Part I.
State Of Rome From The
Twelfth Century. Temporal Dominion
Of The Popes. Séditions
Of The City. Political Heresy Of
Arnold Of Brescia. Restoration
Of The Republic. The
Senators. Pride
Of The Romans. Their Wars. They
Are
Deprived Of The Election
And Presence Of The Popes, Who
Retire To Avignon. The
Jubilee. Noble Families Of Rome.
Feud Of The Colonna
And Ursini.
In the first ages of the decline and
fall of the Roman empire, our eye is invariably fixed
on the royal city, which had given laws to the fairest
portion of the globe. We contemplate her fortunes,
at first with admiration, at length with pity, always
with attention, and when that attention is diverted
from the capital to the provinces, they are considered
as so many branches which have been successively severed
from the Imperial trunk. The foundation of a
second Rome, on the shores of the Bosphorus, has compelled
the historian to follow the successors of Constantine;
and our curiosity has been tempted to visit the most
remote countries of Europe and Asia, to explore the
causes and the authors of the long decay of the Byzantine
monarchy. By the conquest of Justinian, we have
been recalled to the banks of the Tyber, to the deliverance
of the ancient metropolis; but that deliverance was
a change, or perhaps an aggravation, of servitude.
Rome had been already stripped of her trophies, her
gods, and her Cæsars; nor was the Gothic dominion
more inglorious and oppressive than the tyranny of
the Greeks. In the eighth century of the Christian
æra, a religious quarrel, the worship of images,
provoked the Romans to assert their independence:
their bishop became the temporal, as well as the spiritual,
father of a free people; and of the Western empire,
which was restored by Charlemagne, the title and image
still decorate the singular constitution of modern
Germany. The name of Rome must yet command our
involuntary respect: the climate (whatsoever
may be its influence) was no longer the same:
the purity of blood had been contaminated through
a thousand channels; but the venerable aspect of her
ruins, and the memory of past greatness, rekindled
a spark of the national character. The darkness
of the middle ages exhibits some scenes not unworthy
of our notice. Nor shall I dismiss the present
work till I have reviewed the state and revolutions
of the Roman City, which acquiesced under the absolute
dominion of the popes, about the same time that Constantinople
was enslaved by the Turkish arms.
In the beginning of the twelfth century,
the æra of the first crusade, Rome was revered
by the Latins, as the metropolis of the world, as
the throne of the pope and the emperor, who, from the
eternal city, derived their title, their honors, and
the right or exercise of temporal dominion. After
so long an interruption, it may not be useless to repeat
that the successors of Charlemagne and the Othos were
chosen beyond the Rhine in a national diet; but that
these princes were content with the humble names of
kings of Germany and Italy, till they had passed the
Alps and the Apennine, to seek their Imperial crown
on the banks of the Tyber. At some distance from
the city, their approach was saluted by a long procession
of the clergy and people with palms and crosses; and
the terrific emblems of wolves and lions, of dragons
and eagles, that floated in the military banners,
represented the departed legions and cohorts of the
republic. The royal path to maintain the liberties
of Rome was thrice reiterated, at the bridge, the
gate, and on the stairs of the Vatican; and the distribution
of a customary donative feebly imitated the magnificence
of the first Cæsars. In the church of St. Peter,
the coronation was performed by his successor:
the voice of God was confounded with that of the people;
and the public consent was declared in the acclamations
of “Long life and victory to our lord the pope!
long life and victory to our lord the emperor! long
life and victory to the Roman and Teutonic armies!”
The names of Cæsar and Augustus, the laws of
Constantine and Justinian, the example of Charlemagne
and Otho, established the supreme dominion of the emperors:
their title and image was engraved on the papal coins;
and their jurisdiction was marked by the sword
of justice, which they delivered to the præfect of
the city. But every Roman prejudice was awakened
by the name, the language, and the manners, of a Barbarian
lord. The Cæsars of Saxony or Franconia were
the chiefs of a feudal aristocracy; nor could they
exercise the discipline of civil and military power,
which alone secures the obedience of a distant people,
impatient of servitude, though perhaps incapable of
freedom. Once, and once only, in his life, each
emperor, with an army of Teutonic vassals, descended
from the Alps. I have described the peaceful
order of his entry and coronation; but that order
was commonly disturbed by the clamor and sedition of
the Romans, who encountered their sovereign as a foreign
invader: his departure was always speedy, and
often shameful; and, in the absence of a long reign,
his authority was insulted, and his name was forgotten.
