal suzerainty over the Two Sicilies, and to promise to conform to the papal will with regard to the leagues of the Lom- bard and Tuscan cities. This guarantee of Otto laid the first real foundation of the Papal States. Hith- erto, vague Donations had given pretexts for claims ; but Otto's deed was a definite Imperial grant, and conveyed an unquestionable title. In spite of Inno- cent's support matters went ill for Otto in Germany. Philip's star rose, and Innocent, to whom the cause of the Papacy was the cause of God and justified diplomatic conduct, was on the point of shifting to Philip's side, when in the nick of time Philip was murdered (1208). Otto's claim was now undisputed. No sooner, however, did he feel the crown secure on his head than he shifted his ground. Guelf by birth though he was, he found that he could not be both obedient to the Pope and loyal to his Imperial du- ties. He turned into a complete Ghibelline, broke TRIUMPH OF THE PAPACY 121 his grant to the Pope, attempted to restore the feudal system in the papal territories, and assumed to treat the Two Sicilies as a fief of the Empire. Innocent, outraged and indignant at this breach of faith, excommunicated him (1210). Thereupon, as at the time when Gregory VII excommunicated Henry IV, the German barons rose, deposed Otto, and summoned young Frederick from Sicily to take the German crown. Innocent supported Frederick's cause, but exacted the price which he had formerly exacted from the perjured Otto. Frederick, pressed by present need, and forgetful of Otto's evil prece- dent, pledged himself as follows : " We, Frederick the Second, by Divine favour and mercy, King of the Ro- mans, ever Augustus, and King of Sicily . . . recog- nizing the grace given to us by God, we have also before our eyes the immense and innumerable bene- fits rendered by you, most dear lord and reverend father, our protector and benefactor, lord Innocent, by God's grace most venerable Pontili' ; through your benefaction, labour, and guardianship, we have been brought up, cherished, and advanced, ever since our mother, the Empress Constance of happy mem- ory, threw us upon your care, almost from birth. To you, most blessed father, and to all your Catho- lic successors, and to the Holy Roman Church, our special mother, we BhaU discharge all obedience, honour, and reverence, always with an humble heart and a devout spirit, as our Catholic predecessors, kings and Emperors, are known to have done to your predecessors; doI a whit rrom these shall we take away, rather add, that our devotion may shine the 122 A SHOET HISTORY OF ITALY more." ' Frederick promised that he would not in- terfere in the* election of bishops, and thai the can- didal canonically elected should be installed. He confirmed the papal title to the Papal States. "I \o\v. promise, swear, and take my oath to protect and preserve all the possessions, honours, and rights of the Roman Church, in good faith, to the best of my power " (1213). From this time forward Frederick advanced from success to success. Otto was driven into private life, and the Pope's legate put the German crown on Frederick's head at Aachen (1215). Where Inno- cent blessed, success and prosperity followed ; Avhere he cursed, death and destruction came. Elsewhere the Pope was equally triumphant. All Europe bent under his imperial decrees. The kings of Portugal, Leon, Castile, and Navarre were scolded or punished. The King of Aragon went to Rome and swore allegiance. The Duke of Bohemia was rebuked, the King of Denmark comforted, the nobles of Iceland warned, the King of Hungary admon- ished. Servia, Bulgaria, even remote Armenia, re- ceived papal supervision and paternal care. Philip Augustus of France, at Innocent's command, took back the wife whom he had repudiated. John of England grovelled on the ground before him, and yielded up " to our lord the Pope Innocent and his successors, all our kingdom of England and all our kingdom of Ireland to be held as a fief of the Holy See" (1213). Another triumph of darker hue added to the bril- 1 Select Mediceval Documents, Mathews, p. 1-16, translated. TRIUMPH OF THE PAPACY 123 liance of Innocent's career. In the south of France, in the pleasant places of Provence and Languedoc, where troubadours praised love and war, and lords and ladies wandered down primrose paths, the hum- bler folk got hold of certain dangerous ideas. They believed that there was a power of evil as well as a power of good, that Christ was but an emanation from God, that the God of the Jews was not the real God of Goodness, and, worse than all, that the Ro- man Church, with its sacerdotalism, forms, sacra- ments, and ritual, was, to say the least, not what it should be. Innocent entertained no doubts that the Roman Church had been founded by God to maintain His truth on earth ; as a statesman he re- garded heresy as we regard treason and anarchy ; as a priest he deemed it sin. He called Simon of Montfort and other dogs of war from the north and urged them at the quarry. The heresy was put down in blood. Here appears the black figure of St. Dominic, encouraging the faithful, rally- ing the hesitant, and by the fervour of his belief, by his devotion, by his genius for organization, more destructive to heresy than the sword of Montfort. Thu^ Innocent sat supreme. He had created a papal kingdom where his predecessors had asserted impotent claims; be had confirmed the Two Sicilies in their dependency upon the Holy See; be bad put the Papacy at the head of the Gnelf party in Italy, and had made that part v almost national; he had enforced the power of the Church throughout Eu- rope, had given crowns to the Kings of A.ragon and of 124 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY England, fco fche Emperors of Germany and of Con- stant inople. No such spectacle had been seen since tin- reign of Charlemagne j none such was to be Been again till the coming of Napoleon. The con- ception of Europe as an ecclesiastical organization had leached its fullest expression. CHAPTER XIII ST. FRANCIS (1182-122G) In spite of the dazzling success achieved by Innocent, matters were not well with the Church in Italy. Cor- ruption threatened it from within, heresy from with- out. Simony was rampant; livings were almost put up at auction. Innocent asserted that there was no cure but fire and steel. The prelates of the Roman Curia were " tricky as foxes, proud as bulls, greedy and insatiable as the Minotaur." The priests were often shameless ; some became usurers to get money for their bastards, others kept taverns and sold wine. Wor- ship had become a vain repetition of formulas. The monks were superstitious, many of them disreputable. The inevitable consequence of this decay in the Church was heresy. Italy was nearly, if not quite, as badly honeycombed with heretics as Languedoc had been. The Patarini, whom we remember in Hildebrand's time, now become a species of heretics, abounded in Milan ; other sects sprang up in towns near by. In Ferrara, Verona, Rimini, Faenza, Treviso, Florence, Prato, anti-sacerdotal sentiment was very strong. In Viterbo tin- heretics \\\ Pope Innocent, had driven out the German count, and had formed themselves into a free commune, Bave for their allegiance to the Holy See ; but the change was not all gain. The town was divided into discordant classes ; the nobility, maintained in idleness by the produce of their estates, the bour- geoisie, engaged in trade (Francis's father was a merchant), the artisans grouped in guilds, and the serfs, who tilled the fields and tended the vineyards and olive orchards. Once rid of the German count, the bourgeoisie endeavoured to rid themselves of the arrogant and idle nobility. Street war broke out. The nobles fled to Perugia, another little town perched on a hill some dozen miles across the plain, and asked for help. Perugia rejoiced in the oppor- tunity. The miseries of a petty war between two little neighbours need no description. Fields and vineyards were devastated, olive orchards destroyed, farm-houses burned. Even in peace the peasants around Assisi lived in constant disquiet, ready to fling down their mattocks and flee to the protection of the city walls. Within the city the streets were narrow, the houses small. Dirt abounded. War brought pov- erty, dirt brought the pest, Crusaders brought lep- rosy. At the gates of the town stood lazar-houses, ST. FRANCIS 129 and in remote spots lepers in the earlier stages of disease gathered together. Yet, despite war, pest, and leprosy, life in Unibria could never have been wholly sad. Certainly the sons of the well-to-do enjoyed themselves and whiled away the time care- lessly. Sometimes a great personage stopped on his Rome ward way ; sometimes strolling players exhib- ited their shows on the piazza before the Temple of Minerva ; sometimes a troubadour, escaped from the persecution in Provence, passed by on his way to Sicily, and sang his songs to repay hospitality. Many an afternoon and night the clubs of young gentlemen gave fetes champ etres and dances. Fran- cis, as a boy, was gayest of the gay, dancing and piping in the market-place, fighting in the front rank against the nobles of Perugia, but when he grew to manhood he could not bear the contrast between mirth and misery. He sought for some universal joy and found it in the love of Christ. He gathered about him a scanty band of holy and humble men of heart, who took the vow of poverty, and devoted them- selves to praising God, comforting the wretched, and tending lepers. The abbot of the neighbouring Bene- dictine monastery gave them a little chapel, where St. Benedict himself had once said mass, which lay in the plain a mile below the town. This little chapel, named the Portiuncula (the little portion), which is now covered by the great church of Santa Maria ili'jli Angeli (St. Mary of the Angels), so called because the songs of angels were heard there, vraa tin- cradle of the Franciscan ( trder. It was a tiny building, twenty feet wide and thirty long, with a 180 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY steep pitched roof, plain walls, and big, round-arched door, and was Badly dilapidated. St. Francis and his friends buill it up, and it became their church. Round it they built their huts, and encompassed all with a hedge. Here it was that St. Clare, the daugh- ter of a nobleman of Assisi, donned the nun's dress. Here Francis passed the happy years of his life, while as yet his disciples were few and all were animated by his passionate longing- for self-abnega- tion. He followed the New Testament literally, su- perstitiously one would say were it not that this literal obedience was accompanied by ineffable peace of heart and joy. He specially enjoined poverty. A smock, a cord, and sandals were enough for a true brother. Once a novice begged for permission to own a psalter, and teased him, but Francis an- swered : " After you have the psalter you will covet and long for a breviary ; and when you pos- sess a breviary you mil sit on a chair like a great prelate, and say to thy brother, fetch me my bre- viary." Nor would he suffer the brethren to take heed for the morrow. They were only allowed to ask for provisions sufficient for the day. For he, in the rapture of his love, found infinite pleasure in the literal fulfillment of every word that had fallen from Christ's lips. Francis was an orator ; he pos- sessed passion, the gTeat source of eloquence, and stirred prelates and Crusaders as well as peasants and lepers. The world wished for sympathy and he gave it. He seemed to be sick with the sick, afflicted with those in affliction, holy with the good ; and even sinners felt him one of themselves. To ST. FRANCIS 131 his disciples he was Jesus come again. Joy and hap- piness radiated from him. All the world felt the charm and beauty of his love of God, and poetry followed him as wild violets attend the spring-. Thus Francis, by rubbing off the incrustations of twelve hundred unchristian years, revealed the poetry of the gospel to an eager world. One charming trait of his character was his love of animals, espe- cially of birds. He wished the ox and the ass, com- panions of the manger, to share in the Christmas good cheer ; and hoped that the Emperor would make a law that nobody should kill larks or do them any hurt. He was always very fond of larks and said that their plumage was like a religious dress. ••Wherefore, — according to his disciple, Brother Leo, — it pleased God that these lowly little birds should give a sign of affection for him at the hour of his death. On the eve of the Sabbath day after vespers, just before the night in which he went up to God, a great multitude of larks Hew down over the roof of the house where he lay, and all flying together wheeled in circles round the roof and sin£- ing sweetly seemed to be praising God." IIi> disciples went forth from their headquarters, the PortiunculOy like the Apostles, to preach the gospel, first to the people of Umbria and Tuscany, then on to Bologna and Verona, and soon over the Alps and across the seas. The Order had three branches: the begging friars themselves, tonsured and clad in undved cloth, with cords about their musts and sandals on their feet; the sister Clares, shut up in nunneries, and dressed most simplv ; 132 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY and the third order, people who continued to live in the world, but wished to follow the example of Christ and his blessed imitator and servant, Francis. The first rule of the begging friars had been very strict. For Francis the strait gate that led to eter- nal life was poverty. Even in his lifetime after his ( hrder had become popular, there was grumbling and opposition ; and after his death, the literal ob- servance of his wishes was promptly given up. He would never allow his brethren to own a house or have a church ; and yet within two years after his death the great basilica in Assisi was begun, dedi- cated to him, and hurried to magnificent completion. The Church, which held the doctrine of evangelical poverty fit only for mad men of genius, laid her heavy hand on the Order, and guided and governed it as best suited her purposes. But it would be grossly unfair to the Church to blame her for vio- lating Francis's chief dogma. The total rejection of property, the total disregard of the morrow, seemed to her, as they seem to us to-day, doctrines wholly inapplicable to this world in which we find our- selves. CHAPTER XIV THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE (1216-1250) The Church seized the Franciscan Order as a man in danger grasps at a means of safety, and shaped it to her needs ; for, in spite of her brilliant triumphs under Innocent, her needs were great. The Papacy and the Empire approached their final struggle ; both felt instinctively that the issue must be decisive. Their fundamental incompatibility had been aggra- vated by the union of the crowns of Sicily and Ger- many. Innocent had been pushed by circumstances into supporting Frederick's claim to Germany, and though he had striven to prevent the natural conse- quences by extorting oaths from Frederick, yet as time went on the danger became clearer. Under Innocent's successor, Pope Honorius, the Papacy lay like a cherry between an upper and lower jaw, which watered to close and crunch it; and this ex- treme peril is the excuse for the bitterness of the Popes in the contest which followed. The Papacy fought for its life. The contest affected all Italy. Milan and many cities of the valley of the Po were Guelf ; but Pavia and some others were Ghibelline, not that they loved die Emperor, bat hated .Milan ; Florence and the other Tuscan cities, except ( Jhibellme Pisa and Siena, which hated Florence, were Guelf; Koine was split in two: L84 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY the Colonna, the Frangipani, and other great families were generally Ghibelline, though permanent alle- eriance was unfashionable, while the Orsini and others were Guelf. The Gray Friars, who swarmed from the AJps to the Strait of Messina, were steadfast Guelfs, and even carried their loyalty so far, their enemies said, as to subordinate religion to political ends. On the other hand, the aristocracy, which was chiefly of Teutonic descent, held for the Empire. Frederick himself is the central figure of the period. In his lifetime he excited love and hate to extrava- gance, and he still excites the enthusiasm of scholars. His is the most interesting Italian personality between St. Francis and Dante. I say Italian, for though Frederick inherited the Hohenstaufen vigour and energy, he got his chief traits from his Sicilian mother. Poet, lawgiver, soldier, statesman, he was the wonder of the world, stupor mundi, as an Eng- lish chronicler called him. Impetuous, terrible, vo- luptuous, refined, he was a kind of Caesarian Byron. In most ways he outstripped contemporary thought ; in many ways he outstripped contemporary sympa- thy. He was sceptical of the Athanasian Creed, of communal freedom, and of other things which his Italian countrymen believed devoutly; while they were sceptical of the divine right of the Empire, of the blessing of a strong central government, and of other matters which he believed devoutly. Between a stubborn Emperor, a stiff-necked Papacy, and obstinate communes, relations strained taut. The first break occurred between Emperor and Papacy. The Popes honestly desired to reconquer Jerusalem, THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE 135 which had fallen back into infidel hands, and inces- santly urged a crusade ; but perhaps at this juncture their zeal was heightened by a notion that the most effective defensive measure against the Emperor would be to keep him busy in Palestine. Frederick had solemnly promised to go. He had also solemnly promised to keep the crowns of Germany and of the Two Sicilies separate, by putting the latter on his son's head ; but instead of this separation he kept both crowns on his own head, and secured both for his son as his successor. In spite of this violated pro- mise, Pope Honorius, a gentle soul, devoutly eager for the crusade, crowned Frederick Emperor (1220), upon Frederick's renewed promise that he would start on the crusade within a year. The year passed, then another and another, and Frederick, with his crowns safe on his head, did not move a foot towards Jerusalem. The gentle Honorius remonstrated; Fred- erick made vows, excuses, protestations, but did not go. Finally the mild Pope died, and was succeeded by the venerable Cardinal Ugolino, Gregory IX, ( 1227— 1241 ). Ugolino was a member of the Conti family of Latium (so preeminently counts that they took their name from their title), and a near relation to [nnocenl III. His indomitable character proved his kinship. Blameless in private life, a warm friend to St. Francis, deeply versed in ecclesiastical affairs, be had a benign nice and noble presence; in fact, to quote tie- gentle Pope Honorius, he was "a Cedar of Lebanon in the Park of the Church." But, in spite of bis virtue, his training, and his fourscore . he was a very Hotspur, fiery, impatient, and L86 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY headstrong. It was be who had put the crusader's oross into Frederick's hands and had received his crusader's vow ; and now, having bottled up his wrath daring the pontificate of Honorius, he could brook no further delay. Frederick made ready to go. Ships and men were gathered at Brindisi, and, in spite of a pestilence which killed many soldiers, the ileet set sail. A few days later word was brought that Frederick had put about and disembarked in [taly. Gregory was furiously angry, and despatched an encyclical letter to certain bishops in Frederick's kingdom, which sets forth the papal side of the matter: "Out in the spacious amplitude of the sea, the little bark of Peter, placed or rather dis- placed by whirlwinds and tempests, is so continu- ously tossed about by storms and waves, that its pilot and rowers under the stress of inundating rains can hardly breathe. Four special tempests shake our ship : the perfidy of infidels, the madness of tyrants, the insanity of heretics, the perverse fraud of false sons. There are wars without and fears within, and it frequently happens that the distressed Church of Christ, while she thinks she cherishes children, nour- ishes at her breast fires, serpents, and vipers, who by poisonous breath, by bite and conflagration, strive to ruin all. Now, in this time when there is need to destroy monsters of this sort, to rout hostile armies, to still disturbing tempests, the Apostolic See with great diligence has cherished a certain child, to wit, the Emperor Frederick, whom from his mother's womb she received upon her knees, nursed him at THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE 137 her breasts, carried him on her back, rescued him often from the hands of them that sought his life, with great pains and cost studied to educate him until she had brought him to manhood, and led him to a kingly crown and even to the height of the Im- perial dignity, believing that he would be a rod of defence, and a staff for her old age." The encyclical then proceeds to recount Freder- ick's promises, his delays, evasions, excuses, and the false start from Brindisi, and adds, " Hearken and see if there be any sorrow like the sorrow of your mother the Apostolic See, so cruelly, so totally deceived by a son whom she had nursed, in whom she had placed the trust of her hope in this matter. But we put our hope in the compassion of God that He will show to us a way by which we shall advance pros- perously in this affair, and that He will point out men, who in purity of heart and with cleanness of hand shall lead the Christian army. Yet lest, like dumb dogs who cannot bark, we should seem to defer to man against God, and take no vengeance upon him, the Emperor Frederick, who has wrought such ruin on God's people, We, though unwilling, do publicly pronounce him excommunicated, and command that he be by all completely shunned, and that vou and other prelates who shall hear of this, publicly publish his excommunication. And, if his Contumacy shall demand, more grave; proceeding shall be taken." This ban of excommunication was published over the world ; bishops gave it out in their dioceses, priests in their parishes; Gray Friars told of it from 138 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY Sicily to Scot la ml. Frederick in answer wrote letters to the kings of Europe, saying that the Roman Ch u nli Mas so consumed with avarice and greed, that, not satisfied with her own Church property, she was not ashamed to disinherit emperors, kings, and princes, and make them trihutary. To the King of England he wrote: — " Of these premises the King of England has an example, for the Church excommunicated his father, King John, and kept him excommunicated till he and his kingdom hecame trihutary to her. Like- wise all have the example of many other princes, whose lands and persons she squeezed under an in- terdict till she had reduced them to similar servi- tude. We pass over her simony, her unheard-of ex- actions, her open usury, and her new-fangled tricks, which infect the whole world. We pass over her speeches, sweeter than honey, smoother than oil, — insatiable bloodsuckers ! They say that the Roman Curia is the Church, our mother and nurse, when that Curia is the root and origin of all evils. She does not act like a mother, but like a stepmother. By her fruits which we know she gives sure proof. "Let the famous barons of England think of this. Pope Innocent instigated them to rise in revolt against King John as a stubborn enemy of the Church, but after that abnormally celebrated King- made obeisance and, like a woman, delivered lip him- self and his kingdom to the Roman Church, that Pope, putting behind him his respect for man and fear of God, trampled down the nobles, whom he had first supported and pricked on, and left them THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE 139 exposed to death and disinheritance, so that he, af- ter the Roman fashion, should gulp down his impu- dent throat the fatter morsels. In this way, under t'he incitement of Roman avarice, England, fairest of countries, was made a tributary. Behold the ways of the Romans ; behold how they seek to snare all and each, how they get money by fraud, how they subjugate the free and disturb the peaceable, clad in sheep's clothing but inwardly ravening wolves. They send legates hither and thither, to excommu- nicate, to reprimand, to punish, — not to save the fruitful seed of God's w r ord, but to extort money, to bind and reap where they have never sown. "Against us also, as He who sees all things knows, they have raged like bacchantes, wrongfully, saying that we would not cross the sea according to terms fixed, when much unavoidable and arduous busi- ness about the going, and about the Church and about the Empire, detained us, not counting sick- ness. First there were the insolent Sicilian rebels : and it did not seem to us a good plan nor expedient for Christianity to go to the Holy Land," etc. And he ended, bo the chronicler says, with an exhortation to all the princes of the world to beware against such avarice and wickedness, because " you are concerned when your neighbour's house is on fire." These letters show the temper on both sides. Out- wardly, however, peace was observed, and Frederick really went Oil the promised crusade; and, though iu Syria be found Patriarchy Templars, Hospitallers, and Franciscans all turned against him, he succeeded in making a treaty by which Jerusalem, Nazareth, 140 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY and Bethlehem were ceded to him, and he crowned himself king in Jerusalem. In the mean time hos- tility's had broken out in Italy. Frederick incited the Roman barons to drive the Pope from Rome, and the Pope preached a crusade against Frederick. But both sides, having many cares within their re- spective jurisdictions, at length made peace, and Frederick was enabled to go back to his consuetas (It Iwias, his wonted delights. This phrase, which was used by the Pope, probably contained an innuendo, for gossip busied itself with Frederick's Christianity and morals. He tolerated Saracens in his kingdom, lived on friendly terms with them, and preferred them in his army, for they were indifferent to excommunication ; and gos- sip added that he liked Saracen ladies, hinted at a harem, and alleged that in Syria he had accepted the present of a troop of Moslem dancers. Gossip, spread by the glib tongues of mendicant friars, charged him with saying, " If God had seen my beautiful Sicily, he would not have chosen that beggarly Palestine for His Kingdom," " There have been three great impostors who invented religions, and one of them was crucified." Frederick's real offence in ecclesiastical eyes was that he wished to subordinate the spiritual to the secular power. It was natural, however, that pious folk should look askance at a prince who, while Christendom was fight- ing Islam, hobnobbed with Mohammedans and seemed to find them more sympathetic than Christians. Frederick's real consuetce delicice were of an- other kind. In his Sicilian court we catch the first THE FALL OF THE EMPIKE 141 streaks of the dawn that was destined to brighten into the day of the Renaissance. He himself was a highly accomplished man, spoke Italian, German, Arabic, and Greek, and took an interest in mathe- matics, philosophy, and in general learning. But poetry was his favourite pleasure. The Italian lan- guage, recently emerged from dog Latin, had just begun to serve literary uses, and Frederick's court had the honour of producing the first school of Ital- ian poetry. He, his sons Manfred and Enzio, his chief counsellor Pier della Vigna, and many poets and troubadours drawn thither by his fame, so far outstripped the rest of Italy that all Italian poetry, wherever written, was called Sicilian. Sicily was the most civilized place in Europe, now that Southern France had been crushed by the Albigensian persecution. The old Greek stock kept some trace of their inheritance ; the Arabs had brought their culture ; the Normans had added chiv- alric ideas ; the Crusades and commerce had enlarged the intellectual boundaries ; and Frederick himself had extraordinary versatility. Mathematicians from Granada, philosophers from Alexandria, were as welcome as the troubadours from Provence. Fred- erick looked after his own royal estates, managed his stud farm in Apulia, decided when brood mares should be fed on barley and when kept to grass. He was a greaf Bporteman, too, and wrote a book on falconry. He enacted a famous code of laws, far Superior in many respects to existing legislation, which was conceived with the definite plan of exalt- ing royal authority over feudal prerogatives and 142 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY communal customs. He deprived the barons of criminal jurisdiction; forbade private war, carrying weapons, etc.; he limited trial by ordeal so far as he could, calling it "a species of divination ;" he made minute regulations in matters of business and behav- iour, and maintained a paternal authority. In fact, Sicily, with its culture, poetry, Moslems, and its unorthodox king, succeeded to the heretical position of Southern France. The Papacy felt in- stinctively that a civilization so happy in the good things of this world, so lax on many points of mo- rality, so careless of the Roman ecclesiastical sys- tem, was a perpetual menace to it. In the nature of things, the peace that had been made with Freder- ick could not last long. The breach happened in the North. The Lom- bard cities revolted. Frederick marched against them and won a victory (1237). Then was the zenith of his power; his very triumph was the cause of his undoing. All the Guelfs of Italy roused them- selves for the struggle. The Pope took part, and a second time excommunicated Frederick, enumerat- ing a score of sins. A later Pope held a council at Lyons (a place of safety), excommunicated Fred- erick again, and deposed him from his Imperial throne (1245). Then an anti-emperor was set up. Blow on blow fell upon Frederick. He was terribly routed at Parma, through carelessness. His gallant son En/io. the poet, was captured by the Bolognese, who would not release him, though Frederick offered to put a rim of gold round the walls of their city. Kn/.io spent twenty-three years in prison and there THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE 143 died. Pier della Vigna, who " kept both the keys of Frederick's heart," was suspected of high treason and condemned to death. Frederick himself died in 1250, and the Pope shouted for joy at the news, " Be glad ye Heavens, and let the Earth rejoice ! " He had good reason, for the Church had lost its most dangerous enemy. With the death of Frederick the Empire came to its end. The name of Holy Roman Empire con- tinued till 1806, and from time to time for several hundred years German kings came down across the Alps to receive the Imperial crown, but on Fred- erick's death the old mediaeval Empire practically ceased ; and Italy, instead of being an Imperial pro- vince, became a series of independent states. The end of the Hohenstaufens themselves reads like the last act of a bloody Elizabethan tragedy. Within a few years the only survivors among Fred- erick's descendants were his lawful heir, a baby, Conradin, and an illegitimate son, Manfred. Man- fred, who had inherited the charm, the address, the energy and brilliance of his father, succeeded in es- tablishing himself in the Two Sicilies, at first as regent for bis nephew, and afterwards, for in those troubled times a regency was precarious, as king in bifl own right. But the Popes were resolved not to undergo a repetition of the danger they had expe- rienced from Frederick, and laid their plans to de- stroy the last of the " viper's brood," as they called Frederick's family. They followed the old precedent, set in the days vrhen the Papacy bad been in danger from the Lombards, and invited a French prince. 144 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY Charles of Anjou, brother to St. Louis, to come and depose Manfred^ and offered him the crown of the Two Sicilies. The crafty, capable, deep-scheming Charles accepted, and came amid great rejoicing among the Guelfs. Rome made him Senator. Flor- ence made him podesta ; in fact, all Guelf Italy was at his feet. The Pope proclaimed a crusade against Manfred, collected tithes and taxes for the holy purpose, and provided Charles with an army. Man- fred was defeated and killed (1266), and two years later, the valiant Conradin, a lad of sixteen, who came down in the mad hope of regaining his king- dom, was also defeated, taken prisoner, and, after a mock trial for treason, put to death. Thus the Pa- pacy prevented the union of the Two Sicilies with the Empire, and thus the House of Anjou supplanted the last of the Hohenstaufens at Palermo and Naples. CHAPTER XV THE FALL OF THE MEDLEVAL PAPACY (1303) We are now coming out of the Middle Ages, and the dawn of a new era grows more and more ap- parent. The Empire, embodiment of an old outworn theory, has already fallen, and its victorious rival, the Papacy, in so far as it embodies the mediaeval idea of a theocratic supremacy, is tottering, and it, too, will soon fall before the unsympathetic forces of a new age. So long as the Papacy stood un- touched, it looked as potent and sovereign, and spoke with as lofty a tone, as in the days of Inno- cent ; but a hundred years had wrought great changes, and at a push it tumbled and fell. Hints had already been dropped that the dread thunderbolt, the curse of Rome, which had helped win the proud position of lordship over Europe, had become mere brutum fulmen. Excommunication had been so prodigally used for political purposes that educated men no longer believed that it was really the curse of heaven. Moreover, Europe had not been standing still. The vigorous, compact kingdom of Fiance had come into being, and flushed with a sense of power and importance, determined to take that part in European polities which it regarded as in due. In angry Belf-confidenee the young king- dom confronted the overweening Papacy, savagely 146 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY tore off its giant's robe, and laid bare its real -weak- ness. Boniface VTJI (1294-1303) was the pontiff under whom the papal empire came to its end. He was a vigorous, energetic, arrogant, eloquent, handsome man, with a wide knowledge of law, diplomacy, and politics. In the cathedral at Florence there is a large statue of him, calm and dignified, almost he- roic. He sits with his rochet and tiara on, his right hand raised with two fingers extended as if bless- ing, — an unusual occupation, — and looks far more of this world than of the other. His contempo- rary, the Florentine historian, Villain, a Guelf, says: " He was great-minded and lordly, and coveted much honour, . . . and was much respected and feared for his learning and power. He was very grasping for money in order to aggrandize the Church and his own relations, making no shame of gain, for he said that he might do anything with what belonged to the Church. . . . He was very learned in books, very wary and capable, and had great common sense ; he had wide knowledge and a good mem- ory, but was extremely cruel and haughty with his enemies and adversaries, . . . more worldly than befitted his exalted station, and he did many things displeasing to God." Dante, passionately Ghibelline, calls Boniface " prince of the new Pharisees " and sends him to hell. Boniface's chief enemies, as was usual in the case of a Pope who had enemies, were Romans. If the Papacy had been able to reduce Rome to real obe- dience, its history would have been different. The FALL OF THE MEDLEVAL PAPACY 147 rebellious commune and the rebellious barons were constantly on the watch for favourable opportuni- ties to revolt, or, as they regarded it, to assert their rights and liberties, and Boniface's first strug- gle came with the great House of Colonna. The Colonnas were haughty ; he was imperious. They hinted that he was not legally Pope ; he excommuni- cated them, proclaimed a crusade, captured and de- stroyed their fortresses in the Campagna, and made them deadly enemies. This victory was achieved at a price thereafter to be paid in full. But for the time Boniface was triumphant, and seemed, to him- self at least, to sit as high as the great Innocent a hundred years before. In the year 1300 he originated the custom, ever since observed, of a papal jubilee to celebrate the centennial year. For centuries Palestine had been the destination of pilgrims, and the holy character of Rome had been passed by, but, now that Pales- tine was completely lost, Rome reasserted herself as the pilgrims' city, and crowds again visited the Ro- man basilicas. Eager to encourage a practice which he saw would increase the prestige and the income (if the Holy Sec, Boniface issued his Bull of Jubilee which promised remission of sins to all pilgrims who Bhotdd visit tin* basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul during the year. Pious folk came from etery where ; on an average there were two hundred thousand at a time. They gave theii offerings so generously that, as an eye- witness Bays, " Day and night two priests stood beside the altar in St. Paul's, holding rakes in their L48 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY hands, raking in the money." It was noticed, how- ever, thai there were no kings or princes in the throng. That year was the summit of Boniface's prosperity. In the mean time the quarrel with France had already begun. The French king, Philip the Fair, who was the personification of the new lay spirit, enacted a series of laws against the clergy, and, going counter to the accepted doctrine of clerical immunity from secular taxation, levied taxes upon them. This step was portentous. Boniface answered by absolutely forbidding both taxation and payment of taxes. The King of France not only persisted in taxation, but also forbade the exportation of any money from his kingdom, and so deprived the Pope of all his French revenues. Other angry words and acts followed, and a papal bull was publicly burnt in Paris. Boniface, who had a marked predilection for vehe- ment language, issued a bull, which deserves to be quoted as it sums up the extreme papal doctrine and also incidentally reveals how completely he misunder- stood the drift of public opinion. " We are com- pelled, our faith urging us, to believe and hold — we do firmly believe and simply confess — that there is one holy and Apostolic Church, outside of which there is neither salvation nor remission of sins. ... In this Church there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. ... Of this one and only Church there is one body and one head, — not two heads as if it were a monster, — Christ, namely, and the Vicar of Christ, St. Peter, and the successor of St. Peter. FALL OF THE MEDLEVAL PAPACY 149 . . . We are told by the word of the gospel that in this His fold there are two swords, — namely, a spiritual and a temporal. . . . Both swords . . . are in the power of the Church ; the one, indeed, to be wielded for the Church, the other by the Church ; the one by the hand of the priest, the other by the hand of kings and knights, but at the will and suffer- ance of the priest. One sword, moreover, ought to be under the other, and the temporal authority to be subjected to the spiritual. . . . That the spiritual exceeds any earthly power in dignity and nobility we ought the more plainly to confess the more spiritual things excel temporal ones. ... A spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is judged by no one. This authority, moreover, even though it is given to man, and exercised through man, is not human but rather divine, being given by divine lips to Peter and founded on a rock for him and his successors through Christ Himself ; the Lord Himself saying to Peter : ' Whatsoever thou shalt bind,' etc. Whoever, there- fore, resists this power thus ordained by God, resists the ordination of God. Indeed, we declare, an- nounce, and define, that it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff." In retort the king, knowing that the country was behind bun, convoked the States-General of the kingdom; which upheld him, charged Boniface with all sorts of misbehaviour, and called for a general council of the Church to judge the matters in die- pate. The crafty king, however, had determined on other l.'.n A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY means of revenge than decrees, accusations, and burn- ing bulls; he devised a plot to kidnap Boniface and let eh him prisoner to France. One William Noga- retj once a professor of law in a French university, now deep in the king's counsels, went to Italy, met a vindictive member of the Colonna family, Sciarra Colon na, and the two arranged the details of the plot. There were many conspirators, for not only the Colonnas were eager to revenge themselves, but nu- merous nobles, dispossessed to make room for the Pope's relations, were ready to lend a hand. The unsuspecting Boniface, now an old man of eighty- six years, was at Anagni (a little fortified town not far from Rome), his native place, but nevertheless honeycombed with treason ; here, from the pulpit of the cathedral where Emperors had been excommu- nicated, he proposed to excommunicate the King of France. Two days before the day set for the excom- munication, Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna, with a troop of soldiers, entered the city which had been opened by traitors ; many of the townsmen ranged themselves under the French banner. The conspira- tors broke into the episcopal palace, where they found the valiant old man seated on a throne, in his pon- tifical garments, with the tiara on his head, and a cross in his hand. Sciarra Colonna dragged him down and would have stabbed him with his dag-ger but that Nogaret withheld him by main force. The Pope was made prisoner and the palace sacked ; but in a few days sympathy turned, papal partisans stormed the palace, rescued Boniface, and carried him to Rome. Here the Orsini, pretending to befriend him, kept FALL OF THE MEDLEVAL PAPACY 151 him shut up in the Vatican, half crazed by fright and fury, till death happily released him (October 11, 1303). Then men remembered an old prophecy uttered concerning* him : " He shall enter like a fox, reign like a lion, and die like a dog." Thus drama- tically the hollowness of papal power was revealed. France did not rest content with this insolent act. A year or two later, a Frenchman of Gascony, the archbishop of Bordeaux, was made Pope by the French king's influence. This Pope, Clement V (1305-14), never went to Rome, but took up his abode at Avignon, a little city on the Rhone, not very far from its mouth. The place was under the overlordship of the Angevin kings of Naples, but really under the influence of the kings of France. Here the Papacy stayed for nearly seventy years, practically a dependency of France. A series of French Popes succeeded one another. They built on the bank of the Rhone a gigantic fortress, regarded Rome, the source of their greatness, as a dismal and dangerous out-of-the-way place, and believed that they had transferred the seat of the Papacy perma- nently. This period of exile was regarded by the Italians as a Babylonish captivity. Political degradation was not all. The Roman Curia became a collection of men of pleasure. The ambitious Popes, even Boniface, had had a touch of the heroic in them, and erred through pride, arro- gance, and hate ; but these A\ ignonese Popes, though some of them were good men, suffered the papal court to become a place of amusement, banqueting, and dissipation. CHAPTER XVI LAST FLICKER OF THE EMPIRE (1300-1313) After the Papacy had been dragged in servitude to France, the Empire, like a dying soldier who gets on his feet to shout one shout of triumph over his enemy's fall, made a last gallant effort to recover life and strength. The effort was very gallant but very ineffectual, and owes its chief celebrity to its connection with the great man, who summed up and reiterated the Imperial creed, somewhat in the same way that Pope Boniface had summed up and reit- erated the papal creed. Both creeds were dead, but each man believed his fervently, and as Boniface's bulls set forth the doctrines of Hildebrand and In- nocent III, so Dante's treatises and letters set forth the beliefs of Barbarossa and Frederick II. The year of Boniface's jubilee is the year to which Dante assigns his journey to the abodes of departed spirits, and as the jubilee marked the close of the mediaeval Papacy, so the " Divine Comedy " marks the close of mediaeval theology, and Dante himself stands as the greatest mark at the boundary between the old world passing away and the modern world coming in. Giovanni Villani, who was about fifteen years younger, described him in this way : " He was deeply versed in almost all learning, al- though he was a layman ; he was a very great poet, LAST FLICKER OF THE EMPIRE 153 a philosopher, and a complete master of rhetoric in prose and verse as well as in public speech ; a most noble writer, very great in rhyme, with the most beautiful style that ever was in our language up to his time and since. In his youth he wrote the book on ' The New Life of Love,' and then when he was in exile he composed twenty ethical poems and many ad- mirable poems on love ; and he wrote among others three noble epistles ; one he sent to the government of Florence, complaining of his banishment from no fault of his ; another he sent to the Emperor Henry, when he was at the siege of Brescia, blam- ing him for his delay, in the tone of a prophet ; the third to the Italian cardinals, during the vacancy after the death of Pope Clement (V), that they should come to an accord and elect an Italian Pope ; all in Litin, in lofty style, with excellent reasonings and appeals to authority, which were much praised by men of judgment. This Dante by reason of his knowledge was somewhat arrogant, haughty, and disdainful, and, like an ungracious philosopher, he could not talk easily with unlearned men ; but be- cause of his other merits, the learning and the worth of this great citizen, it seems fitting to give him perpetual remembrance in this chronicle of mine, notwithstanding that his noble works left to us in writing bear true testimony to what he was and confer honourable fame upon our city." ' Dante, by passage! in his " Divine Comedy," but more particularly by his treatise "De Monarchia " ( On Universal Empire i, enables us to understand how 1 Storia di Firenze, lib. ix, cap. cxxxv. 