The progress of independence in Germany and Italy undermined
the foundations of the Imperial sovereignty, and the
triumph of the popes was the deliverance of Rome.
Of her two sovereigns, the emperor
had precariously reigned by the right of conquest;
but the authority of the pope was founded on the soft,
though more solid, basis of opinion and habit.
The removal of a foreign influence restored and endeared
the shepherd to his flock. Instead of the arbitrary
or venal nomination of a German court, the vicar of
Christ was freely chosen by the college of cardinals,
most of whom were either natives or inhabitants of
the city. The applause of the magistrates and
people confirmed his election, and the ecclesiastical
power that was obeyed in Sweden and Britain had been
ultimately derived from the suffrage of the Romans.
The same suffrage gave a prince, as well as a pontiff,
to the capital. It was universally believed, that
Constantine had invested the popes with the temporal
dominion of Rome; and the boldest civilians, the most
profane skeptics, were satisfied with disputing the
right of the emperor and the validity of his gift.
The truth of the fact, the authenticity of his donation,
was deeply rooted in the ignorance and tradition of
four centuries; and the fabulous origin was lost in
the real and permanent effects. The name of Dominus
or Lord was inscribed on the coin of the bishops:
their title was acknowledged by acclamations
and oaths of allegiance, and with the free, or reluctant,
consent of the German Cæsars, they had long exercised
a supreme or subordinate jurisdiction over the city
and patrimony of St. Peter. The reign of the
popes, which gratified the prejudices, was not incompatible
with the liberties, of Rome; and a more critical inquiry
would have revealed a still nobler source of their
power; the gratitude of a nation, whom they had rescued
from the heresy and oppression of the Greek tyrant.
In an age of superstition, it should seem that the
union of the royal and sacerdotal characters would
mutually fortify each other; and that the keys of
Paradise would be the surest pledge of earthly obedience.
The sanctity of the office might indeed be degraded
by the personal vices of the man. But the scandals
of the tenth century were obliterated by the austere
and more dangerous virtues of Gregory the Seventh
and his successors; and in the ambitious contests which
they maintained for the rights of the church, their
sufferings or their success must equally tend to increase
the popular veneration. They sometimes wandered
in poverty and exile, the victims of persecution; and
the apostolic zeal with which they offered themselves
to martyrdom must engage the favor and sympathy of
every Catholic breast. And sometimes, thundering
from the Vatican, they created, judged, and deposed
the kings of the world; nor could the proudest Roman
be disgraced by submitting to a priest, whose feet
were kissed, and whose stirrup was held, by the successors
of Charlemagne. Even the temporal interest of the
city should have protected in peace and honor the
residence of the popes; from whence a vain and lazy
people derived the greatest part of their subsistence
and riches. The fixed revenue of the popes was
probably impaired; many of the old patrimonial estates,
both in Italy and the provinces, had been invaded
by sacrilegious hands; nor could the loss be compensated
by the claim, rather than the possession, of the more
ample gifts of Pepin and his descendants. But
the Vatican and Capitol were nourished by the incessant
and increasing swarms of pilgrims and suppliants:
the pale of Christianity was enlarged, and the pope
and cardinals were overwhelmed by the judgment of
ecclesiastical and secular causes. A new jurisprudence
had established in the Latin church the right and
practice of appeals; and from the North and West
the bishops and abbots were invited or summoned to
solicit, to complain, to accuse, or to justify, before
the threshold of the apostles. A rare prodigy
is once recorded, that two horses, belonging to the
archbishops of Mentz and Cologne, repassed the Alps,
yet laden with gold and silver: but it was
soon understood, that the success, both of the pilgrims
and clients, depended much less on the justice of their
cause than on the value of their offering. The
wealth and piety of these strangers were ostentatiously
displayed; and their expenses, sacred or profane,
circulated in various channels for the emolument of
the Romans.