154 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY the Empire could raise its head in Italy sixty years after Frederick II had died. In Germany after an interregnum, the House of Hapsburg had mounted the throne, hut no one had ventured to cross the Alps for the Imperial crown. Nevertheless, Dante and the Ghihellines could not bring themselves to believe that the old familiar institution had fulfilled its function and was to be cast aside. The concep- tion of Europe as a group of equal nations had not yet arisen, and Ghihellines still believed that a Ro- man Emperor could put down confusion, anarchy, political chaos, and cure all the ills of Italy. The Ghihellines believed in the Emperor as Mohamme- dans believed in Mohammed ; if he should return, exiles (like Dante) would be restored, peace would bloom, and Rome again become the head of a just and universal empire. Dante, in the " De Monar- chia," first contends that universal empire is neces- sary to the well-being of the world ; having estab- lished that proposition, he argues that this universal empire rightly belongs to the Roman people, and proves his point by appeals to Virgil and the New Testament ; then he proceeds to show that the au- thority of the Empire is derived directly from God. " Some say," he says, " that Constantine when he was cleansed of the leprosy by the prayers of Silvester, then Pope, gave the seat of the Empire, to wit Rome, to the Church, together with many other dignities appertaining to the Empire. There- fore, they argue, since then no one can receive those dignities, except he shall receive them from the Church, to whom they belong. . . . This proposi- LAST FLICKER OF THE EMPIRE 155 tion I deny ; and when they put forth their proof, I say it proves nothing-, because Constantine could not alienate the dignities of the Empire, nor the Church receive them. . . . No man has a right to do things by means of an office entrusted to him, which go directly counter to that office. . . . There- fore an Emperor has no right to divide the Empire . . . and the Church in no wise is able to receive temporal things because the precept expressly for- bids it, as we have it in Matthew l Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey,' etc." This Ghibelline theory was in flat contradiction to Boniface's theory, just as the Imperial creed had always contradicted the papal creed. In Dante's time the two conflicting theories seemed to have be- come mere ghosts ; when of a sudden the Imperial theory started up in reality. A new king of the Ro- mans, Henry VII, announced that he was coming into Italy to take his Imperial crown. The Ghib- ellines welcomed him with boundless enthusiasm. Dante, in undeserved exile from Florence, flushed with the hope of return to his dearly beloved city, wrote a circular letter to all the princes of Italy : — " Behold now is the acceptable time, in which arise signs of consolation and peace. For a new day begins to shine, showing tin- dawn that shall dissi- pate the darkness of long calamity. N<»w tin; breezes of the East begin to blow, the lips of heaven redden, and with serenity comfort the hopes of the peoples. And we who have passed a long night in the desert shall see tin- expected joy. 150 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY " Rejoice, Italy, pitied even by the heathen, now shalt thou be the envy of the earth, because thy bridegroom, the comfort of the world and the glory of the people, the most merciful Henry, Divus, Au- gustus, Caesar, hastens to thy espousals. Dry thine eyes, put off the trappings of woe, thou Fairest ; for he is at hand who shall free thee from the prison of the ungodly, who shall smite the malignant, and destroy them with the edge of the sword, and shall give his vineyard to other husbandmen, who will ren- der the fruits of justice in the time of harvest." The hope that Henry would restore peace and establish order warmed even the Guelfs ; and almost all the Italian cities, excepting stubborn Florence, sent envoys to greet him as he came to take the Imperial crown. The French Pope was greatly per- plexed as to what to do. On the one hand, he had begun to wish for an Emperor to subdue the Roman barons and to be a counterweight to the French king, whom he found too masterful a protector ; on the other hand, he was afraid to displease the French king, and to do anything that might set the Ghib- ellines on their feet again. So he played a double game : he encouraged Henry in the North, and in the South he strengthened the Angevin King of Naples, the leader of the Guelfs. Henry VII crossed the Alps in October, 1310. He was brave, honest, and just ; he believed devoutly in his Imperial mis- sion, desired peace, and wished to be Emperor of Guelf and Ghibelline alike. At first all went well ; many cities opened their gates and received Impe- rial vicars; Milan lowered her flags as Henry en- LAST FLICKER OF THE EMPIRE 157 tered, and her Guelf archbishop put the iron crown of Lombardy upon his head. But this happy calm could not last long. Henry was poor, he asked Milan for a great deal of money, and then demanded, os- tensibly as a guard of honour for his journey to Rome but really as hostages, fifty noblemen from each of the two parties. The Ghibellines assented : but the Guelfs suspected treachery and refused ; their leaders fled and their houses were sacked and burned. This was the end of peace. Henry at- tempted to enforce obedience. He sacked Cremona, razed her walls to the ground, and laid siege to Brescia. The horrors of the siege were fearful ; the citizens fought with desperation, but yielded at last to famine and pestilence. The unfortunate Henry had how been forced into the old position of German tyrant and Ghibelline party chief ; and, instead of marching directly on Rome, or on rich Florence which was the head and front of the Guelf cause in the North, he had wasted valuable time in taking unimportant cities. The Ghibellines were in a fever of impatience. Dante wrote : — u To the most holy Conqueror, and only lord, our lord Henry, by divine providence King of the Ro- mans, ever Augustus, your Dante Alighieri, a Flor- entine and undeserving exile, and all Tuscans every- where, who wish for peace on earth, kiss your feet. " For a long time have we wept by the rivers of confusion, and have incessantly prayed for the pro- tection of' a just king, who should . . . put us back in our just rights. When you, successor of Ciesar and Augustus, crossing the ridges of the Apennines, 158 A SHOUT HISTORY OF ITALY brought back the venerable insignia of Rome . . . like tlif sun suddenly uprising, new hope of better time for Italy shone out. But now men think you delay, or surmise that you are going back . . . and we are constrained by doubt to stand uncertain and to cry, like John the Baptist, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another? . . . Do you not know, most excellent of Princes, do you not see Prom the watch-tower of your exalted height, where the stinking little fox lurks, safe from the hunters? In truth, the evil beast does not drink of the head- long Po, nor of your Tiber, but its wickedness pol- lutes the rushing waters of the Arno, and the name of this dire, pernicious creature (do you not know?) is Florence. She is the viper turned against the breast of its mother ; she is the sick sheep that con- taminates the whole herd of her master. Indeed with the fierceness of a viper she strives to tear her mother ; she sharpens the horns of rebellion against Rome, who made her in her own image and likeness. . . . " Up, then, break this delay, take confidence from the eyes of the Lord God of Hosts, in whose sight you act, and lay low this Goliath with the sling of your wisdom and the stone of your strength ; for with his death the dark night of fear shall cover the camp of the Philistines, and they shall flee, and Israel shall be set free. And just as now, exiles in Baby- lon, we mourn remembering holy Jerusalem, so, then, citizens and at home, we shall breathe in peace and turn the miseries of confusion into joy. " Written in Tuscany . . . fourteen days before the kalends of May, 1311, in the first year of the LAST FLICKER OF THE EMPIRE 159 coming into Italy of the divine and most happy Henry." Henry did go south, hut there were greater obsta- cles in his way than Dante imagined. The spirit of the age was against him. It was vain to try to bring back the past. Florence shut her gates, manned her walls, sent more money to his enemies, and headed a league of the Guelf cities in Tuscany and Umbria. Even Rome was half against him. The Ghibelline nobles received him and took him to their part of the town; but the Guelfs held St. Peter's, and though there was fierce fighting in the streets, the Guelfs stood their ground, and Henry was forced to receive the Imperial crown from the papal legate (the Pope was too prudent to leave Avignon) in the basilica of St. John Lateran. Here the luckless Emperor stayed for a time in the midst of ruin, material, political, and moral. Then he attempted to crush Florence, the ringleader of disobedience, but her walls were too strong ; the impotent Em- peror could do no more than harry the country-side. He fell back upon Ghibelline Pisa, and set patiently to work to gather together a new army. The Ghib- ellines gallantly responded to his call, and Henry actually set forth on his way to Naples, to punish the House of Anion and avenge the Hohenstaufens, but death cut short his lofty plans. He died in a little town near Siena L313), and the hopes of Dante and the Ghibellines were ruined forever. The last flicker of the Empire had gone out. Other Emperors, it is true, crossed the Alps, but not BS masters. The connection of Italy with the 100 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY Holy Roman Empire ends with the death of the gal- lant Henry. The mediaeval Papacy and the mediaeval Empire had passed away, for the Middle Ages them- selves had come to an end. CHAPTER XVn A REVIEW OF THE STATES OF ITALY (about 1300) Now that the two great actors, whose long-drawn quarrel has been the main thread of Italian history, have made their exits, and left us, as it were, with a sense of emptiness, it becomes necessary to call the roll and make a better acquaintance with the lesser dramatis personal, who step to the front of the stage and carry on the plot of history. The pro- gramme reads as follows : — DRAMATIS PERSONS The Papacy An absentee. The Empire A shadow. The Kingdom of Naples . House of Anjou reigning. The Kingdom of Sicily . House of Aragon reigning. Florence A Guelf democracy. Siena) _,, ., „. -p. r Glnbelhne cities. Genoa A maritime aristocracy. Venice A maritime oligarchy. Milan A Lombard commune. Savoy A feudal county. Guelf cities of Tuscany, communes of Loni- bardy, petty marquisates of the northwest, etc. In the South, the kingdom of the Two Sicilies has already been torn in two. Charles of Anjou, the conqueror of the Hohenatanfena, clever, shrewd, L62 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY and capable as he was, had overreached himself. He entertained great ambitions, and was dreaming of Constantinople and its imperial crown, when a rebellion known as the Sicilian Vespers broke out in Sicily. The country had been overrun with French office-holders and French soldiers, and the Sicilians, who regretted the Hohenstaufens, had reached the utmost limit of endurance. The whole island had become a powder-box; it was a mere matter of accident where and how the powder would ignite. A French soldier insulted a woman on her way to church. In a moment he was killed and his fellow soldiers massacred to a man. " Death to the French ! " resounded over the island, and the infu- riated Sicilians put all to the sword. The revolu- tionists needed a leader, and, as the old Norman blood royal still survived in Manfred's daughter, they invited her husband, King Pedro of Aragon, to be their king. Pedro accepted, and he and his de- scendants, the House of Aragon, made good their claim to the throne of Sicily against all the attempts of the House of Anjou and of the lords suzerain, the Popes, to oust them. By this revolution, Sicily was separated from the Kingdom of Naples for more than a hundred years. In the centre of Italy there w r as great disorder. The lords of the Papal States remained at Avignon, and attempted to govern their dominions by legates ; but though their sovereignty nominally extended from tin Tyrrhene Sea to the Adriatic, they were impo- tent to enforce it. There was no unity ; each town was governed separately by a papal legate, by a REVIEW OF THE ITALIAN STATES 163 powerful baron, or by a communal government. Rome itself, which in the absence of the Popes had dwindled to a little city of ruins, towers, churches, vineyards, and vegetable gardens, was in constant disorder. The towns near by were often faithful to their allegiance, but across the Apennines the ob- stinate little cities between the mountains and the sea were almost always independent. At present there is nothing of sufficient interest to prevent us from treating Rome as carelessly as the Popes did, and passing hurriedly through to Florence and the independent communes of Northern Italy where we must pause. Prior to the wars between the Empire and the Pa- pacy feudal institutions had prevailed there, though with less vigour in Northern Italy than elsewhere in Europe, and all the land had been divided up into various fiefs, in which counts and marquesses held sway. During those wars the cities shook off Im- perial dominion and got rid of Imperial rulers, and began their careers as independent Italian com- munes. Most of these cities were of old Roman foundation, but the time of Hildebrand and Henry IV may be deemed their nativity, as then they first appear in Italian history as individuals. All these towns were little republics, each with its own char- acter, but all conforming more or less to a general type. Within massive walls the city clustered round two main points, the cathedral, which was Hanked by belfry and baptistery, and the pi OZZQ (public Square), on which fronted the PaldZZO PtlbbUco, the city hall, where the magistrates had their offices. K,4 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY Round abotri and radiating off, houses and palaces, grim and heavy, stood high above the narrow streets. Scattered here and there scores of private fortresses raised their great towers thirty yards and more into the air. Street, palace, tower, all were obviously ready for street warfare, waiting on tiptoe for the bells to rinfir. The citizens were divided into three classes. The upper class included the old nobility, the high clergy, the large merchants, the rich bankers ; the middle class included the petty merchants, the tradesfolk, the master artisans ; and below them came the mis- cellaneous many. In some cities the nobility, allying itself with the proletariat, held the political power. But in the more democratic cities, like Florence, the trades and crafts controlled the government. In Florence there were seven greater guilds, — judges and notaries, wool-merchants, refiners and dyers of foreign wool, silk-dealers, money-changers, physi- cians and apothecaries, furriers ; and fourteen lesser guilds, — butchers, shoemakers, masons, carpenters, blacksmiths, and so on. Every freeman was obliged to belong to one of the guilds ; Dante was enrolled in the guild of physicians and apothecaries. Trades and crafts descended from father to son, and each guild was divided into masters, journeymen, and ap- prentices. In the government, executive, legislative, and ju- dicial powers were distinguished, but not strictly separated. The executive power was vested in one man, or in several men, who were assisted by a kind of privy council. This council superintended various REVIEW OF THE ITALIAN STATES 165 matters of public concern, such as weights, measures, highways, and fines. There was also a larger coun- cil, to which, as well as to public office generally, only the enfranchised citizens were eligible. These privileged persons were never more than a small frac- tion of the population ; in Florence, for instance, barely three thousand, even in her populous days. Finally, there was a parliament or assembly of all the free citizens, which met on the piazza, and shouted approval or disapproval to such questions as were submitted to it. In the earlier days the joint executives were called consuls. Their places were not easy. If they were fair to all, they displeased their own party ; if unfair to the opposite party, they were liable to retaliation. The difficulties of partisanship led to the appoint- ment of a new officer, the podeata. The name and idea came from the governors put in the Imperial cities by Barbarossa. The podesta, who was elected by the citizens, supplanted the consuls in all their more important functions ; he became the head of both the civil and the military service, a kind of governor. He was a nobleman, chosen, in the hope of avoiding local partisanship, from some other Italian city. The citizens, if Guelf, of course chose a Guelf; if Ghibelline, a Ghibelline. When the »o- (ft>sfa.s term of office, which was usually six months or a year, began, he came to the city bringing two knights, Beveral judges, councillors, and notaries, a Benescha] and attendants, and in the piazza took his oath of office, — to observe the laws, to do justice, and to wrong no man. His duties, and often his 1GG A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY movements, were carefully prescribed; sometimes he was Dot allowed to enter any house in the city other than the palace prepared for him. At the end of his term he was obliged to linger for a time, in order to give anybody who might be aggrieved an opportunity to lodge a complaint against him and obtain redress. Such was the ordinary form of com- munal government; but the constitutions varied in different cities, and in each city shifted every few years, as class feeling, partisan enmity, or new men Buersrested changes. The prosperity and power of these communes came from trade, and show how trade prospered and riches accumulated. Some merchant guilds carried on a very extensive business. Take the wool guild of Florence. Tuscany yielded a poor quality of wool, and as it was impossible to weave good cloth from poor wool, these Florentine merchants imported raw wool from Tunis, Barbary, Spain, Flanders, and Eng- land, wove it into cloth so deftly that foreigners could not compete with them, and exported it to the principal markets of Europe. Trade with the North, however, was less important than trade with the East. Merchandise was carried over the seas more easily than over the Alps, and in many respects the products of the East were better and more va- ried than those of northern Europe. The Italians loaded the galleys of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa with silken and woollen stuffs, oil, wine, pitch, tar, and common metals, and brought back from Alexan- dria, Constantinople, and the ports of Asia Minor and Syria, pearls, gold, spices, sugar, Eastern silk, REVIEW OF THE ITALIAN STATES 167 wool and cotton, goatskins and dyes, and sometimes Eastern slaves. Such a wide commerce outstripped the capacity of barter and cash, and gave rise to a system of banking, with its attendant credits and bills of exchange. The quick-witted Florentines excelled at this business, and great banking houses, like the Bardi and the Peruzzi, had branches or cor- respondents in all the chief cities. This large commerce in face of the obstacles that barred its way seems extraordinary. A city like Florence, for instance, especially in the earlier days, was greatly hampered by the conditions about her. Outside her walls, within the radius of a dozen or twenty miles, were castles manned by arrogant no- bles, who made traffic unsafe. They would not con- form to the new economic condition of society except upon compulsion. Rival cities refused to let Florentine wares pass through their territories without payment of ruinous tolls. Wars were waged to moderate these exactions. Or, again, war was necessary to enforce the rights of Florentine citizens in other cities. Moreover, each city had its own system of weights and measures, its own coin- age ; each imposed customs on all wares entering its gates, in earliei days so much a cart-load, afterwards a percentage of the value. On all highways, at all bridges and fords, there were tolls to be paid. From city to city a merchant had to change his money, until in later times certain coins, like the Florentine florin, passed current everywhere; and sometimes, on entering tie- gates, In- was obliged to adopt a distin- guishing badge, a-, for instance, according to the 168 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY usage al Bologna, putting a piece of red wax on his thumb-nail. These were the fetters placed on trade in time of peace ; but peace itself was transitory and uncertain. Apart from the wars with the Emperor, the cities periodically fought the feudal nobility, or one another. Venice made war on Ravenna, Pisa on Lucca, Vicenza on Treviso, Fano on Pesaro, Verona on Padua, Modena on Bologna, and the greater cities, like Milan and Florence, on any or all of their re- spective neighbours. When a city had no absorbing war abroad, factions fought at home. Burghers and nobles barricaded the streets, manned the towers, rang the bells, shot and hacked one another with spasmodic fury. The burghers generally won. They then banished hundreds of their adversaries, and made laws against them. In some cities a register was kept to record the names of the nobles whose democracy was suspected ; in others, as in Lucca, no- bles were excluded from all share in the government, and were not allow r ed to testify against burghers. In Pisa, if there was disquiet in the streets, the no- bles were obliged to stay indoors. These factions called themselves Guelfs and Ghibel- lines. At first Guelfs were the burghers of the com- munes and partisans of the Papacy, and Ghibellines partisans of the Empire and the feudal system ; but subsequently the terms merely served to distinguish political parties, whose platforms, as w r e should say, shifted with questions of the hour. Even when these two factions were at peace, they distinguished them- selves by different badges and fashions. The mer- lons of the Guelf battlements were square, those of REVIEW OF THE ITALIAN STATES 169 the Ghibelline swallow-tailed. Good party men wore caps of diverse pattern, did their hair differently, cut their bread and folded their napkins in different ways. It was enough that one side should bow, take an oath, harness a horse, in one mode, for the other side to start a contrary fashion. The growth of population, of property, of com- merce, however, shows that history may easily dwell too much upon fighting and war. In these petty wars and street frays, the numbers engaged were few, and but little blood was shed. Most of the fighting was a consequence of economic difficulties. It was the mediaeval equivalent of strikes, lock-outs, boycotts, undersellings, rivalries, riots, and other phe- nomena of modern industry. The maritime cities were in a very different posi- tion from the inland cities, and had a different his- tory. They enjoyed great advantages for trade. No feudal barons could bar the sea, and pirates and infidels were not serious impediments. Greater commercial prosperity, however, begot more bitter commercial jealousy. Genoa hated Pisa; no Geno- ese Bailor could endure the cut of a Pisan sail. Both cities had a large trade in the Levant, and being so near each other became deadly rivals. They fought spasmodically for years, from the Gulf of Genoa to the Black Sea, and at last came to the death grapple. The time was unfortunate Bor Ghibelline Pisa, as a Gruelf league had been attacking her on land. The decisive battle was fought off the island of Melo- ria, a few miles from the month of the Arno. The Genoesej who outnumbered the Pisansj won a great 170 A SHORT IIISTOKY OF ITALY victory, destroyed or captured many galleys, and took ten thousand prisoners (1284). Pisa never re- covered from this blow. Florence and Lucca took immediate advantage of it to unite with Genoa, and force Pisa to submit to a Guelf government ; and from this time on greedy Florence, like a hawk, kept her eyes fixed on poor Pisa, impatient for the time when she should seize her prey. Genoa remained a republic, active, eager, im- petuous, torn by factions and subject to many vicis- situdes, but lack of space compels us to leave her and pass on to where " Venice sits in state, throned on her hundred isles." She, queen of the sea, had even a more lavish portion of individuality than her sister cities, individual as they all were, and hardly belonged to Italy, so completely did she hold herself aloof from the two great interests of mediaeval Italy, the Empire and the Papacy. No cries of Pope's men and king's men, of Guelf and Ghibelline, disturbed the Grand Canal or the Piazza of St. Mark's ; no feudal incumbrances hampered her mercantile spirit, nor did papal anathemas cause a single Venetian ship to shift her course. Venice had long remained loyal to Constantinople, and even after all political dependence had ceased, was, in character and aspect, more a Constantinople of the West than an Italian city, a grown-up daughter, more beautiful than her beautiful mother, who, living her own triumphant and unfUial life, still retained many of her mother's traits. Untroubled by sentiment, even in the Crusades, Venice always kept steadily in view her fixed purpose of increasing her commerce and of securing foreign REVIEW OF THE ITALIAN STATES 171 markets; and this purpose shaped her political ac- tions, and also, indirectly, the form of her government. Originally the citizens, assembled in public meet- ing, elected the Doge, and exercised a right to vote on important political matters ; but the great fam- ilies soon acquired control, and little by little turned the government into an oligarchy. The first great step was taken in Barbarossa's time, just when the Lombard cities were struggling to free themselves from Imperial dominion. A Great Council of four hundred and eighty members was established, to which were given the powers of legislation, appoint- ment, electing the Doge, and filling vacancies in itself. The franchises of the people were all taken away and the oligarchy left supreme. This oligarchy of merchant princes, in whom patriotism, pride of place, and love of gain harmoniously accorded, was an exceedingly competent body of men. The great- ness of Venice was their greatness, and they pursued it devotedly. Beginning early in life these patricians were trained for their duties by service in the navy and in the merchant marine, or by employment in the government of the various cities, islands, and territories included in the long stretch of coastwise empire. Knowing that Venice lived by commerce they made every effort by war, diplomacy, and pri- vate enterprise, to extend thai commerce. After the conquest and division of the Eastern Empire (1204) they became more eager than ever for a monopoly of trade with the Levant, and inevitably came into deadly rivalry with Genoa, also passionately eager to bold the gorgeous Easl iii fee. 172 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY The wars with Genoa, destructive though they were for the time being, were of service to the aris- tocracy, lor they made the Venetians appreciate the value of a compact governing body; and the aristo- cracy took advantage of that appreciation to tighten its hold on the government. Throughout the thirteenth century the Great Council, though it consisted entirely, or almost en- tirely, of patricians and elected its own members, had been open to ajl classes. Any citizen, however unlikely to be elected, was eligible. At the close of the century the patricians secured the enactment of a series of measures, which in substance divided the citizens into two classes, those Avhose ancestors had sat in the Great Council, and those whose an- cestors had not, and decreed that only members of the first class should be eligible. This legislation is known as the closing of the Great Council. As all those who were eligible naturally wished to become members, the Council gradually increased until it finally numbered over fifteen hundred. The patri- cians also further curtailed the powers of the Doge, divided the various functions of government among the main sub-divisions of the Council, — the Sen- ate, the Council of Forty, the Doge's cabinet, and the Council of Ten, — and gave to the State the definite form of ofovernment which it maintained to its end. From Venice we must pass by Milan and the cities of the Po, to where in the extreme Northwest the Counts of Savoy, perched on the Alps, main- tained a precarious sovereignty over both slopes, with no resources except the muscles of their moun- REVIEW OF THE ITALIAN STATES 173 taineers and the possession of Alpine passes. Little did the proud maritime cities, Genoa and Venice, the great inland cities, Milan and Florence, and Rome least of all, suspect that these poor counts would one day consolidate all the territory from the foot of the mountains to the Riviera in a compact little kingdom (Piedmont), and from that as a pedestal, step to still higher honours. The House of Savoy runs aristocratically back into legend ; but about the year 1000, a certain Humbert of the White Hand, emerging from historic obscurity, obtained the city of Turin and part of Piedmont, as a mar- riage portion for his son, and thereby secured to his house a footing in Italy (1045). In the course of another century or so these Savoyards in a succes- sion of Humberts and Amedeos, brave, shrewd, and usually successful men, extended their dominions by war, by marriage, and by bargains. They made the most of their position as door-keepers to Italy, and exacted various privileges from needy Emperors, as the price of passing- the Alps. They fought rival counts, waged innumerable petty wars, and rightly Ot wrongly acquired territories which are now parts of France, Switzerland, and Italy. The succession of counts reads like any other mediaeval genealogy; and their exploits, raids, and sieges viewed from this cold distance have a somewhat monotonous similar- ity ; hut survival proves the worth and valour of the stock, and when after long cent uries the people of Italy had need of princes, the House of Savoy the onlv Doble house that had retained power and respect, li IS a luilliant example of the truth of 174 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY the saying that those who have been faithful over a few things shall be masters over many. Such were the political divisions of Italy in this transition period which intervenes between the de- parting Middle Ages and the incoming Modern World. CHAPTER XVIII THE TRANSITION FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE RENAISSANCE This intervening" period — the twilight between the Middle Ages and the dawn of the Modern World — needs a little further emphasis, from the very fact that it is a period of transition and sheds light both on the time before and the time after. On its emo- tional side it belonged to the Middle Ages, on its intellectual side it belonged to the Modern World. Its religion was essentially mediaeval. For in- stance, a religious wave arose in Perugia, spread through Italy, and crossed the Alps. Hosts of peni- tents, hundreds and thousands, lamenting, praying, scourging themselves, went from city to city. Men, women, and children, barefoot, walked by night over the winter's snow r , carrying tapers, to find relief for their emotional frenzy. These Flagellants were like ;i primitive Salvation Army, and gave unconscious expression to the profound and widespread discon- tent with the Church. Their actions, however, so clearlv exhibited religions mania that governments took alarm ; the hard-headed rulers of Milan erected six hundred gallows on their borders and threatened to hang every Flagellant who came that way. Other forms of religious sentiment were more rational, and expressed themselves in passionate 176 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY calls for peace between neighbours and countrymen. Priests adjured the fighting cities to he friends: "Oh, when will the day come that Pavia shall sav to Milan, Thy people are my people, and Crema to ( Jremona, Thy city is my city?" In Genoa, one morn- ing before daybreak, the church bells rang, and the astonished citizens, huddling on their clothes, beheld their archbishop, surrounded by his clergy with lighted candles, making the factional leaders swear on the bones of St. John Baptist to lay aside their mutual hate. Gregory X (1271-70) pleaded with the Florentine Guelfs to take back the ban- ished Ghibellines. " A Ghibelline is a Christian, a citizen, a neighbour; then, shall these great names, all joined, yield to that one word, Ghibelline? And shall that single word — an idle term for none know what it means — have greater power for hate than all those three, which are so clear and strong, for love and charity ? And since you say that you have taken up this factional strife for the sake of the Popes of Rome, now, I, Pope of Rome, have taken back to my bosom these prodigal citizens of yours, however far they may have offended, and putting behind me all past wrongs, hold them to be my sons." ' In consequence of Gregory's passionate en- treaty, one hundred and fifty leaders of each party met and embraced on the sandy flats of the Arno. The most famous of these emotional peace-mak- ings was the work of a Dominican monk of Vi- cenza. On a great plain just outside Verona, a vast congregation assembled (a contemporary said 1 Storia degli Italiani, Cesare Cantu, vol. ii, p. 851 (19). THE PEEIOD OF TRANSITION 177 400,000 people), from all the warring cities far and near, bishops, barons, burghers, artisans, serfs, wo- men, and children. The monk preached upon the text, " My peace I give unto } T ou." The great com- pany beat their breasts, wept for repentance and joy, and embraced one another. Then the friar raised the crucifix and cried, " Blessed be he who shall keep this peace, and cursed be he who shall vio- late it ; " and the audience answered " Amen." It is hardly necessary to say that these emotional peace- makings were soon followed by martial emotions ; freed prisoners were hurried back to prison, the re- called were banished again, and sword and halberd were picked up with appetites whetted by abstinence. The intellectual side of this period is best repre- sented by the universities, which had sprung up in many of the North Italian cities in the preceding century. The term university signified a guild of students, and possessed many of the characteristics of our colleges. The university was composed of students and professors, and governed itself. It owned neither lands nor buildings, and in case of need could shift its abode with little trouble. The students, at Least in a great university like that of Bologna whither young men flocked by thousands from all Europe, were divided into two bodies, th086 from beyond the Alps and Italians. These two bodies were subdivided into groups according t<> their state or city. Each group elected representa- tives, and these, together with special electors, elected the rector. This representative body made a formal treaty with the town authorities, and secured good 178 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY terms, because the presence of a university, bringing money and fame, was of great consequence to the town. The professors were appointed by the stu- dents. At Bologna Roman law was the chief study, and very famous jurists lectured there. We may re- member that Barbarossa had recourse to Bologna when he was in need of lawyers to determine his Im- perial rights. It was Roman law that attracted the great concourse of students, for the growing needs of civilization made a constant demand for men learned in the law ; but other branches of knowledge were also taught, theology, canon law, medicine, and as- trology, as well as the so-called -L>21) is the first great figure. But, owing to his disproportional importance, we are liable to forget that he has his orderly place in the revival of poetry and literature which began in the brilliant court of Frederick II in Sicily. On the destruction of the Hohenstaufens, the poetic pri- macy passed to Bologna, where Guido Guinicelli and others composed poetry in a somewhat learned fash- ion, as befitted a university town, and then passed on to Tuscany, and in particular to Florence, where Dante was preceded by his friend Guido Oavalcanti. Dante, although distinctly mediaeval by his theology, his appeals to the authority of Virgil and Aristotle, and by his political views, has the characteristics of the new spiritual energy. He lays immense stress on individuality, and delineates real life with wonderful vividness. These traits mark him as belonging to the new world coming in rather than to the old world gfoinof out. From the point of view of history, Dante's most marked achievement, perhaps, was to raise the Tus- can (or more strictly speaking the Florentine) idiom, from among many competitors, to the dignity of being the Italian language. This was the consequence of writing the " Divine Comedy " in Tuscan, instead of in Latin. Dante's Tuscan verses were recited in the tavern and on the piazza, and were greeted with loud applause by apprentices and artisans, shop- men and tavern-keepers. He excited the enthusiasm of both educated and ignorant. At that time the THE INTELLECTUAL DAWN 185 spoken dialects were very numerous. A friend re- monstrating with Dante for writing- in an Italian dialect instead of in Latin, said that there were a thousand. Dante himself in his treatise " On the Vernacular Speech " enumerates Sicilian, Calabrian, Apulian, Roman, Tuscan, Genoese, Sardinian, Ro- magnol, Lombard, Venetian, and others. These dia- lects of the provinces were further subdivided among themselves. In Tuscany the people of Siena spoke one idiom, those of Arezzo another. In Lombardy the citizens of Ferrara spoke in one way, the citizens of Piacenza in another. Even in one city, as in Bologna, the dwellers in St. Felix Street and those in Greater Street did not speak alike. Besides the difficulties of many dialects, besides the immense prestige of Latin as the language jf learning, of law, of the Church, French appeared as a possible literary lan- guage for Italy. Authors in Florence, Venice, Siena, and Pisa wrote books in French," because the French language jroes over the world, and is more delectable to read and to hear than any other." But Dante made the Florentine tongue immortal, and not only wrote the u Divine Comedy " in Florentine, but also •• The New Life" and " The Banquet." Prior to his time the divers idioms had stood on an equality ; after ln> time Tuscan became the language of polite Speech and of literature, the real Italian language, and the others were degraded to the position of mere dialects. Petrarch and Boccaccio, both Florentines, also deserve then- share of praise. Petrarch's son- nets and Boccaccio's stories firmly established the primacy to which Dante had raised the Tuscan idiom. 186 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY The revival of sculpture also began before the middle of the thirteenth century. Here the great leader is Niccolo Pisano (1206-78?). There has been a dispute as to his birthplace. Some say he came from Southern Italy and learned his art there. If this theory is true, Frederick's kingdom has the honour of having revived sculpture as well as litera- ture ; but it is more likely that Niccolo came from some village in Tuscany, and early went to Pisa, where he got his designation Pisano. The first cer- tain record of his work is an inscription on the pul- pit in the Baptistery at Pisa, which states that he completed the pulpit in 1260. Pisa was then at the height of her glory, in the happy years before her fatal conflict with Genoa ; she had built the Cathe- dral, the Leaning Tower, and the Baptistery, and now wished to beautify them within. Niccolo's pulpit shows both imitation of the classic and observation of nature. He had before him bits of ancient sar- cophagi, which had been built into the wall of the Cathedral : his Madonna bears traces of the Phaedra of the sarcophagus, one of his three Wise Men re- sembles a young Greek, and his modelling in general has a touch of classic freedom, dignity, and repose. In his conception of the scenes Niccolo adhered to ecclesiastical tradition, just as Dante did to ecclesias- tical theology, but in his figures, in the drapery and various details, his faithfulness to reality is striking, at least when compared with the Byzantine style theretofore prevailing. The success of this pulpit was so great that a few years later he was asked to carve another for the cathedral in Siena. An envoy THE INTELLECTUAL DAWN 187 came on purpose, and in the Baptistery of Pisa a contract was drawn up in which it was agreed that Niccolo should go to Siena and stay till the work was done, taking three assistants, and also his young son Giovanni, at half pay, if he wished. This con- tract was made in 1265, the year of Dante's birth. Niccolo also worked at Bologna, Perugia, Pistoia, probably at Lucca and almost certainly in many other places. This was the period of the free devel- opment of the communes after the death of Fred- erick II, and Niccolb's popularity is proof of wide- spread prosperity and interest in art. Niccolo's son Giovanni (1250-1328?) inherited his father's gen- ius; and his work, especially his masterpiece, a pul- pit at Pistoia, shows how fast art w r as developing. Giovanni, in his eagerness to express the animation and passion of life, neglected the classic and went directly to nature, at least in desire if not in exe- cution. This passionate interest in life is the very quality that gives Dante's " Inferno " its intense vivid- ness. These two Pisani founded the great Tuscan school of sculpture, and influenced both painting ami architecture as well. Italian architecture at this time does not show one great figure like Niccolo Pisano, nor does it show a definite beginning of a new period. On the contrary, throughout the Middle Ages building held its own Burprisingly well in comparison with the other arts. In (he days of Theodoric the Ostrogoth, it carried on the I>\ /.antine tradition at Ravenna, and for centuries the churches in Rome were limit on the old basilican principle. Over a hundred years lss .\ SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY before Dante was born, and before Niccolo carved his pulpit, the Lombard style flourished in Lom- bardy, Tuscan Romanesque in Tuscany, and Nor- man Sicilian in Sicily. Before the Empire had re- ceived its coup tudio for the honour of a first view, and crowds pressed about hoping to get a glimpse of the picture. When the picture was carried through the streets to its destination in the church of Santa Maria Novella, a great procession followed, as if it were a hero returned from the wars. Poor Cimabue, however, Idom mentioned except as a dull background against which the conquering Giotto stands in bril- liant relief. Giotto (1267?— 1336) is the master revolutionist of painting, lb- was a contemporary of Dante, a IVw jrean younger, born .it tie- time when Niccolb and Giovanni irere working a t the pulpit in Siena, 190 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY and Charles of Anjou was posing as an admirer of the fine arts in Cimabue's studio. He painted Dante in a fresco on the wall of the Bargello (a palace in Florence), at least so tradition says; and Dante in the " Divine Comedy " speaks of him as outstripping the once renowned Cimabue. Giotto was an ugly little man, of great character and quick wit. Various stories are told of his repartees. Once, when he was painting for the King of Naples and working with great diligence, the king, who used to watch him, said, " Giotto, if I were you, I should not work so hard." "I shouldn't, — if I were you," retorted Giotto. He studied under Giovanni Pisano, and learned so much that it has been said that " Giotto is the greatest work of the Pisani." Giotto was also the successor to Arnolfo as the leading architect in Florence, and built the Campanile of the Duomo, and, being likewise a sculptor, modelled some of the bas-reliefs that ornament the panels of the base. His great art was painting, and especially the paint- ing of figures. Giotto was in demand to paint fres- coes on the walls of churches and chapels at Flor- ence, Arezzo, Assisi, Padua, Ravenna, Rome, and Naples ; and other painters came from far and near to study under him. He dominated Italian painting, and his school was the only school for a hundred years. After the world had adopted Raphael's fres- coes as the type of excellence his fame was dimmed for a time, but since Mr. Ruskin's enthusiastic ad- miration it has regained its ancient lustre. These instances of revolution in the arts show that a new intellectual life had begun, that the THE INTELLECTUAL DAWN 191 Middle Ages had really ended. In fact, the passing away of the Holy Roman Empire and of the Euro- pean suzerainty of the Papacy was merely an epi- sode in the general intellectual revolution. CHAPTER XX THE DESPOTISMS (1250-1350) Perhaps the quality which strikes us most in this dawn of our Modern World is its suddenness; Nic- colo Pisano gets up, as it were, out of the ground, Giotto follows Cimabue, Dante is born while Guido Guinicelli is still a young man. We are amazed and bewildered, and it is not in the arts alone that the change is so startling. The political structure shifts with equal quickness, and while we are trying to connect and coordinate this outburst of art with the democratic triumph of the communes, the demo- cratic communes disappear under our eyes. At first as we look we are a little puzzled, for the outward form of the commune remains unchanged ; the po- desta is still there, the Great Council and the inner council are still there, the committees and the sub- committees superintending and directing the affairs of the commonwealth ; but further observation dis- closes a lack of spontaneity. The motive power does not seem the resultant of the debate and argu- ment of numerous discordant wills, but to proceed from some one definite inner source. More careful observation shows that these outward committees are but registeringf boards that record an inner will, that their members go to one particular palace to have their minds made up, at first privily, but THE DESPOTISMS 193 soon openly, and at last confessedly and ostenta- tiously. This is the regular course. The commune is, as it were, a political chrysalis out of which a full-blown tyrant bursts. The tyrants were men of capacity, who gathered the various functions of the ETOvernment into their own hands, and bv a course of adroitness and fraud, or by a coup d'etat, reduced the city to obedience, and then, after having exer- cised sovereign rights during their lives, bequeathed the principality to their heirs. The reason of their success is plain. It was impossible for trade to flour- ish, for property to collect its income, for luxury to enjoy itself, under the political confusion that attended the democratic endeavours for self-gov- ernment. The uncertainty in government, law, and trade, was too high a price to pay for liberty. Men of property, men of business, men of pleasure, pre- ferred the comparative stability of a tyranny. Before we look at this process in individual states we must eliminate the exceptions. The kingdom of Sicily under the House of Aragon, and that of Naples under the House of Anjou, had become, in great measure, absolute monarchies, for the gifted Emperor Frederick, who was no lover of democracy, had crushed <>r circumvented the communal spirit in his kingdom. The suppression of popular liber- ties did ii< >t resull in the strict enforcemenl of order in either bdngdorA, particularly not in Sicily where feudal anarchy was rampant ; but we must leave those Southerners to their oranges and lemons, to their flowers and azure skies, to their churches and cloisters, where Romanesque, Byzantine, and Arab 194 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY influences met and combined in arch and dome and sculptured trimming, and go northward to find the main historical current of the century. Florence, too, we must except from the tyrannic system, for a democratic government prevailed there for many years to come, and also Rome, where the Papacy prevented Colonna and Orsini from estab- lishing a despotism. Verona shall serve as the paradigm for the des- potic form of government. In this ancient city on the banks of the Adige, where the amphitheatre of Au- gustus still stood though the churches built by Theo- doric the Ostrogoth had crumbled away, the spirit of material and intellectual activity had been busily at work. The stately church of San Zeno (eleventh century), most beautiful of Romanesque churches, coloured with the hues of early dawn and rich with bronze doors and sculptured front, stood proudly apart outside the walls ; but within, the cathedral had been begun, and the great Ghibelline tower al- ready lifted its crenellated top high over the market- place. Rushing through the city the headlong Adige turned innumerable mill-wheels, and Veronese girls washed the clothes of the Capulets and Montagues in its waters. Altogether the city was a very de- sirable signory. This fact had been discovered in Frederick's time, and Ezzelino da Romano, one of the Ghibelline nobles of the North, had made good his power there and distinguished himself by his cruelty, for which he is still remembered. On his most satisfactory death, not long after Frederick's, the Scaligers succeeded to the dominion of the city THE DESPOTISMS 195 (1259). These Scaligers were of the best type of tyrant, especially Can Grande (1311-1329), the fifth in possession of the signory, who presents the type in its noblest and mos.t attractive form. Neverthe- less, despite his brilliance, his success