Such powerful motives should have
firmly attached the voluntary and pious obedience
of the Roman people to their spiritual and temporal
father. But the operation of prejudice and interest
is often disturbed by the sallies of ungovernable
passion. The Indian who fells the tree, that
he may gather the fruit, and the Arab who plunders
the caravans of commerce, are actuated by the same
impulse of savage nature, which overlooks the future
in the present, and relinquishes for momentary rapine
the long and secure possession of the most important
blessings. And it was thus, that the shrine of
St. Peter was profaned by the thoughtless Romans;
who pillaged the offerings, and wounded the pilgrims,
without computing the number and value of similar visits,
which they prevented by their inhospitable sacrilege.
Even the influence of superstition is fluctuating
and precarious; and the slave, whose reason is subdued,
will often be delivered by his avarice or pride.
A credulous devotion for the fables and oracles of
the priesthood most powerfully acts on the mind of
a Barbarian; yet such a mind is the least capable
of preferring imagination to sense, of sacrificing
to a distant motive, to an invisible, perhaps an ideal,
object, the appetites and interests of the present
world. In the vigor of health and youth, his
practice will perpetually contradict his belief; till
the pressure of age, or sickness, or calamity, awakens
his terrors, and compels him to satisfy the double
debt of piety and remorse. I have already observed,
that the modern times of religious indifference are
the most favorable to the peace and security of the
clergy. Under the reign of superstition, they
had much to hope from the ignorance, and much to fear
from the violence, of mankind. The wealth, whose
constant increase must have rendered them the sole
proprietors of the earth, was alternately bestowed
by the repentant father and plundered by the rapacious
son: their persons were adored or violated; and
the same idol, by the hands of the same votaries,
was placed on the altar, or trampled in the dust.
In the feudal system of Europe, arms were the title
of distinction and the measure of allegiance; and
amidst their tumult, the still voice of law and reason
was seldom heard or obeyed. The turbulent Romans
disdained the yoke, and insulted the impotence, of
their bishop: nor would his education or
character allow him to exercise, with decency or effect,
the power of the sword. The motives of his election
and the frailties of his life were exposed to their
familiar observation; and proximity must diminish
the reverence which his name and his decrees impressed
on a barbarous world. This difference has not
escaped the notice of our philosophic historian:
“Though the name and authority of the court
of Rome were so terrible in the remote countries of
Europe, which were sunk in profound ignorance, and
were entirely unacquainted with its character and
conduct, the pope was so little revered at home, that
his inveterate enemies surrounded the gates of Rome
itself, and even controlled his government in that
city; and the ambassadors, who, from a distant extremity
of Europe, carried to him the humble, or rather abject,
submissions of the greatest potentate of the age, found
the utmost difficulty to make their way to him, and
to throw themselves at his feet.”
Since the primitive times, the wealth
of the popes was exposed to envy, their powers to
opposition, and their persons to violence. But
the long hostility of the mitre and the crown increased
the numbers, and inflamed the passions, of their enemies.
The deadly factions of the Guelphs and Ghibelines,
so fatal to Italy, could never be embraced with truth
or constancy by the Romans, the subjects and adversaries
both of the bishop and emperor; but their support
was solicited by both parties, and they alternately
displayed in their banners the keys of St. Peter and
the German eagle. Gregory the Seventh, who may
be adored or detested as the founder of the papal
monarchy, was driven from Rome, and died in exile
at Salerno. Six-and-thirty of his successors,
till their retreat to Avignon, maintained an
unequal contest with the Romans: their age and
dignity were often violated; and the churches, in the
solemn rites of religion, were polluted with sedition
and murder. A repetition of such capricious
brutality, without connection or design, would be
tedious and disgusting; and I shall content myself
with some events of the twelfth century, which represent
the state of the popes and the city. On Holy
Thursday, while Paschal officiated before the altar,
he was interrupted by the clamors of the multitude,
who imperiously demanded the confirmation of a favorite
magistrate. His silence exasperated their fury;
his pious refusal to mingle the affairs of earth and
heaven was encountered with menaces, and oaths, that
he should be the cause and the witness of the public
ruin. During the festival of Easter, while the
bishop and the clergy, barefooted and in procession,
visited the tombs of the martyrs, they were twice assaulted,
at the bridge of St. Angelo, and before the Capitol,
with volleys of stones and darts. The houses
of his adherents were levelled with the ground:
Paschal escaped with difficulty and danger; he levied
an army in the patrimony of St. Peter; and his last
days were embittered by suffering and inflicting the
calamities of civil war. The scenes that followed
the election of his successor Gelasius the
Second were still more scandalous to the church and
city. Cencio Frangipani, a potent and
factious baron, burst into the assembly furious and
in arms: the cardinals were stripped, beaten,
and trampled under foot; and he seized, without pity
or respect, the vicar of Christ by the throat.