and magnifi- cence, his chief renown is as host to the exiled Dante, who in gratitude for " my first refuge and first hostelry " dedicated the " Paradiso " to him, and celebrated his carelessness of hardship and of gold, and his doughty deeds from which even ene- mies could not withhold their praise. Can Grande, like other despots, had two objects, — to make his signory secure, and to enlarge it. As he was secure of Verona, he cast his covetous glances abroad and fixed them on Vicenza, a little town some thirty miles to the northeast. Vicenza was, so to speak, no longer in the market, as she had been snapped up by her neighbour, Padua, which had had the advantage of being less than twenty miles away. But Can Grande played his cards well, and by help of the Emperor Henry VII, who appointed him Imperial vicar, got possession of the prize. Padua, a rich and prosperous Guelf city, with Bnbject towns round about, and a famous university within, refused to acquiesce in a surrender of Vicenza to a Ghibelline lord. A long war en- sued. The fair fields in the forty miles between Ve- rona and Padua were laid waste, the poor peasants were dr;i""ed to one citv or the Other and held for ransom, and the (Juell's in Verona and the Ghib- ellinee in Padua were persecuted, imprisoned, and tortured. Atla>t Padua, her signory over, her neigh- 19G A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY hours lost, her population fallen away, her citizens fighting among themselves, her nohles destroying one another in the hope of becoming lords of the city, gave way and surrendered to Can Grande. Other cities shared Padua's fate, and Can Grande, by virtue of his conquests as well as of his character, became one of the chief powers in Italy. Can Grande was brave even to recklessness, covetous of dominion, Bteadfast in his political aims, true to his promises, generous to his enemies. On his death he bequeathed his signory to his nephew ; and his body was buried in the churchyard of a little Gothic chapel, where stone effigies of armoured Scaligers on caparisoned steeds surmount Gothic tombs, and the pride of life and conquest strives to overcrow death. The story of the Scaligers must be continued some- what further, for they exhibit the phenomenon, so frequent in Northern Italy at this time, of a des- potism that begins in vigour, continues in energy and success, and then dies down under degenerate heirs to go out at last like a candle. Can Grande's nephew, Mastino (1329-51), — the family had a fondness for canine appellations, Great Dog and Mastiff, — be- gan his career with ability and courage ; he con- quered Brescia to the west, halfway to Milan, and Parma, which lies beyond Mantua. These particular acts of aggression helped his ruin, for Milan and Mantua took alarm and joined a league against him. But that was not till later. In the days of his pros- perity Mastino was very magnificent. Soldiers, horse and foot, attended him ; his palace was thronged with lords, gentlemen, and buffoons; his stables were full THE DESPOTISMS 197 of chargers and palfreys, his bird-sheds of falcons. At his court there were innumerable fashionable devices for driving care away, dancing, singing, joust- ing ; everything was luxurious ; men and furniture were decked with embroidery, cloth of gold, cloth from France, and cloth from Tartary. When Mastino rode forth all Verona rushed to the windows ; when he was angry all Verona trembled. He was a dark- skinned, bearded man, with heavy features and a great belly ; in later life he ate grossly, and sank into dissipation. Seldom on a Friday or Saturday, or even in Lent, would he refrain from meat ; and he did not care a rap for excommunication. He became arrogant and vainglorious. His dissipation and lack of piety, however, were less direct causes of his fall than his ambition; he coveted, rumour said, a king- dom of Lombardy or even of all Italy. But at last he overreached himself in dealing with the Florentines. They wished to get possession of Lucca, and he undertook to buy it for them, — it was a fourteenth- century custom to sell a city, — but when he got possession of Lucca he kept it for himself. The Florentines declared war, and induced all his rival despots, the Visconti of Milan, the Gonzaga of Man- tua, the Kstensi of Ferrara, to join a league against him. Venice also joined, being indignant with the Scaligers for levying tolls upon merchandise th.it went up the Po, and for interference with the Ve- iM-tiin monopoly of salt. The league was victorious and forced the Scaligers to hard terms. Venice took tin- towns near her, thus acquiring her first territory on tin- Italian mainland; the great Paduan family, I'.'* A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY the Carrara, took back Padua ; the Visconti of Milan took Brescia (1338). The Scaligers were shorn of their power, and from this time on the house dwin- dled ; assassinations of brother by brother darkened its close, and at the end of the century it lost Ve- rona and all. What the Scaligers did at Verona other great fam- es o ilies were doing elsewhere. The Gonzacra established themselves in Mantua, the Estensi in Ferrara, the Ben- tivogli in Bologna, the da Polenta in Ravenna, the Malatesta in Rimini, the Montefeltri in Urbino, the Baglioni in Perugia, and greatest of all the Vis- conti in Milan. The city of Milan has so important a place in the history of Italy, that we must pause over the Visconti. This family succeeded in dis- possessing its rivals and in becoming masters of the city in 1295, about the time that the oligarchy was clinching its hold on Venice, and the democracy becoming all powerful in Florence. In fact, one may accept this date as the point at which Florence, Ven- ice, and Milan start on their upward careers towards becoming three of the six chief divisions of Italy. Convenience has its rights, and it is eminently con- venient to start the Renaissance, politically as well as intellectually, in this eager, passionate last quarter of the thirteenth century. The Visconti, however, were not firm in their seats till the gallant Henry VII, Dante's hope, came down into Italy to revive the Empire. We have seen that Henry did not revive the Empire, but he did strengthen Can Grande, his loyal lieutenant in Ve- rona, and also the Visconti, his loyal friends in Milan. THE DESPOTISMS 199 It is pathetic, even now, to think of that high-aspir- ing Henry, with his noble, old-fashioned ideas con- cerning the Roman Empire and universal brother- hood under the shelter of the Roman eagle, and of the great Dante fastening all his hopes on those same old- fashioned ideas, while the crafty lords of Milan and Verona, laughing in their sleeves, professed the most devout Imperial creed and feathered their own nests. On the Emperor's death (1313) the Visconti were firmly seated. The signory descended from one gen- eration to the next. Their sway was extended over the cities round about, until it included most of Lom- bard}'. Ambition, growing by what it fed on, aimed at the cities of Pisa, Bologna, and Genoa. Such plans aroused both jealousy and fear. The ambition of the Visconti to take Pisa alarmed Florence, who had marked Pisa as her own ; that to take Bologna stirred the absentee Popes, who went through the old forms of excommunication, interdict, and crusade ; but Genoa, crippled by her wars with Venice, rent asun- der by internal factions, wearily gave herself to Milan, in the vain hope of winning peace and security. In spite of checks here and there, the state of Milan became more and more powerful, and the signory of the \ ixonti by far the greatest of the tvrannies in Italy. There wen-, of course, many men who attempted to become despots and failed ; and others who suc- ceeded for their lifetimes, bui were not able to make their Bignories bo Btroog as to become family pos- Bessions to be enjoyed l»\ their heirs after them. Of the latter kind one must he mentioned. In Lucca 200 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY Castruccio Castracane (died 1328), a very brilliant politician and soldier, became so powerful that he reduced to subjection much of the country round and nearly succeeded in conquering Florence, with whom he was long at war. Like other successful ty- rants he called himself a Ghibelline, and drew what advantage he could from his profession of faith, but really only aimed to acquire a principality for him- self. He died in the prime of life ( to the great relief of the Florentines), and left so brilliant a reputation for the qualities which achieve success by fair means or foul, that two centuries later Machiavelli held him up as an example for princes to follow. CHAPTER XXI THE CLASSICAL REVIVAL (1350) We are now well started on the fourteenth century, and it will be well to glance at the chief Italian states in order to get our bearing's. Sicily was in a state of hopeless despondency. The island was nominally subject to the House of Aragon, but its kings were not men of sufficient character to impose their authority, and the unfor- tunate kingdom was beginning to go down hill. The Kingdom of Naples was, for the time being, much better off, for its king, Robert, grandson of Charles of Anjou, was a man of unusual gifts and capacity, but he was succeeded by a foolish, frivolous, light-minded, light-mannered granddaugh- ter, Joan (1343-81), who brought forty years of trouble to her kingdom, and under her Naples started rolling down that same incline on which Sicily was rolling somewhat ahead of her. The fail- ure of Sicily and Naples to take part in the great career in matters intellectual now opening before Northern [taly is partly due to the race that popu- lated them, a miscellaneous mixture <>t' Moods (at least it is customary to explain unknown causes of success and failure by saying good blood and bail blood), and partly to the autocratic will of the bril- liant Frederick II, who crushed out independence 202 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY in his kingdom, and so deprived it of that communal life which is the only obvious factor, except "good blood," in the intellectual success of Northern Italy. The whole pontifical state, from the fortresses of the Colonna on the Tiber to the strongholds of the Malatesta in Rimini, was in the vortex of confusion. Florence was well off, for though the foreigners whom she had invited to be protectors against Cas- truccio Castracane and others were rather detrimen- tal than useful, and though there were signs of a © © new struggle between the Gfrandi and the Burghers, &© © her commerce prospered, her dominion spread over the towns round about, and her luxury grew so fast that the troubled elders passed all sorts of sump- tuary laws to prescribe what should be worn and what not, by both fashionable and simple. In the northwest, now Piedmont, there were, be- sides the Counts of Savoy, several struggling claim- ants who severally asserted titles to their own and other strips of territory. In the northeast, Venice, which had acquired a footing on the mainland des- tined to grow into the province of Venetia, was prosperous. And between Piedmont and Venice the successful Visconti of Milan, soon to receive the keys of Genoa, were likewise well satisfied. The political situation may now be dismissed, and we may turn to the distinguishing mark of the century, the classical revival. The distinction which Italy enjoys as the most famous country in Europe is due to three ages, — first, the ancient epoch of Augustus CaBsar and Trajan, when the Roman Empire imposed the "pax THE CLASSICAL REVIVAL 203 romana on a grateful world ; second, the mediaeval epoch of Hildebrand and Innocent III, when the Papacy, following* its great prototype with unequal steps, imposed its pax romana on both troubled, souls and angry hands ; and third, the epoch of the Renaissance, when Italy took the lead in the intel- lectual development of modern Europe. It would be as absurd to subordinate intellectual life to politics in the period of the Renaissance as it would be to subordinate the religion of the era of Hildebrand to its art, or the politics of the Augustan age to its religion. The highest life of Italy, the life which gives importance to the history of this coming period, is its intellectual life, and, though we must not for- get politics entirely, we should lay the chief stress on intellectual rather than on political matters. Since the date of the Pisan pulpit, prosperity had increased fast, and curiosity, the desire to investi- gate, the wish to know, had grown lustily. There were still the same two stores of knowledge, — nature and the classics, — but the first, for many reasons, seemed vague, intangible, when compared to the second, in which the demi-gods (so they appeared then) of the ancient world had garnered the rich harvest of their thoughts. The classical heritage, the record of a higher civilization, seemed a lay Bible, the revelation of truth, the means of salva- tion; and the young generation emerging in the dawn of intellectual light burned thirstily to this newly found inheritance. The leader of this pil- grimage to the land flowing with intellectual milk and honey was Francis Petrarch ( 1304 -71 I. 204 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY Petrarch was a Florentine, but he lived in exile. His father had been banished at the same time with Dante, and after a few wandering years had settled at Avignon. Petrarch studied law at the University of Bologna and became a confirmed Ghibelline. This item of biography is important, because it re- minds us that Petrarch's passion for the classic world, though it had its roots in the traditional admiration for Rome, received strength and justifi- cation not only from Latin literature, but also from the Civil law. Men who grasped the complexity and richness of the Roman law necessarily admired Roman civilization, and inferred that all other mani- festations of that civilization must be as admir- able as the law, and perhaps less dry. Petrarch found the law dry, but he left Bologna with a pas- sion for the classic world ; and when he went back to Avignon he met all the most cultivated men of Europe. Learning still attended the papal court, and Avignon served to make this charming young scholar of genius known to the world. He flung up the law and devoted himself to literature. Cicero was his hero. Petrarch was the first of the humanists, the herald of the Renaissance, and, if we look farther forward still, the harbinger of the Reformation. Petrarch's importance was very great because he was not too far ahead of his generation. He shouted aloud the glory of Rome, of Roman literature and Roman thought, and the echo re- sounded throughout Europe. In the year 1341, in Rome, upon the Capitoline Hill, Petrarch re- ceived the crown of laurel, as scholar and poet, from THE CLASSICAL KEVIVAL 205 the Senate and People of Rome. The King of Naples was his sponsor, and the tyrants of the North ap- plauded. This ceremony was the conspicuous re- cognition that a new period was opening before Italy ; and Petrarch's laurel crown may be put be- side the Imperial wreath of Augustus and the tiara of Hildebrand, as the starting-point of Italy's third great period of triumph. After his coronation, Petrarch went about Italy spreading the seeds of the new enthusiasm. He lived or made visits at Parma, Bologna, Verona, Florence, Arezzo, Naples, Rome, Milan, Padua, and Venice. He became tremendously fashionable. The Pope invited him to be papal secretary, the King of France extended the hospitality of Paris to him, the Emperor bade him to Prague, the Visconti wanted him at Milan, the Scaligers at Verona, the Cararresi at Padua, the lord high Seneschal at Naples ; the Florentines asked him to accept a chair in their new university, the Venetians offered him a house. All this honour ostensibly shown to Pe- trarch was really the salutation to the new dawn. The strength of this classic revival, though most effective in literature and the arts, is perhaps still more noticeable in the political career of another young man of genius who had as passionate a love of classic Rome as Petrarch himself. Cola di Rienzo (1314-54) was an imaginative, poetical dreamer, who fed his youth on Livy, Cicero, Seneca, and de- lighted to muse on the glories of Julius Cesar and to study the antique monuments of Rome. His pub- lic career began as envoy on one of the unsuccessful 206 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY embassies which used to entreat the Popes to return to the deserted city. Cola was handsome, eloquent, ar- dent, a sort of Don Quixote, and roused the Roman populace to share his dreams and to believe in the possible restoration of the Senate and People of Rome to their ancient grandeur. He led the people against the nobility, forced the riotous barons to submit to his rule as tribune of the people, and established a government of law in the city ; but his ambition flew far beyond the city walls. He dreamed of the con- federation of all Italy under the lead of Rome. He would have smiled at limiting imitation of the great days of old to the arts or to literature ; he intended to restore the Roman Republic as it had been in its high and palmy days. His wild aspirations throw a backward light over the history of the city of Rome throughout the Middle Ages, and over that repub- licanism which played so important a part in the struggle between Empire and Papacy, and light up the old theories under which the Roman people claimed the right to elect both Emperor and Pope ; just as Boniface's bulls portray the outworn papal theories, and Dante's " De Monarchia " the dead Imperial beliefs. Cola's first step was to invite all the princes and communes of Italy to attend a general meeting in Rome ; and as all Italy had responded to Petrarch's appeal in behalf of the classic past, so did she, for the moment, respond to Cola's appeal. Milan, Genoa, Lucca, Florence, Siena, and the smaller cities nearer by, answered with apparent sympathy. Petrarch was mad with delight, and hailed Cola as Camillus, Brutus, THE CLASSICAL REVIVAL 207 Romulus. For the moment, such was the strength of classical illusion, the dream seemed to be real. Cola wrote to the Florentines (September, 1347), " We have made all citizens of the states of Holy Italy- Roman citizens, and we admit them to the right of election. The affairs of Empire have naturally de- volved upon the Holy Roman People. We desire to renew and strengthen the old union with all the principalities and states of Holy Italy, and to deliver Holy Italy itself from its condition of abject sub- jection and to restore it to its old state and to its ancient glory. We mean to exalt to the position of Emperor some Italian whom zeal for the union of his race shall stir to high efforts for Italy." 1 Cola's great idea was destined to wait five hundred years for fulfilment. The time was not ripe, and he himself not a suitable instrument. His career was brief. He became not only vainglorious but also very cruel. He grew fat, and lost the charm of youth and novelty. The nobles and the upper classes of Rome hated him ; and when, in need of money, he in- creased the taxes, the Roman populace turned upon him, stormed the Capitol, captured him as he tried to slink away in disguise, and murdered him on the Bteps leading down from the palace. His head was rut off, bis body was dragged through the streets and bnrnedj and the ashes scattered to the winds. The mad dream had been, in its nature, evanes- cent. The classical heritage was too purely intellec- tual, too remote from existing needs, to he ahle to 1 Hume in the MiddL Ages, Gngonmni, rol. vi, p. 295, note 1 (translated). 208 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY shape politics. But that fourteen hundred years after the death of Julius Caesar, Cola should have been able to establish himself as Roman tribune on the Capi- toline Hill, and to act as if the Republic of the days of the Gracchi had been but temporarily superseded, si io\vs the immense influence of Rome over the me- diaval imagination, and helps us to understand the autocratic power of the classical heritage in shaping and directing the intellectual revolution in Italy. CHAPTER XXII THE ILLS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY The fourteenth century undoubtedly felt itself emancipated from the limitations of the Middle Ages, and with justice, so far as the classical revival was concerned, but it did little or nothing to free itself from ills that were distinctly of a mediaeval character, — plague, lawlessness, and tyranny. In that respect, the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern World was slow and made a striking contrast with the rapid evolution of art. The chief of these ills was the plague. Only in remote places of the East, if at all, does the scourge of disease now fall as it then did in the most civi- lized cities of the world, and it was from the East that these plagues came, brought by sailors. One blasted Tuscany in 1340, one Lombardy in 13G1 ; but the wmst was the awful Black Death of 1348, which wrought havoc in various parts of Italy and then swept northward across the Alps On its de- structive path. It was this plague which Boccaccio describes in the beginning of the "Decameron." It spread like fire among dry wood which lias been Sprinkled with oil. At first swellings appeared the size of an egg or an apple, then black and hard Spots; on the third day came death. Kven ani- mals caught the disease. Boccaccio saw two pigs 210 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY which had chewed the garment of a plague-stricken man die in convulsions. Medicine was useless. Some thought the wisest course was to live on the daintiest food and drink, and never speak of the plague ; others believed in carousing and jollity, and went about from tavern to tavern seeking diversion, but always keeping sober enough to avoid the sick. Pri- vate houses were deserted and lay open to anybody. Loyalty disappeared. All who could fled into the country. Thousands fell sick daily. In place of de- cent burial, dead bodies were tossed huggermugger into trenches. Between March and July, Boccaccio says, more than 100,000 people died within the walls of Florence. Florence was not singular. In Siena 80,000 people, three quarters of the population, died ; in Genoa, 40,000 ; in Pisa, seven out of ten, and so on in Venice, Rome, Naples, and Sicily. These fig- ures seem incredible ; but Petrarch says : " Posterity will not believe that there ever was a period in which the world remained almost entirely depopu- lated, houses empty of families, cities of inhabitants, the country of peasants. How will the future be- lieve it, when we ourselves can hardly credit our eyes ? We go outdoors, walk through street after street, and find them full of dead and dying ; when we get home again we find no live thing within the house, all having perished within the brief interval of absence. Happy posterity, to whom such calami- ties will seem imasrininers and dreams." Poor Pe- trarch ! The lovely Laura, of whom he wrote so many perfect sonnets, died of the Black Death in ILLS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 211 Avignon. Giovanni Villain, the historian, died in Florence. This terrible calamity throws into high relief the great classical impulse, to which the last chapter was devoted. In earlier times men would have turned to religion and the Church ; but now Petrarch, a most devout Christian, and his disciples continued to worship Cicero and the heroes of the Augustan age, and to talk of Caesar and Pompey, Scylla and Charybdis, as the most important and interesting of thino-s. Another great evil which rivalled the plague as a curse, was the host of mercenary soldiers who swarmed over Italy like locusts. In the days of Barbarossa, battles like that of Legnano had been fought between the train-bands of the communes on one side and the feudal chivalry and men-at- arms on the other. But since then a great change had come over the methods of raising 1 soldiers. Un- der the feudal system the term of service in the field for the liegemen of the Emperor had been forty days ; but that time was too short for an effective campaign. When the Emperor wished to cross tin Alps and go to Rome in order to receive the Imperial crown, he was obliged to hire soldiers ; and, as years went on and these Imperial descents becalm- mere adventurous expeditions, the character of tin- soldiers degenerated, until in Petrarch's time the Imperial armies were made up of ruffians re- cruited anywhere. There were also other reasons Cor establishing mercenaries in place of militia. The despots of Northern Italy did not wish their subjects trained to arms. The burghers of mercantile cities did 212 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY not wish to leave their counting-rooms, nor to have their employees mustered out, so they too preferred hired soldiers to a native militia. Moreover, warfare had changed ; cavalry needed frequent manoeuvres, bowmen and pikemen required drill and continuous discipline. Thus the old train-hand system of the communes, under which the militia hurried to their appointed posts on the ringing of the hells, gave way to the system of mercenary troops led by soldiers of fortune, condottieri, as the Italians call them. These soldiers, who had come down from the North to serve Emperors, or despots like the Vis- conti, or perhaps had sailed from Spain to fight under the House of Aragon in Sicily, as soon as the immediate war was ended, having been left unpaid or having taken a liking to a trade in which the labor was congenial, the risk small and booty enor- mous, decided not to disband, but to continue to try their luck together. They sold their services to whatever city or despot would pay them most, or wandered about in a nomadic fashion, capturing a city if they could, if not, living on the country-side. One can imagine these rogues among unwarlike peasants, or in a pleasant little city like Lucca or Cremona. They were very fickle, fought one another only upon compulsion, and then most reluctantly and gently, and were very nearly as terrible to their employers as to their adversaries. They were organ- ized, sometimes very well, in bands under a general or a council of officers, and had such names as The Company of St. George, or The Great Company. Some of their leaders became very famous, like ILLS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 213 Duke Werner, who proclaimed himself " Lord of the Great Company, enemy to God, to Pity, and to Mercy." The most interesting of these leaders, at least for us, is John Hawkwood, an English ad- venturer, who began life as a London tailor, but dropped scissors and needle to enlist for Edward Ill's French campaign, and then, seeing fortune smile most sweetly from distraught Italy, crossed the Alps and led his company all over the penin- sula. There is a full length fresco of him on horse- back in the Duomo at Florence, painted in gratitude for his deeds in life or merely for his death. For a hundred years and more these ruffians swaggered about Italy. Petrarch finds in them one cause the more to hold out his arms toward the mighty past. He writes in a letter : " Oh, would that you were alive, Brutus, Great-heart, that I might turn to you. Manlius — Great Pompey — Julius Caasar [etc., etc., etc.], Jesus, Lord of the world, what has happened? Why do I moan and groan for grief? Oh ! a vile handful of robbers, spewed out of their nasty dens, walks and rides over the ancient queen of the world, Italy. ( ' h rist Jesus, in tears and supplication I turn to Thee. Oh, if we have abused Thy goodness more than was right, it we have shown ourselves too proud in Thy aid and favour, if we have borne ourselves ill to- wards Thee, well mayst Thou not permit us to be free; but let not this daughter, these sacrileges, these robberies, these deeds of violence, these rav- ishings of wives and maidens, find mercy in Thine eyes. Put an end to this evil. To the wicked who 214 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY have said in their hearts 'There is no God/ show that Thou art ; and to us however unworthy, show that we are Thy children. Almighty Father, help ns ; in Thee alone we put our hope, and in supplication we invoke Thy name, weeping and con- fessing that there is none who shall fight for us, unless Thou, our Lord, be he." This strange mixture of classic enthusiasm and Christian piety, this odd idea that the triumphant cause of the Roman Republic was due to the favour of Christ, shows us that Petrarch had not yet got wholly clear of medieval beliefs. But, as with Cola di Rienzo, everything Petrarch says testifies to the power of the Roman tradition. A third evil, yet not to be compared with the plague and the condottieri, was the tyranny of the despots. The founders of despotisms were men of vigour and political capacity, and gave to their sub- jects in lieu of liberty greater security and order than they had enjoyed before. Their descendants, like proverbial heirs, finding hard work both dis- tasteful and unnecessary, gave themselves up to dis- sipation and cruelty ; they dropped their ancestors' attitude of leading citizens and treated the prin- cipalities as private property, intended for their amusement. Tne Visconti, though they retained their family ability and force of character longer than most princely houses, shall serve to illustrate the general dynastic development, more especially as the history of Milan, which had become the chief power in Italy, will be the best thread to carry us to the end of the century. ILLS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 215 Towards the middle of the century Archbishop Giovanni Visconti had become the lord of Milan (1349-54). He was a clever, cultivated man, inter- ested in letters. He employed scholars to prepare a commentary on the "Divine Comedy," and by urgent persuasion in'duced Petrarch to take up his abode at Milan. On the archbishop's death his three nephews succeeded jointly to the signory. As one of these three nephews, Bernabo (1354-85), illustrates the moral degeneracy of the tyrant we will glance at his habits. Bernabo was addicted to the chase. Nobody else was allowed to keep a dog, but he kept five thou- sand. These he billeted on the citizens of Milan. Every fortnight the masters of his kennels made their rounds ; if the dogs were too thin, a fine was imposed; if dead, a general confiscation. If a man killed a wild boar or a hare, he was maimed or hanged, or sometimes, in mercy, merely obliged to eat the quarry raw. Bernabo was afraid of conspiracies and rebellion. No man might go out into the street after dark for any cause whatever, under pain of having a foot cut off. No man might utter the words " Guelf " or " Ghibelline," under penalty of having his tongue cut out. Once Bernabo shut up his two secretaries in a case with a wild boar. On another occasion a young man who had polled a policeman's beard was condemned to pay a small fine, but Bernabo ordered hifl right hand cut oil'. The jfOffrxff) delayed execu- tion of the sentence, so that the lad's parents might have time to ask mercy. For this Bernabo caused the lad's two bands to be cui off and also the podestd's right hand. A sexton who demanded too much for 21G A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY differing a grave was buried alive side bv side with the dead body. Two monks who came to remon- strate with Bernabd for his cruelty were burnt alive. Nevertheless, Bernabd protested himself devout ; he fasted, built churches and monasteries. This amiable man had thirty-two children. His brother, joint heir of the principality, Galeazzo II, was of the same stuff, except that in place of piety he substituted an inter- est in letters; he founded the University of Pavia, and exchanged figs, flowers, and flattery with Petrarch. Galeazzo's son, Gian Galeazzo (1378-1402), rose still higher in the world ; he gave 300,000 sequins to the King of France, and in return received the king's daughter in marriage. For a second wife he married his cousin, daughter of his amiable uncle Bernabo, who thought that this marriage would bind his nephew to him by bonds of filial affection. Gian Galeazzo however, by means of a trick, got his father- in-law within his reach, arrested him, accused him of witchcraft, put him in prison and poisoned him, and so became sole lord of Milan. This worthy lord converted his principality into a dukedom and be- came duke (1395) ; but as we have followed the fam- ily to the end of the century, and long enough to make ourselves acquainted with the habits of tyrants, we must leave them. Poor Italy suffering from these three evils, plagues, condottieri, and tyrants, naturally sought for a cure, and, with what seems to us a singular lack of imagi- nation, turned to the old remedies, Emperor and Pope. From time to time Emperors came into Italy, but the Hapsburgs were very different from the Hohenstau- ILLS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 217 fens, and their trips to Rome were mere money-get- ting excursions. They sold privileges and honours, imposed what taxes they coidd collect, and sneaked back to Germany. Obviously there was no hope from Emperors. Then rose the cry for the return of the Pa- pacy. Every Italian, however he might hate or de- spise the Popes, felt proud that the Papacy was an Italian institution, and believed that every Pope, good or bad, should live in Rome and sit on his throne at St. Peter's. Sentiment grew strong, especially among the women ; Petrarch thundered, St. Cathe- rine of Siena pleaded. Moreover, the sharper argu- ment was urged with great practical effect, that the Papal State might shake off the papal dominion if the Pontiffs did not look after it themselves. The Popes began to stir uneasily. The cardinals indeed, accustomed to the safe city of Avignon, did not care to go to turbulent Rome, or perhaps, as Petrarch said, they could not bear to leave their Burgundian wines. But finally Gregory XI (1370-78) raised his courage to the sticking point. He returned to Rome in 1377, and the Babylonish Captivity of seventy years ended. CHAPTER XXIII A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW (1350-1450) The return of the Papacy to Rome was an event of importance both for Italy and the Catholic Church. Had it remained in France, it must have dwindled and shrunk, like Antaeus, kept away from its source of strength. Nevertheless, the Papacy was no longer what it once had been ; it cannot serve us now as a central channel for the course of Italian history, and will rank no higher than the first of half-a-dozen little channels, which we must pursue separately. The returning Pope found his territory in greater obedience than he deserved ; for a brilliant Spanish cardinal, Albornoz who had been sent some time before had reduced almost all the cities to subjection (1353-67) ; even Bologna, successfully disputed with the Visconti, acknowledged papal dominion. But there was neither peace nor tranquillity. Every- where turbulence and murmurous threatenings rum- bled ; and worse was to come. The very year after the return from the Babylonish Captivity the Great Schism rent the Church asunder for forty years. There were two parties in the College of Cardinals, the French and the Italian, with little love lost be- tween them. The Italians were in control and elected Urban VI (1378-89), a domineering, cruel, most unpastoral person, who insulted the foreign cardi- A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW 219 nals, and so angered them that they left Rome, declared his election illegal, and elected one of themselves as Pope in his stead. This anti-pope, attended by his troop of cardinals, returned to Avignon. Christian Europe divided in two : some countries recognized Urban, others recognized the anti-pope. Thus the schism began, and prepared the way for the next great split of Christian Europe into Catholics and Protestants. There were now two sources of apostolic succession, two supreme rulers, and two systems of taxation. Misbehaviour and confusion at the top lowered the moral tone of the whole Church. The Curia in Rome was scan- dalously venal. Indulgences were sold : offices were bestowed for money. Nobody in Rome respected the Pope, hardly anybody respected the clergy. All Christendom felt that reformation was ne- cessary, and that, first of all, the schism must be closed. Thereupon some outward deference was paid to public opinion ; the Roman Pope went so far as to make ostensible overtures to his rival at Avignon, and he of Avignon bowed and smiled most politely in return. Friendly greetings went to and fro, and a meeting was talked of. It became obvious, however, after a time, thai neither Pope had the slightest intention of abdicating in the other's favour. Christendom remained insistent, and the two batches of cardinals took the matter into their own hands. They held b Council at Pisa, which deposed both Popes, and elected a third i 1 109), but, as the other two Popes refused to ac- knowledge their deposition, matters were worse than 220 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY before. The situation recalled the old days when a German Emperor had come down to Rome and had deposed three rival Popes together. The need seemed to revive the past. The Emperor Sigismund (1410-37) assumed to speak as the head of Chris- tendom. He summoned an Ecumenical Council to meet at the city of Constance, on the Lake of Con- stance, to judge the schismatic quarrel and to consider the general state of the Church. Other troubles besides schism had begun to appear. The failure of Rome to satisfy the conscience of Europe had borne fruit. Heresy had appeared. In England, Wyclif (1327-84) had denounced the higher clergy for greed and arrogance; he had disavowed alle- giance to the divided Papacy, and had opposed the doctrine of transubstantiation. In Bohemia, Jerome of Prague rejected the temporal jurisdiction of priests, and John Huss asserted that Constantine had done great wrong when he endowed Pope Sil- vester with lands and temporal power. Christendom responded to the Emperor's call. Prelates and scholars of the highest character and standing assembled at Constance (1414). It was a great occasion, and belongs to the history of Eu- rope. This Council, the seventeenth Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church (1414-18), deposed all three Popes, and elected a Roman, of the House of Colonna, Martin V (1417-31), and so closed the schism and restored unity to the Church. The more difficult matter of crushing heresy was not so readily dealt with. The two reformers, Jerome of Prague and John Huss, refused to recant or modify their A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW 221 views. They were condemned and handed over to the secular arm for punishment ; and the Emperor, heedless of the safe-con duct he had given, burnt them at the stake (1415-16). To follow the proceedings of this interesting Council more fully would take us too far into papal affairs. It must suffice to say that the Reformation can be sniffed in the air. Rome had not done its elementary duties as head of Christendom, and Christendom insisted on a change and on reform ; but Rome was powerful and would not submit. Two parties appear, the reformers and the papists. The former wished to purify the Roman Curia and the whole Church, and to give the Papacy a repub- lican character, — to make the Pope a president, as it were, and the College of Cardinals a senate. The latter liked the old easy ways and wished the Pope to be absolute monarch. The papal party by dexterous politics foiled the plans of the reformers and prevented change of any kind, although no doubt it acted less from desire to obstruct reform than to prevent the anti-monarchical party from getting control of the Church and using the prestige of re- form to attack the papal autocracy. From this time on the papal party consistently pursued this course, ami therefore reformation came not from Koine, but from (Jermanv, and instead of being a reform from within, came practically as an attack from without. and caused fche permanent schism of the Reforma- tion. We must now leave the 1'apacv, which follows it- wilful COUrSI via Pabylonish Ahsenteeism, Schism, and refusal to reform and steers directly 222 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY towards the rocks of the Reformation, and betake ourselves to the other parts of Italy. The Kingdom of Naples would have been badly off at best under its light-mannered queen, Joan I (13-43-81), but it became involved in the papal schism, and got into a wretched plight. The queen rashly took sides with the Avignon Pope, and the irascible Roman Pope vowed vengeance. He set her cousin, Charles, who belonged to the Durazzo branch of the House of Anjou, on the throne in her stead. The story is a miserable mixture of treasons, battles, and vulgar crimes. Charles got possession of the unfortunate queen and strangled her, and he and his heirs fought her adopted heirs for years. Each side hired mercenaries. John Hawkwood was there, and other notable leaders. Poor Naples, taxed, robbed, and ravaged by rival kings, their favourites, and mistresses, rolled rapidly from bad to worse. Exception must be made in favour of Charles's son Ladislaus (1390-1414), a bold, enter- prising soldier, who played a part in the affairs of Italy like that of his ancestor, Charles of Anjou. But he failed in not leaving a son to inherit the crown, and was succeeded by his sister, another Queen Joan (1414-35), likewise light-mannered. There is nothing memorable to grace her career, except the presence of a soldier of fortune, once a Romagnol peasant, Muzio Attendolo, better known as Attendolo Sforza (strength). His son was Fran- cesco Sforza, destined to a brilliant career in Milan. The queen did one thing, however, for which we, who clutch at any unification of Italian history, must A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW 223 thank her. She adopted, not wholly of her free will, Alfonso of Aragon, King- of Sicily, and so brought about, though for a few years only, the reunion of the Two Sicilies. With regard to Sicily we need say nothing except that the royal House, which still had a strain of Hohenstaufen-Norman blood, died out, and that Sicily passed as a marriage portion to the crown of Aragon, and became a mere appanage of that kingdom (1409). Finally, as I have said, King Al- fonso was adopted as heir to the second Queen Joan, and took part in the civil wars that devastated Naples. Then began the long struggle of Spaniard against Frenchman (the Neapolitan House of Anjou was still French), which was destined to be so disas- trous to Italy. Alfonso conquered and was acknow- ledged King of the Two Sicilies by his suzerain the Pope (1443). Thus for a time the Southern Kingdom was united and at peace. It is a happy moment to leave it and go northward, in the hope of finding greater moral and intellectual activity, if not greater tranquillity and order. To the northeast, Venice had been growing in power; but with the growth of her power the Dumber of her enemies and their bitterness towards her had grown. Her possessions on the mainland, wrested Erom Verona, broughl her into hostility with Padua; her Adriatic possessions, [stria and Dalmatia, made her an enemy of Hungary; her coastwise empire and trade in the Levant made Genoa her deadly rival; and her imperial expansion entangled her in war after war. Both the war with 224 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY Padua and that with Hungary told upon her, but the struggle with Genoa was far worse. During the last grapple, known as the war of Chioggia (1378- 81), Venice was reduced to narrow straits, and but for her great admirals, Vettor Pisani and Carlo Zeno, would have been defeated. Genoa never re- covered from the losses she sustained ; but Venice regained her strength, and renewed her conquests on the mainland. She conquered Padua (1404) and strangled the last heirs of the House of Carrara, though they were prisoners of war ; she seized Verona, and set a price on the heads of the last of the Scaligers, though they had been her allies. Her chief expansion on the mainland of Italy was under the Doge Francesco Foscari (1423-57), when she annexed Bergamo and Brescia, and carried her western boundary to the river Adda. For the sake of convenience we may divide the life of Venice into four stages : first, her lusty youth, which closed with the profligate capture of Constantinople and the piratical dismemberment of the Byzantine Empire (1204) ; second, her vigorous prime, which lasted till she annexed Italian territory, threw in her lot with Italy, and from being almost an Oriental outsider became an Italian state (1338) ; third, her glorious maturity, which continued till the League of Cambrai, when almost all Europe united to destroy her (1508) ; and fourth, her long period of ebbing fortune, dur- ing which she slipped slowly into decrepitude. In the present chapter we deal with the earlier part of her maturity, when Venice was contesting with Milan for primacy in power and importance. A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW 225 During all this period the oligarchy had been tightening its hold on the government, and was now absolute and secure. One last attempt had been made to overthrow it, but had easily been put down. No one knows exactly what led to the con- spiracy, or what was the exact purpose of the conspir- ators. The ringleader was the Doge himself, Marino Faliero, one of the old nobility. The story is that he wished to revenue himself for a jn-oss insult from a young nobleman, and it seems likely that a per- sonal quarrel had some connection with a general plot which aimed to overthrow the oligarchy, and substitute a government of the old nobility sup- ported by the people. The plot was betrayed. Nine of the conspirators were hanged from the windows of the Ducal Palace. Faliero's head was cut off, his portrait in the hall of the Ducal Palace was painted out, and in the blank space was written : " This is the place of Marino Faliero, beheaded for his crimes." The oligarchy did not fail in its duty to itself, but neither did it fail in its duty to the state. Com- merce was the life of Venice ; and the oligarchy tended it with the utmost care. The famous Vene- tian arsenal was the foster-mother of thai commerce. There the money-getting ship^ were built and equipped: caracks with three decks and great depth of hold, galleasses with high forecastle and poop, galleys with long rows of oars and lateen sails, all of different builds to suit tin; rough Atlantic Ocean, the .Mediterranean Sea. or the safe]- Adriatic. Kiche>, a firm rule, and the security of an island 226 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY home, showed visibly in Venice. Instead of for- tresses with massive walls and solid towers, light, elegant palaces, decked with gay balconies and in- crusting marbles, lined the canals. All revealed tran- quillity and prosperity ; and the adoption of Gothic architecture in place of Byzantine, and in especial the long- Gothic arcades of the Ducal Palace (1300- 40), testified how Venice had turned her face from the East to the West. In contrast with Sicily and Naples, rolling down hill separately or together, and with the troubled Papal States, Venice appears alto- gether happy and successful as she passes from the fourteenth into the fifteenth century. Milan we have brought to the dignity of a duke- dom, for which Gian Galeazzo Visconti (1378-1402), the amiable nephew of the too-confiding Bernabo, paid the price of 100,000 sequins to the fount of honour, the ultramontane Emperor. This nephew, despite a moral inadequacy in his family relations, was in many respects an excellent ruler. He reduced the more burdensome taxes (in one city, it is said, he cut them down from 12,000 florins to 400), and abol- ished others altogether. He corrected abuses, reor- ganized the administration of justice, and enacted wise laws. He understood the pride of the Milanese in their city, and laid the foundations of the great Gothic cathedral on a scale to gratify that pride ; he began the beautiful church of the Cistercian monks, the Certosa, at Pavia ; he completed the palace at Pa via, whither he transported his famous collection of books and an equally famous collection of holy bones. He had the family ambition, and annexed Vicenza, A BIKD'S-EYE VIEW 227 Verona, Padua. Siena, Assisi, Perugia, Pisa, and Bologna. Rumour said that he aspired to a kingdom of Lombard v. and even of all Italy. But Venice and Florence were too powerful for the success of his plans. Venice, perhaps, might have regarded her- self as still too much detached from Italy to care to oppose him single-handed ; but the doughty burghers of Florence were zealously democratic and would not endure any suggestion of foreign dominion. They had fought the Pope, when they suspected him of designs on their city, and now they organized a league against Gian Galeazzo. Perhaps it would have been a most fortunate thing for Italy if the Duke of Milan had been able to consolidate all Italy, or even all the North, in one kingdom. Centuries of suffering, of ignominy, of foreign domination might have been avoided ; but then, perhaps, the great intellectual harvest, that gave Italy for the third time primacy over Europe, would not have attained its full growth. These are idle speculations, for Gian Galeazzo died in his prime (1402), and the univer- sal dominion of Milan became an academic ques- tion. Nevertheless, one cannot withhold a sensation of regret. There was undoubted brilliance in Gian Galeazzo; whatever lie did was done royally. His ambitions were high, planned always on a large scale. Bis purchases of the French king's daughter and of the ducal in!.