Gelasius was dragged by the hair along the ground,
buffeted with blows, wounded with spurs, and bound
with an iron chain in the house of his brutal tyrant.
An insurrection of the people delivered their bishop:
the rival families opposed the violence of the Frangipani;
and Cencio, who sued for pardon, repented of
the failure, rather than of the guilt, of his enterprise.
Not many days had elapsed, when the pope was again
assaulted at the altar. While his friends and
enemies were engaged in a bloody contest, he escaped
in his sacerdotal garments. In this unworthy flight,
which excited the compassion of the Roman matrons,
his attendants were scattered or unhorsed; and, in
the fields behind the church of St. Peter, his successor
was found alone and half dead with fear and fatigue.
Shaking the dust from his feet, the apostle
withdrew from a city in which his dignity was insulted
and his person was endangered; and the vanity of sacerdotal
ambition is revealed in the involuntary confession,
that one emperor was more tolerable than twenty.
These examples might suffice; but I cannot forget
the sufferings of two pontiffs of the same age, the
second and third of the name of Lucius. The former,
as he ascended in battle array to assault the Capitol,
was struck on the temple by a stone, and expired in
a few days. The latter was severely wounded in
the person of his servants. In a civil commotion,
several of his priests had been made prisoners; and
the inhuman Romans, reserving one as a guide for his
brethren, put out their eyes, crowned them with ludicrous
mitres, mounted them on asses with their faces
towards the tail, and extorted an oath, that, in this
wretched condition, they should offer themselves as
a lesson to the head of the church. Hope or fear,
lassitude or remorse, the characters of the men, and
the circumstances of the times, might sometimes obtain
an interval of peace and obedience; and the pope was
restored with joyful acclamations to the Lateran
or Vatican, from whence he had been driven with threats
and violence. But the root of mischief was deep
and perennial; and a momentary calm was preceded and
followed by such tempests as had almost sunk the bark
of St. Peter. Rome continually presented the
aspect of war and discord: the churches and palaces
were fortified and assaulted by the factions and families;
and, after giving peace to Europe, Calistus the Second
alone had resolution and power to prohibit the use
of private arms in the metropolis. Among the nations
who revered the apostolic throne, the tumults of Rome
provoked a general indignation; and in a letter to
his disciple Eugenius the Third, St. Bernard, with
the sharpness of his wit and zeal, has stigmatized
the vices of the rebellious people. “Who
is ignorant,” says the monk of Clairvaux, “of
the vanity and arrogance of the Romans? a nation nursed
in sedition, untractable, and scorning to obey, unless
they are too feeble to resist. When they promise
to serve, they aspire to reign; if they swear allegiance,
they watch the opportunity of revolt; yet they vent
their discontent in loud clamors, if your doors, or
your counsels, are shut against them. Dexterous
in mischief, they have never learned the science of
doing good. Odious to earth and heaven, impious
to God, seditious among themselves, jealous of their
neighbors, inhuman to strangers, they love no one,
by no one are they beloved; and while they wish to
inspire fear, they live in base and continual apprehension.
They will not submit; they know not how to govern faithless
to their superiors, intolerable to their equals, ungrateful
to their benefactors, and alike impudent in their
demands and their refusals. Lofty in promise,
poor in execution; adulation and calumny, perfidy and
treason, are the familiar arts of their policy.”
Surely this dark portrait is not colored by the pencil
of Christian charity; yet the features, however
harsh or ugly, express a lively resemblance of the
Roman of the twelfth century.