- were Bplendidly prodigal. The design of tie- cathedral was ooble and bold. It an endeavour to give the Gothic Btyle an Italian character. In tlii- it Is easj to find symbolism. The Gothic Btyle represented the < i 1 1 i I » * • 1 1 i 1 1 * - cause, as 228 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY well as Teutonic blood and influence, whereas the Italian represented the Guelf cause and also Latin blood. The high-aspiriog Gian Galeazzo wished to use both Teutonic and Italian elements as the ma- terials for his kingdom. In view of his intellec- tual gifts, one readily slurs over his moral inade- quacy, if that term may be applied to traits which would have done honour to Iago ; in fact, prior to Caesar Borgia, he was the most distinguished example of the type of intellectual, murderous Italian, which exercised so powerful an attraction over the wild fancy of the Elizabethan dramatists. Gian Galeazzo's death left his dukedom in a cha- otic condition. A widow, a regent committee, and three boys were left to see the state, built up with so much care and astuteness, fall away piecemeal into the hands of the petty despots, who had been dispossessed during the process of integration. Ven- ice took Verona, Padua, and other cities near by ; the Papacy got back Bologna, Florence managed to secure Pisa. Thus the dukedom was carved up. The eldest son died soon, leaving behind him a mem- ory of the pleasure he took in watching mastiffs tear his prisoners to pieces ; but the second son, Filippo Maria (1412-47), inherited his father's craft and much of his ability. By means of two famous con- dot fieri, Carmagnola, best remembered as the victim of Venetian anger, and Francesco Sforza, of whom we have heard in the Neapolitan service, he grad- ually restored the dukedom very nearly to its bound- aries under his father. Filippo Maria was the last of his race, and we will leave him, engaged in A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW 229 speculation as to the best political use of his mar- riageable daughter Bianca Maria. We must pass over the Counts of Savoy, now become dukes ( 1-11(5 1, the marquesses of Monferrat and Saluzzo, and the lords of other petty territories, and turn our attention to Florence. Florence was always in a state of struggle, always engaged in exiling, deposing, or in some way suppressing aris- tocrats. Forced, in days of peril, to receive foreign lords as military leaders, she had managed to expel the last of them, one Walter of Brienne, a clever knave, who bore the odd title of Duke of Athens, which he had inherited from his grandfather, one of the gentlemen adventurers who had gone to the East. His father had been expelled from Athens, and the son was happily driven out of Florence. The burghers followed up their victory (1343) with new laws against the aristocrats, and held the government for a generation. Then first appears the name of Medici. One Salvestro dei Medici, as Gonfalonu re of Justice, the supreme officer in Flor- ence under the existing constitution, proposed fur- ther laws in favour of the people. The lower classes, with whetted appetites, wanted more. The mechanics and artisans of the lower guilds, and more particu- larly the wool carders and combers (the Oiompi) of the great wool guilds, r08€ in riot, overturned the government, andputa wool-^carder, Micheledi Lando, at the head of the city ( L378). Florence was demo- cratic, hut not BO democratic as to submit to the rule of a wool-carder. The rich burghers would not stom- ach a plebeian any more than thev would a king 230 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY A reaction set in, and the government passed into the \t i\ competent hands of an oligarchy of distin- guished citizens. This oligarchy governed well. Its Leaders, Maso degli Albizzi, and Niccolo da Uzzano, acted patriotically and wisely. They resisted the aggressions of Milan from the north, and of Naples ( under that exceptional king Ladislaus) from the south, and made it their policy to maintain the bal- ance of power in Italy. Under this oligarchy began the great development of art, known as the Renais- sance, or, to be more exact in quoting the textbooks, the First or Early Renaissance. To that subject, which shall give us for a time at least a centre, and save us from these puzzling political subdivisions, we joyfully proceed ; only remembering that at this period Italy has these main political divisions, — the Kingdom of Sicily, the Kingdom of Naples (the two temporarily reunited), the Papal States, the city of Florence, the duchy of Milan, and the city of Venice. CHAPTER XXIV THE EARLY RENAISSANCE (1400-1450) By Renaissance, new birth, we mean the rapid, many-sided, intellectual development which started forward in Italy at this time. It was really a stage in the movement which began a hundred years earlier, but the textbooks confine the term Renaissance to the period which began at the opening of the fif- teenth century ; and just as the first beginning took place in Florence, so this fresh start, like a stream of energy issuing at a divine touch, also burst out of the city of Florence. The simplest way to get an idea of this period, known as the Early Renaissance, will be to notice a few of the men, lead- ers in their several spheres, in whom that energy became incarnate. We must not let ourselves think that the Renais- sance was a merely artistic movement. A few men are known to us. and we think of them as wandering about in artistic isolation, as if they were hermits iu a Thebaid. But, in reality, only a Blight traction of even the deeper feelings and interests take artistic or literary form ; the great majority are put into life. The celebrated Florentine artists of tints.- days were merely representative of their fellows; they wen- sur- rounded by crowde of neighbours, all crammed full with ardour for living, for expression, for discussion, 232 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY for money-making, for glorifying their city. In re- cognition of this fact, and of the great service ren- dered to the arts throughout the Renaissance by men who were not artists, but potent signors of wealth and cultivation, whether merchants, dukes, or cardinals, I take Cosimo dei Medici (1389-1464) as the first figure in this brief account of the Early Renaissance. Cosimo's father, the richest banker in Italy, and one of the chief citizens of Florence, had been active in politics, and chief of the party which was opposed to the ruling oligarchy. Cosimo succeeded to his father's position, and when the oligarchy fell became the actual head of the city, though he always affected the role of private citizen. His quick in- telligence and his broad cultivation gave him keen sympathy with the fermenting intellectual life about him, and his great wealth enabled him to express that sympathy in most substantial ways. He got his first schooling from a Florentine humanist, and then went abroad, travelled in Germany and France, and visited the Council of Constance then in session. After that his attention was devoted to business and to political affairs. His position in Florence during early man- hood was always precarious, for the sharp-witted Florentines were not easily hoodwinked and saw whither Cosimo's masterfulness was tending. For a time he was in exile, but after a tussle he won his place and banished his enemies. Wealth w r as his great instrument. He lent and gave lavishly. In later life he used to say that his chief error had been that he had not begun to spend money ten years sooner THE EARLY RENAISSANCE 233 than he did. He was a serious man, given to intel- lectual matters, and averse to buffoons and strolling players, so popular then ; by virtue of wide expe- rience in the conduct of large affairs, of extensive reading, of a retentive memory, and a natural gift for lan&ruase, he was both an interesting talker and good company. He talked literature with men of letters, but he was equally ready to talk divinity, in which he was well read, or philosophy, or astrology in which he believed although some men did not. He liked gardening, and enjoyed going out of town to his country-place ; there he would prune the vines for two hours in the morning, and then go indoors to read. His connection with the arts of the Renais- sance, however, is our chief concern. He employed the famous architect Michelozzo to build his palace, now known as Palazzo Riccardi, his villa, and also the Dominican convent of San Marco. He employed the still more famous Brunelleschi to rebuild the abbey of Fiesole. He was fond of sculptors, especially of Donatello, and had statues by the best masters of the day in his palace. He employed Fra Angelico to paint in the convent of San Marco, and Benozzo Grozzoli in his private chapel. Benozzo painted a procession of the Three Wise Men, with Cosimo, his BOD, and his grandson, young Lorenzo the Magnifi- cent, riding in their train. Cosimo's greatest interest, however, was in the humanities. Be built several buildings for libraries in Florence, and one in Venice, and interested himself greatly in the preservation and increase of the libraries themselves. For the library in the abbey at Fiesole he employed a man 234 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY of letters (Vespasiano da Bisticci, his biographer), who hired forty-five copyists, and in twenty-two months finished the two hundred volumes deemed necessary for a good library. His list included the Bible and concordances and commentaries, beginning with that by Origen ; the works of St. Ignatius, St. Basil, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. John Chrysostom, and all the works of the Greek fathers which had been translated into Latin ; St. Cyprian, Tertullian, and the four doctors of the Latin Church ; the mediaeval masters St. Bernard, Hugo of St. Victor, St. Anselm, St. Isidore of Spain ; the scholastic philosophers, Albertus Magnus, Alexander of Hales, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura; Aristotle, and com- mentaries ; books of canon law ; the Latin prose classics, Livy, Caesar, Suetonius, Plutarch, Sallust, Quintus Curtius, Valerius Maximus, Cicero, Seneca; the Latin poets, Virgil, Terence, Ovid, Lucan, Sta- tius, Plautus ; and " all the other books necessary to a library." One wonders if this clause includes Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, or whether the hu- manists did not regard them as necessary or appro- priate to culture. Taken altogether Cosimo may stand as an heroic model of the Florentine burgher, such as one sees in the frescoes of the time, shrewd, prudent, thought- ful, cautious in plan and prompt in action, interested in the best things of this world, and in a measure generous, but wholly without romance, chivalry, or idealism. At the close of his life he used to stay hours at a time, wrapt in thought, without speak- ing a word. One of the women of the house asked THE EARLY RENAISSANCE 235 him the reason of this. He answered : " When you have to go out of town, you spend a fortnight all agog to prepare for going ; and now that I have to go from this life to another, does n't it seem to you that I have something to think about ? " The last book he is reported by his biographer to have read was the " Ethics " of Aristotle. Cosimo was named Pater Patrice, though his real work was the foundation of the House of the Me- dici, which ruled in Tuscany for centuries and min- gled its blood with the royalties of Europe ; but for us he is the patron of the arts, the friend of artists, and serves as the central figure round which to group the men of artistic genius. In architecture the greatest name is that of Bru- nelleschi (1377-1-446). His biography by Vasari opens with these words : " Many men are created by nature little in person and features, who have their souls so full of greatness and their hearts so full of the inordinate fury of genius, that, unless they are at work on things difficult to impossibility, and unless they finish them to the astonishment of the spectator, they never give themselves any rest all tlnir lives; and whatever things chance puts into their hands, HO matter how mean and cheap, they bring to worth and dignify. . . . Such was Brunel- leschi, no less insignificant in person than Giotto, but of so lofty genius, thai it may be Baid he was endowed by beaven to give new form to architec- ture, which for hundreds of years bad gone astray [such was the Renaissance rie* of the Gothic and Romanesque]. Moreover, Brunelleschj was adorned •S.w> A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY with the greatest virtues ; among 1 which was friend- ship to such a degree, that there never was a man more kind or more loving than he. His judgment was wholly free from passion ; wherever he saw the worth of another man's merits, he totally disre- garded any advantage to himself or to his friends. He knew himself ; he inspired others with his own noble qualities, and he always succoured his neigh- bour in time of need. He declared himself a deadly enemy of the vices, and a lover of those who prac- tised virtue. He never wasted time, for he was always busy with his own affairs or with the affairs of others when they had need of him, and when out walking he used to stop and see his friends and always lent them a hand." Brunelleschi was no scholar, but, being a Florentine, he was very fond of talking, and did not hesitate to take part in con- versation with learned men, especially when the talk ran on Holy Writ, and then, as a friend said, he talked like a second St. Paul. He began life, as most architects did, as a mem- ber of the guild of goldsmiths, and learned to model, but he had a bent towards physics and mechanics, and developed naturally into an architect. A great event in his life was a trip to Rome with Donatello ; there the two examined all the classical remains in the city and in the country round about, taking measurements and learning all they could. In Florence besides the abbey of Fiesole, built for Cosimo, Brunelleschi built the church of San Lo- renzo for Cosimo's father, and he designed and be- gan the lordly Pitti palace across the Arno, but his THE EARLY RENAISSANCE 237 great achievement was the dome of the cathedral. The cathedral, first begun by Arnolfo di Cambio, had been in charge of a succession of famous archi- tects, and was nearing completion; but the gap at the intersection of the nave and transepts presented a most difficult architectural problem. The diametei of this gap was about one hundred and thirty-five feet, and the height above the ground was a I tout one hundred and forty-five feet. No such span had been vaulted since the building of the Pantheon. A public competition for a dome was held in which Brunelleschi took part. After long discussion, for Florence was " a city where every one speaks his mind,'' and after much consideration, Brunelleschi was chosen architect. His great dome, though no copy of Roman forms, was thoroughly classic in its simplicity and its spirit, and is the great achieve- ment of the Early Renaissance in architecture. Brunelleschi and his fellow architects, no doubt, wished to revive the old Roman art, and did so as far as they could, but their problems were new and their models few, so they were forced, in the main, to follow their own principles of construction and limit their use of Roman tonus to ornament and detail. Other famous men seconded Brunelleschi j and Florentine, or at Least Tuscan, architects Bpread the ideas of the new art. To them is really due the foundation of the various schools of Renaissance architecture which Bprang up in .Milan. Venice, Pa- via. Bologna, Rimini, Brescia, Siena. Lucca. Peru- gia, and in almost even , hung over Constantinople frightened scholars and drove them westward, and the fall itself (1453) dis- persed the last of them. These Greeks brought in- valuable manuscripts and firmly established Hellenic culture in the kindred soil of Tuscany. In the list of books in Cosimo's library, there was no mention of any Greek classic except Aristotle; but after the immigration of Greek scholars all intellectual Flor- ence went mad over Plato, and Cosimo founded a Platonic Academy. The study of Greek brought with it examination, comparison, criticism ; it brought new knowledge ; it gave new ideas to all the arts, new impulses to the creative imagination, and general intellectual freedom. Interest in the humanities be- came so widespread throughout the peninsula that we get a feeling of Italian unity stronger than any we have experienced since the days of Theodoric. The importance of the humanists, however, was merely as an intellectual leaven. They need not be spoken of apart from the general intellectual move- ment which expressed itself so much more fully and freely in art than in any other way. That movement kindled enthusiasm from Lombardy to Calabria; and Florence still maintained her primacy. All the other cities of Italy lagged far behind her. We must there- fore keep Florence as our paradigm, only remember- ing that at her heels a score of cities toil and pant in artistic eagerness to make themselves as beautiful and famous as Florence. There Cosimo, Pater Patria, had died in fulness of years and wbb Bucceeded by his grandson. Lorenzo the Magnificent, though not immediately, for there 244 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY uas a short-lived Piero in between. Lorenzo took his grandfather's place, became lord of Florence in all but name, and stood the centre of a brilliant group of artists, sculptors, poets, and scholars. His reign, for it must be so called, lasted from 14G9 to 1492, a most notable span of time. The mere names of the famous Florentines would fill pages. A few must be mentioned : Benedetto da Maiano, sculptor and archi- tect, who carved the beautiful pulpit in Santa Croce, and drew the designs for the palace-fortress of the Strozzi ; Giuliano da San Gallo, sculptor and archi- tect, who made the plans for Lorenzo's villa at Poggio a Caiano ; Andrea della Robbia, nephew to Luca, and almost his equal in the tender charm of his blue and white Madonnas ; Mino da Fiesole, who made a bust of Lorenzo's father, and carved in marble the sweetness of young mothers; Antonio Rossellino, who wrought the famous tomb for a great Portuguese prelate in the church of San Miniato; Andrea Verrocchio, who painted the Uffizi Annunciation, so beautiful that it was long attributed to Leonardo, modelled the lady dalle belle menu in the Bargello, and the Colleoni at Venice, greatest of equestrian statues ; Benozzo Gozzoli, who painted the three generations of Me- dici in the Riccardi palace, and in the Campo Santo at Pisa the enchanting frescoes which turn the Old Testament into a kind of Arabian Nights ; An- tonio Pollaiuolo, sculptor and painter, a leader in the new school of realism, and notable for the feel- ing of movement which he conveys ; Filippino Lippi, Lippo Lippi's son, who completed the frescoes in the chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine left unfin- THE RENAISSANCE 245 ished by Masaccio ; Botticelli, the greatest of all the Florentine painters, except Leonardo and Mi- chelangelo ; Domenico Ghirlandaio, whose frescoes in Santa Maria Novella tell us more about those shrewd, capable, quick-witted Florentines than any historian ; Pulci, the poet, who wrote " Morgante Maggiore," a gay epic, which Savonarola thought ought to be burned ; Poliziano, great embodiment of culture, who wrote the first lyrical tragedy, and led the way towards the opera ; Marsilio Ficino, the philosopher who helped Cosimo found the Pla- tonic Academy ; Pico della Mirandola, the charming scholar, whom Machiavelli called " a man almost divine." Perhaps none of these men were equal to the lead- ers in the group which surrounded Cosimo, but they are more interesting to us, and touch our sympathy more readily. They are nearer to us. The earlier problems in architecture, sculpture, and painting were more difficult, but they had been successfully solved; and the fresh problems, which confronted the younger generation, though less adventurous, were more refined. The sons have entered into a hard-earned inheritance, and live more freely. They have more spiritual alertness than their fathers though less rigour, more sensitiveness to passing moods though less robustness, greater mastery of technique though less genius Cor principles. Less great themselves, they have created greater works. Benedetto's Palazzo Strozzi is more majestic and splendid than ftficheloZZo's Palazzo Kiceardi; Yeinx- ohio's statue of Colleoni surpasses Donatello's (Jatta- 240 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY melata ; Botticelli's poetry is more interesting, at least to the unlearned, than Masaccio's puissant thawing. Nevertheless, the greater intimacy of sym- pathy and interest which we feel for the later men is not accounted for by their greater command of their crafts. There is some new element less readily discovered. We perceive a change of attitude toward life, a new conception of human existence. The readiest explanation and perhaps the best, if we do not treat it as completely adequate, lies in the new Greek thought (or rather Greek thought as the Florentines understood it), which the humanists con- tributed to Italian culture ; and indeed not so much in Greek thought itself, as in the impulse it gave to a subtler and more complicated conception of life. Direct Greek influence is most conspicuous in Botticelli. This rare spirit wandered about half in the world of reality which he ill understood and depicted badly, and half in a world of fantasy which he knew better than any other painter. The secret of this world of fantasy, as he discovered, was mo- tion. If a vision tarries, it becomes touched by the blight of familiarity, soiled by the comradeship of life. The fairy spirit of imagination must be ever on the wing. No artist ever let Sweet Fancy loose as Botticelli did in his two great pictures, The Prima- vera (Spring) and The Birth of Venus. In them this Greek influence finds its fullest direct expres- sion. The glory of dawn, the first unveiled fresh beauty of the world, which the Greeks saw, Botti- celli saw also. But besides the childlike joy in pure beauty is another, more complicated, element. Into THE RENAISSANCE 247 the rapturous Greek world, beautiful with sensuous charm, the bewildering idea of a mora] order pre- sents itself. On the countenance of Venus and in the figure o£ Primavera there is a wistf ulness, as if they had a presentiment that they must leave the rose-strewn ocean and the magic wood in which they found themselves. The consequence is a sad- ness as of beholding an antagonism between two beautiful things. The subtler and more complicated conception of life is best expressed by Verrocchio, the other mas- ter spirit of this generation, who displays in his paint- ings and statues the joy he takes in pure beauty, but always adds some other element. The little boy who hugs a dolphin in the court of the Palazzo Vecchio is the incarnation of the grace and happiness of childhood, but he has an impish, Puck-like expres- sion. The young bronze David, who has just con- quered Goliath, has an odd, mischievous sprightliness. Both statues intimate a sceptical attitude towards the fine seriousness of life which had marked Puritan Florence of the older days. His painting of the Annunciation shows a magic background, beautiful and mystical, with enchanted cities, rivers, moun- tains, like tie- part of Xanadfi where KuUa Khan decreed his pleasure dome, or the strange land where La belle Dame Bans Aferci left her knight-at-arma alone and palely loitering. Subtle thoughts play over his statues and paintings, and he taught his pupil Leonardo that Btrange and beautiful fascina- tion of Eace which expresses one know-, n..t wh.it. The earlier simplicity of the (jiinHrmu nh> has passed, 248 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY the artist's attitude to life has become complicated, although the love of beauty for beauty's sake remains abundantly. The lord of Florence, Lorenzo the Magnificent, the centre and patron of this glittering ring, is the best exponent of the late quattrocento taken as a whole. He touched life on every side, public and private, intellectual and frivolous, religious and cynical, artis- tic, literary, philosophical. Lorenzo had a strik- ing, indeed a fascinating, personality. His figure was strong and lithe, and his face among a thou- sand caught the eye. His big jaws, under his lean, furrowed cheeks, were square and grim. His long irregular nose and curving lips gave him a some- what sardonic expression, but his broad forehead was grave and thoughtful, and " princely counsel " shone in his face. His whole aspect was full of char- acter and dignity. Every one felt his fascination. He was a poet and wrote poems of many kinds, grave and gay, some of which are of acknowledged merit : Quant'e bella giovinezza Che si fugge tuttavia, Chi vuol essere lieto, sia, Di doman non v'e certezza. 