The Jews had rejected the Christ when
he appeared among them in a plebeian character; and
the Romans might plead their ignorance of his vicar
when he assumed the pomp and pride of a temporal sovereign.
In the busy age of the crusades, some sparks of curiosity
and reason were rekindled in the Western world:
the heresy of Bulgaria, the Paulician sect, was successfully
transplanted into the soil of Italy and France; the
Gnostic visions were mingled with the simplicity of
the gospel; and the enemies of the clergy reconciled
their passions with their conscience, the desire of
freedom with the profession of piety. The trumpet
of Roman liberty was first sounded by Arnold of Brescia,
whose promotion in the church was confined to
the lowest rank, and who wore the monastic habit rather
as a garb of poverty than as a uniform of obedience.
His adversaries could not deny the wit and eloquence
which they severely felt; they confess with reluctance
the specious purity of his morals; and his errors
were recommended to the public by a mixture of important
and beneficial truths. In his theological studies,
he had been the disciple of the famous and unfortunate
Abelard, who was likewise involved in the suspicion
of heresy: but the lover of Eloisa was of a soft
and flexible nature; and his ecclesiastic judges were
edified and disarmed by the humility of his repentance.
From this master, Arnold most probably imbibed some
metaphysical definitions of the Trinity, repugnant
to the taste of the times: his ideas of baptism
and the eucharist are loosely censured; but a political
heresy was the source of his fame and misfortunes.
He presumed to quote the declaration of Christ, that
his kingdom is not of this world: he boldly maintained,
that the sword and the sceptre were intrusted to the
civil magistrate; that temporal honors and possessions
were lawfully vested in secular persons; that the
abbots, the bishops, and the pope himself, must renounce
either their state or their salvation; and that after
the loss of their revenues, the voluntary tithes and
oblations of the faithful would suffice, not indeed
for luxury and avarice, but for a frugal life in the
exercise of spiritual labors. During a short time,
the preacher was revered as a patriot; and the discontent,
or revolt, of Brescia against her bishop, was the
first fruits of his dangerous lessons. But the
favor of the people is less permanent than the resentment
of the priest; and after the heresy of Arnold had
been condemned by Innocent the Second, in the
general council of the Lateran, the magistrates themselves
were urged by prejudice and fear to execute the sentence
of the church. Italy could no longer afford a
refuge; and the disciple of Abelard escaped beyond
the Alps, till he found a safe and hospitable shelter
in Zurich, now the first of the Swiss cantons.
From a Roman station, a royal villa, a chapter
of noble virgins, Zurich had gradually increased to
a free and flourishing city; where the appeals of
the Milanese were sometimes tried by the Imperial commissaries.
In an age less ripe for reformation, the precursor
of Zuinglius was heard with applause: a brave
and simple people imbibed, and long retained, the
color of his opinions; and his art, or merit, seduced
the bishop of Constance, and even the pope’s
legate, who forgot, for his sake, the interest of
their master and their order. Their tardy zeal
was quickened by the fierce exhortations of St. Bernard;
and the enemy of the church was driven by persecution
to the desperate measures of erecting his standard
in Rome itself, in the face of the successor of St.
Peter.
We may applaud the dexterity and correctness
of Ligurinus, who turns the unpoetical name of Innocent
II. into a compliment.]
Part II.
Yet the courage of Arnold was not
devoid of discretion: he was protected, and had
perhaps been invited, by the nobles and people; and
in the service of freedom, his eloquence thundered
over the seven hills. Blending in the same discourse
the texts of Livy and St. Paul, uniting the motives
of gospel, and of classic, enthusiasm, he admonished
the Romans, how strangely their patience and the vices
of the clergy had degenerated from the primitive times
of the church and the city. He exhorted them
to assert the inalienable rights of men and Christians;
to restore the laws and magistrates of the republic;
to respect the name of the emperor; but to
confine their shepherd to the spiritual government
of his flock. Nor could his spiritual government
escape the censure and control of the reformer; and
the inferior clergy were taught by his lessons to
resist the cardinals, who had usurped a despotic command
over the twenty-eight regions or parishes of Rome.