1 He was a scholar, and full of the fashionable ad- miration for Plato, though he probably shared the current confusion between Plato's own thoughts and those of the Alexandrian Neoplatonists. He was a statesman of foresight and shrewdness, and 1 Oh, how beautiful is youth Ever hurrying away, Come, let him who will be gay, In to-morrow there 's no truth. THE RENAISSANCE 249 contributed more than any one else to preserve the peace of Italy, by maintaining the balance of power among the greater states. He was also a very charm- ing person, and endeavoured to make life in Flor- ence a happy mixture of mirth and intellectual pleasure; and it must be remembered in apprecia- tion of the general sobriety of his life, that a gifted company of men did all they could to spoil him. Lorenzo was the most remarkable prince of the quattrocento, but there were many others who pa- tronized scholars and artists as generously as he. Alfonso of Aragon, the king who temporarily united the Two Sicilies, was devoted to the humanities. He was wont to hear Terence and Virgil read aloud at dinner, and took Livy with him on his campaigns. But Naples and Sicily had almost no share in the achievements and glory of the Italian Renaissance. Lawless, ignorant, poor, unsuccessful, they responded feebly to the efforts of individuals, who, here and there, strove to emulate the great Florentines. But in the North all the world was mad for art, and its princes led the fashion. Federigo da Montet'el- fcrOj Duke of Urbino ( 142'2-1 1S2i, was the foremost Bcholai among soldiers and the foremost soldier among scholars ; be gathered together a noble library, now lodged in the Vatican ; be built a palace, un- matched in Italy-, and collected about him artists of all kinds. Yet Federigo vraa a soldier by nature as well as by prof ession, as one may see from the great portrait of him in the llli/.i, painted by Piero della Branceaca. 11^ itrong profile, with firm mouth and big, broken, aquiline nose, testifies Ear more Forcibly 250 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY to his character as a warrior than as a virtuoso. His near neighbour, the tyrant of Pesaro (a little city by the Adriatic coast), Alessandro Sforza, passed the intervals between his battles in buying books. Duke Ercole of Ferrara was likewise a patron of art, and adorned his capital as well as his palaces and villas with all sorts of beautiful things. The dukes of Milan were somewhat eclipsed, but only for a time, by their less powerful rivals of Ferrara and Urbino. The old ducal line of the, Visconti had died out with Filippo Maria, and Francesco Sforza (husband of Filippo's daughter), who succeeded to the duchy (1450), was busy making good his very defective title, and had little time to attend to art or letters. Even he kept humanists in his pay, and continued work on the glorious Certosa of Pavia. Not only princes but private citizens were lovers and patrons of art. In almost every city of the North — excepting Piedmont — there was some artist of whom the whole city was proud. Nevertheless, throughout the reign of Lorenzo the Magnificent Florence continued to be the most intellectual of Italian cities, as she had been for many genera- tions ; but on Lorenzo's death the primacy in the arts and in matters of the mind passed from Flor- ence to Rome. By a flattering chance that primacy seemed to follow the fortunes of a single family. Under Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo dei Medici, the Renaissance may be said to have made Florence its home ; in the later period it found its fullest expres- sion in Rome, and even there took its name, the Age of Leo, from another Medici, Lorenzo's sou. It was THE RENAISSANCE 251 not to Pope Leo, however, but to his predecessors, that Rome was indebted for preeminence. At the summons of the Papacy men of genius went to Rome from all Italy, but chiefly from Florence ; and a distinguished Tuscan, almost a Florentine, who went from Florence to Rome at the culmination of a brilliant career, fairly serves as the personification of this intellectual migration. Tommaso Parentucelli, who was born in a little town near Lucca, was educated in Florence and Bologna. He took holy orders early, and, going" back to Florence, quickly became intimate with the clever set of humanists who surrounded Cosimo. He was a great student, and won so high a reputation for learning that it was to him Cosimo applied for advice, when he wanted the right books for the library at Fiesole. This collection became famous and was copied both at Rimini and l' rhino. Parentucelli was a very capable and attractive man. and embodied in its best form the essence of Flor- entine humanistic culture. His character, talents, and accomplishments were recognized in the ( Ihurch ; he became bishop, cardinal, and finally Pope, as Nicholas V (1447-55). At Rome Nicholas showed the well-marked char- acteristics of the Renaissance, lie fostered learning, art, ami general culture, not only because of his in- terest in them, hut because In- thought that by their means he could overcome that rumbling .spirit of reform, which was making trouble in Bohemia ami Germany, and thai by giving tin- reformers intellec- tual interests he could occupj thru- minds ami quell their discontent. He entertained lofty imaginings 252 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY of a Papacy, resting on learning and culture, housed in a nonpareil city, which should be the acknow- ledged and admired head of Christendom. He gath- ered together scholars of all kinds, collected a library of five thousand volumes, and founded the Vatican library. He rebuilt or restored numerous churches and other buildings in Rome, he began the new Vat- ican palace, and planned a new cathedral in place of the old basilica of St. Peter's, to be the greatest church in Christendom. He brought to Rome archi- tects, painters, goldsmiths, artists, and artisans of all sorts. With him began the brilliant period of the Papacy as a secular power devoted to art and cul- ture, which culminated in what is known as the Age of Leo X. CHAPTER XXVI THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS (1404-1537) We must now leave the great intellectual progress of the Renaissance on its way from its home in Florence to its culmination in Rome, and look over the politi- cal condition of the principal divisions of Italy. A complete change comes during this period, that can only be likened to the change wrought by the inva- sions of the Barbarians in ancient times. In fact, it is a period of fresh invasions by Barbarians, as the Italians, and not without some justice, still called foreigners. The year 1494 was the fatal date of the first invasion of the French. From that year onward there was a series of invasions of French, Austrians, and Spaniards, until Italy was finally parcelled out according to the pleasure of the invaders. Before that time Italy was in a peaceful and prosperous condition. The famous Florentine historian Guic- ciardini (1483-1540) thus records the time of his boyhood: "Since the fall of the Roman Empire Italy had never known such great prosperity, nor had experienced bo desirable a condition as in the vear 1 L90and the years just before and after. The country had been brought to profound peace and tranquillity, agriculture spread over the roughest and most Bterile bills no less than over the most fer- tile plains, and Italv, subject to no dominion but her 254 A SIIOKT HISTORY OF ITALY own, abounded in men, merchandise, and wealth. She was embellished to the utmost by the magnificence of many princes, by the splendour of many most noble and beautiful cities, by the seat and majesty of Religion ; she was rich in men most apt in public affairs, and in minds most noble for all sorts of know- ledge. She was industrious and excellent in every art, and, according to the standard of those days, not without military glory." In these happy years, and in the decades that pre- ceded them, Italian politics was a domestic game between the five principal powers, Papacy, Naples, Florence, Venice, and Milan, who treated one an- other's border cities as stakes. They made leagues and counter-leagues, waged innumerable little wars, fought bloodless skirmishes, flourished their swords, blew their trumpets, and made a good deal of com- motion ; but they were all Italians, they all knew the rules of the game, however irregular and com- plicated those rules might appear to an outsider, and if there were bloody heads, they were all in the fam- ily. With 1494 came the change. History seemed to turn back a thousand years ; the French poured over the Alps from the northwest, the Imperial soldiers of the House of Hapsburg from the north- east, and the Spaniards from their province of Sicily to the south. Milan, U66-1535 Our chronicle had better begin with the duchy of Milan. There, on the death of Francesco Sforza (1406), his son, Galeazzo Maria, succeeded to the THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS 255 throne. This duke was a typical Italian ruler, bril- liant in display, liberal in giving, harsh in taxing, interested in art and scholarship, crafty and cruel in politics, and shamelessly dissolute in private life. Fearful stories of his brutality are told. He was lit- erally insufferable, and was assassinated (1476). It is interesting to see the great classical influence, which stimulated the arts and the humanities, quick- ening the spirits of young men and giving an antique lustre to murder. The story goes that a schoolmaster of Milan, who had drilled his boys in Plutarch, till Plutarch's world seemed to live again, burst out in his lecture, " Will none among my pupils rise up like Brutus and Cassius to free his country from this vile yoke and merit eternal renown?" Three of his pupils, stimulated by private wrongs to emulate the classical example, murdered the duke in a church. All three were put to death. The last to die was skewered on iron hooks and cut to pieces alive. "I know," he said, "that for my wrongdoings I have deserved these tortures and more besides, could my poor flesh endure them ; but as for the noble act for which I die, that comforts my soul. Instead of repenting it, were I to live my lib 1 ten times again, ten times again to perish in these tortures. Done the trould I consecrate all my life's blood, and all inv might, to that ooble purpo The results of the murder were unimportant. In politics, even more than in the arts, the classic im- pulse only affected details. Lodovico Sforza, nick- named il Morn, the late duke's brother. Beized the government and Supplanted the lawful heir, his 256 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY young nephew, in every ducal prerogative except the title. Lodovico was a brilliant, intellectual man, devoid of moral sense; and for a time flourished in the full sunshine of the opening High Renaissance. He patronized Bramante, he employed familiarly Leonardo da Vinci. But his political talents were suited to the earlier period of domestic Italian poli- tics. Had he lived then, his abilities, inherited from both the Sforzas and Visconti, would have kept him secure on his ducal throne ; but he did not under- stand the larger forces of European politics. Milan being at odds with Naples, and the other Italian powers as usual either taking part, or biding a more favourable time, Lodovico Sforza thought it would be a brilliant play, in the little Italian game, to use a foreign piece to checkmate Naples. He in- vited the French king, Charles VIII, who repre- sented the claims of the House of Anjou to the Neapolitan crown, to come into Italy and take pos- session of his own. Other Italian politicians, with no more knowledge of European politics than Lodo- vico, joined in the petition. Charles VIII, an ugly little man, of scant intelligence, strong in a compact and vigorous kingdom, believing that he could play the part of a Charlemagne, accepted the suggestion with alacrity, got together an admirable army, and crossed the Alps, in the memorable year 1494. He received the respects of Lodovico and swept tri- umphantly down through Italy. No resistance to speak of was attempted. Florence made a treaty with him, the Pope was delighted to be able to do the like, and Naples watched her king run away THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS 257 and the French march in, with blended indifference and pleasure. This brilliant success, however, was a mere blaze of straw. The powers of Europe took alarm, and while the puny Charles was rioting in Naples, made a league, in which Venice, the Pope, and the double-dealing Sforza joined. Charles hur- ried north as fast as he could, and barely escaped across the Alps. But the episode was full of portent for Italy. The Barbarians had once again broken through the barrier which nature had set up to protect Italy ; they had rediscovered what a delight- ful place Italy was ; and the second period of Bar- barian invasion had begun. We cannot dally over Milan. Sforza's treachery overreached itself. The succeeding King of France, Louis XII, a prince of Orleans, was a grandson of Gian Galeazzo Visconti's eldest daughter, and had as good a legal title to the inheritance of the Visconti as his second cousin Lo- dovico ; though in strictness neither title had any legal value. Revenge lent strength to Louis's claim. In a few years (1499), the French again descended into the pleasant plains of Lombardy. captured Milan, took Sforza prisoner, and locked him up in a French prison for the rest of his life. It i^ useless to follow the shifting ownership of Milan, tossed about in the great Btruggle between Francis I of France and the Emperor Charles V. The Empire espoused the cause of the Sforza heirs and put them bach on the tin-one. Then France rained the battle of Marignano | 1515) and recovered Milan, hut the Empire conquered a1 Pavia L525 . and finally won. The male line of the Sforzas became 258 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY extinct in L535 ; and the dukedom of Milan, though it continued to be a nominal fief of the Empire, was annexed to the Spanish crown by Charles V (who was King of Spain as well as Emperor), and passed as a part of the Spanish inheritance to a line of Spanish kings. The Barbarian occupation of Milan was destined to last for three hundred years. Florence, U92-1537 Now that we have followed Milan into the service of Spanish masters, we must do a somewhat similar office for Florence. But Florence's liberty was put out in glory. The politic statesman, Lorenzo dei Medici, whose sagacity had contributed so much to the pleasant state of Italy prior to the French inva- sion, died in 1492. The great period of Florentine intellectual primacy ended with him, for, though Florence continued to pour forth genius, that genius no longer was "fathered together at home but emi- grated to honour other places. Nevertheless, she again challenges our admiration ; the ancient re- publican city once more asserted its preeminence by a burst of moral enthusiasm. Nowhere else in Italy throughout the Renaissance was such a spec- tacle seen, and though the leader, Girolamo Savona- rola (1452-98), was a native of Ferrara, yet it was in Florence, and among Florentines, that he kindled enthusiasm and ran his brilliant career. Savonarola was the reincarnation of a Hebrew prophet, a Flor- entine Habakkuk, passionately sure of the moral government of God, passionately convinced that the wickedness of Italy must bring its own punishment THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS 259 and purification. Shortly before Lorenzo's death he became a distinguished preacher, spoke in the ca- thedral, and won the ear of the people. He preached righteousness and judgment to come. He proclaimed spiritual evils and political punishments, and foretold that God would stretch forth His hand and send His avenger to punish Italy. The prophecies were so definite, and fitted the invasion of Charles VIII so accurately, that Savonarola was hailed as a prophet. In the excitement over the French invasion Loren- zo's sons were driven out, the former republican constitution reestablished, and Savonarola raised by a burst of popular enthusiasm practically to the position of guiding and governing the city. The best way to understand Savonarola's influence is to read a few extracts from the diary of Luca Lan- ducci, a Florentine apothecary : — " December 14, 1494. On this day Fra Girolamo greatly laboured in the pulpit that Florence should adopt a good form of government ; he has been preaching in Santa Maria del Fiore [the Duomo] every day, and this day, Sunday, he preached, and he did not want women but men, and he wanted the officers of the city, and nobody stayed in the Palace [Palazzo Vecchio, the City Hall] except the Gon- Ealoniere and one other; all the officials in Florence were there, and he preached about matters of slate. that we ought to love and fear God and love the common weal, and tli.it no man henceforth should wish to hold lii- head high or wish himself great. lb- alwavs inclined to the people's side, and insisted that no blood should be shed, but that punishment 260 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY should be made in some other way; and he preached like this every day. . . . " April, 1495. Fra Girolamo preached and said that the Virgin Mary had revealed to him how the city of Florence would become richer, more glorious, and more powerful than she had ever been, but not till after many troubles ; and he spoke all this as if he were a prophet, and most of the people believed him, especially the better sort who had no political or partisan passions. . . . "June 17, 1-495. The Frate nowadays is held in such esteem and devotion in Florence that there are many men and women who would obey him impli- cit lv, if he should say ' walk into the fire.' Many be- lieve him to be a prophet, and he said so himself. . . . "February 16 [1496], the Carnival. Fra Giro- lamo preached a few days ago that the children, instead of foolish pranks, throwing stones, etc., should collect alms and distribute them to the worthy poor; and, thanks to divine grace, such a change was wrought, that in place of tomfoolery the chil- dren collected alms for days beforehand, [and to- day six thousand of them or more, carrying olive branches and singing hymns, marched to the Duomo where they offered up their alms] so that good sen- sible men wept from tenderness and said, * Truly this new change is the work of God.' ... I have written this because it is the fact and I saw it, and I felt the greatest happiness to have my children among those blessed innocent bands. . . . " August 15, 1496. Fra Girolamo preached in Santa Maria del Fiore [the Duomo, where great THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS 261 scaffolds had been erected which were filled with children singing-], and there was so much holiness in the church, and it was so sweet to hear the chil- dren sing, above, below, and on every side, singing so simply and so modestly, that they did not seem like children. I write this because I was there and saw it and felt so much spiritual sweetness. In truth the Church was full of angels." The friar's political enemies were strong, and the Pope, the very notable Borgia, Alexander VI, in anger and in fear, excommunicated him, and bade the Signory of Florence forbid him to preach. There was great disturbance over this action, and feeling ran to a passionate height. One of Savonarola's disciples, a foolish Dominican, challenged an adver- sary to the ordeal by fire; the challenge was ac- cepted, and on the appointed day all Florence, in great excitement, flocked to the piazza. The Domin- ican and his adversary were there, and their respec- tive partisans, but nothing was done. One delay followed another ; there was nothing but hesitancy, disagreement as to conditions, backing and rilling. The disappointed populace turned on Savonarola. They had believed him a prophet and expected to see a judgment of God. The Pope took advantage of thi> resentment, and demanded his trial. Savonarola was tried, and tortured. During the torture a con- fession was extorted Erom him, which was undoubt- edly pieced out by forgery. Our apothecary says: — •• April 1'.'. 1 t98. The confession «>l* Pra Girdlamo read before the Council in the Greal Hall, which lie had written with his own hand, — he whom we 262 A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY beld bo be a prophet, — and he confessed that he was not a prophet, and had not received from God the things he preached, and he confessed to many things in the course of his preaching which were the op- posite of what he had given us to understand. I was there to hear the confession read, and was be- wildered and stood astonished and stupefied. My soul was in pain to see such an edifice tumble to earth because it all rested on a lie. I expected Florence to be a new Jerusalem from which should proceed laws, glory, and the example of a good life and to behold the restoration of the Church, the conversion of the infidels, and the comfort of good men, and now I behold the opposite, — and I took the medicine. In Thy will, God, stand all things." Savonarola was condemned to death for heresy ; he was hanged, his body burned, and his ashes flung into the Arno. So ended the one moral effort of the Italian Renaissance. After his death the Republican government en- dured for a time ; but the Medicean faction was powerful and forced its way back in 1512. Then Lorenzo's second son, Giovanni (1475-1521), follow- ing the steps of Florentine art and humanism, went to Rome and became Pope Leo X. As Pope, he was able to strengthen his family in Florence and to ex- tend its dominion. But Republicanism, quickened by the events then happening in Rome, flared up once more in 1527 ; but it was helpless before the hostile spirit of the time. Another Medici had become Pope, Clement VII, and the requirements of policy induced the calculating Emperor, Charles V, to suppress THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS 263 ■what he deemed a rebellion. Florence made a