The revolution was not accomplished without rapine
and violence, the diffusion of blood and the demolition
of houses: the victorious faction was enriched
with the spoils of the clergy and the adverse nobles.
Arnold of Brescia enjoyed, or deplored, the effects
of his mission: his reign continued above ten
years, while two popes, Innocent the Second and Anastasius
the Fourth, either trembled in the Vatican, or wandered
as exiles in the adjacent cities. They were succeeded
by a more vigorous and fortunate pontiff. Adrian
the Fourth, the only Englishman who has ascended
the throne of St. Peter; and whose merit emerged from
the mean condition of a monk, and almost a beggar,
in the monastery of St. Albans. On the first
provocation, of a cardinal killed or wounded in the
streets, he cast an interdict on the guilty people;
and from Christmas to Easter, Rome was deprived of
the real or imaginary comforts of religious worship.
The Romans had despised their temporal prince:
they submitted with grief and terror to the censures
of their spiritual father: their guilt was expiated
by penance, and the banishment of the seditious preacher
was the price of their absolution. But the revenge
of Adrian was yet unsatisfied, and the approaching
coronation of Frederic Barbarossa was fatal to the
bold reformer, who had offended, though not in an
equal degree, the heads of the church and state.
In their interview at Viterbo, the pope represented
to the emperor the furious, ungovernable spirit of
the Romans; the insults, the injuries, the fears,
to which his person and his clergy were continually
exposed; and the pernicious tendency of the heresy
of Arnold, which must subvert the principles of civil,
as well as ecclesiastical, subordination. Frederic
was convinced by these arguments, or tempted by the
desire of the Imperial crown: in the balance
of ambition, the innocence or life of an individual
is of small account; and their common enemy was sacrificed
to a moment of political concord. After his retreat
from Rome, Arnold had been protected by the viscounts
of Campania, from whom he was extorted by the power
of Cæsar: the præfect of the city pronounced
his sentence: the martyr of freedom was burned
alive in the presence of a careless and ungrateful
people; and his ashes were cast into the Tyber, lest
the heretics should collect and worship the relics
of their master. The clergy triumphed in his
death: with his ashes, his sect was dispersed;
his memory still lived in the minds of the Romans.
From his school they had probably derived a new article
of faith, that the metropolis of the Catholic church
is exempt from the penalties of excommunication and
interdict. Their bishops might argue, that the
supreme jurisdiction, which they exercised over kings
and nations, more especially embraced the city and
diocese of the prince of the apostles. But they
preached to the winds, and the same principle that
weakened the effect, must temper the abuse, of the
thunders of the Vatican.
The love of ancient freedom has encouraged
a belief that as early as the tenth century, in their
first struggles against the Saxon Othos, the commonwealth
was vindicated and restored by the senate and people
of Rome; that two consuls were annually elected among
the nobles, and that ten or twelve plebeian magistrates
revived the name and office of the tribunes of the
commons. But this venerable structure disappears
before the light of criticism. In the darkness
of the middle ages, the appellations of senators,
of consuls, of the sons of consuls, may sometimes
be discovered. They were bestowed by the emperors,
or assumed by the most powerful citizens, to denote
their rank, their honors, and perhaps the claim
of a pure and patrician descent: but they float
on the surface, without a series or a substance, the
titles of men, not the orders of government;
and it is only from the year of Christ one thousand
one hundred and forty-four that the establishment
of the senate is dated, as a glorious æra, in
the acts of the city. A new constitution was
hastily framed by private ambition or popular enthusiasm;
nor could Rome, in the twelfth century, produce an
antiquary to explain, or a legislator to restore,
the harmony and proportions of the ancient model.
The assembly of a free, of an armed, people, will
ever speak in loud and weighty acclamations.
But the regular distribution of the thirty-five tribes,
the nice balance of the wealth and numbers of the
centuries, the debates of the adverse orators, and
the slow operations of votes and ballots, could not
easily be adapted by a blind multitude, ignorant of
the arts, and insensible of the benefits, of legal
government. It was proposed by Arnold to revive
and discriminate the equestrian order; but what could
be the motive or measure of such distinction?
The pecuniary qualification of the knights must have
been reduced to the poverty of the times: those
times no longer required their civil functions of
judges and farmers of the revenue; and their primitive
duty, their military service on horseback, was more
nobly supplied by feudal tenures and the spirit of
chivalry. The jurisprudence of the republic was
useless and unknown: the nations and families
of Italy who lived under the Roman and Barbaric laws
were insensibly mingled in a common mass; and some
faint tradition, some imperfect fragments, preserved
the memory of the Code and Pandects of Justinian.
With their liberty the Romans might doubtless have
restored the appellation and office of consuls; had
they not disdained a title so promiscuously adopted
in the Italian cities, that it has finally settled
on the humble station of the agents of commerce in
a foreign land. But the rights of the tribunes,
the formidable word that arrested the public counsels,
suppose or must produce a legitimate democracy.
The old patricians were the subjects, the modern barons
the tyrants, of the state; nor would the enemies of
peace and order, who insulted the vicar of Christ,
have long respected the unarmed sanctity of a plebeian
magistrate.
In the revolution of the twelfth century,
which gave a new existence and æra to Rome,
we may observe the real and important events that marked
or confirmed her political independence. I. The
Capitoline hill, one of her seven éminences,
is about four hundred yards in length, and two
hundred in breadth. A flight of a hundred steps
led to the summit of the Tarpeian rock; and far steeper
was the ascent before the declivities had been smoothed
and the precipices filled by the ruins of fallen edifices.
From the earliest ages, the Capitol had been used as
a temple in peace, a fortress in war: after the
loss of the city, it maintained a siege against the
victorious Gauls, and the sanctuary of the empire
was occupied, assaulted, and burnt, in the civil wars
of Vitellius and Vespasian. The temples
of Jupiter and his kindred deities had crumbled into
dust; their place was supplied by monasteries and houses;
and the solid walls, the long and shelving pórticos,
were decayed or ruined by the lapse of time.
It was the first act of the Romans, an act of freedom,
to restore the strength, though not the beauty, of
the Capitol; to fortify the seat of their arms and
counsels; and as often as they ascended the hill,
the coldest minds must have glowed with the remembrance
of their ancestors. II. The first Cæsars
had been invested with the exclusive coinage of the
gold and silver; to the senate they abandoned the
baser metal of bronze or copper: the emblems
and legends were inscribed on a more ample field by
the genius of flattery; and the prince was relieved
from the care of celebrating his own virtues.
The successors of Diocletian despised even the flattery
of the senate: their royal officers at Rome,
and in the provinces, assumed the sole direction of
the mint; and the same prerogative was inherited by
the Gothic kings of Italy, and the long series of the
Greek, the French, and the German dynasties.
After an abdication of eight hundred years, the Roman
senate asserted this honorable and lucrative privilege;
which was tacitly renounced by the popes, from Paschal
the Second to the establishment of their residence
beyond the Alps. Some of these republican coins
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are shown in
the cabinets of the curious. On one of these,
a gold medal, Christ is depictured holding in his
left hand a book with this inscription: “The
vow of the Roman senate and people: Rome the capital
of the world;” on the reverse, St. Peter delivering
a banner to a kneeling senator in his cap and gown,
with the name and arms of his family impressed on a
shield. III. With the empire, the præfect
of the city had declined to a municipal officer; yet
he still exercised in the last appeal the civil and
criminal jurisdiction; and a drawn sword, which he
received from the successors of Otho, was the mode
of his investiture and the emblem of his functions.
The dignity was confined to the noble families
of Rome: the choice of the people was ratified
by the pope; but a triple oath of fidelity must have
often embarrassed the præfect in the conflict of
adverse duties. A servant, in whom they possessed
but a third share, was dismissed by the independent
Romans: in his place they elected a patrician;
but this title, which Charlemagne had not disdained,
was too lofty for a citizen or a subject; and, after
the first fervor of rebellion, they consented without
reluctance to the restoration of the præfect.
About fifty years after this event, Innocent the Third,
the most ambitious, or at least the most fortunate,
of the Pontiffs, delivered the Romans and himself
from this badge of foreign dominion: he invested
the præfect with a banner instead of a sword, and
absolved him from all dependence of oaths or service
to the German emperors. In his place an ecclesiastic,
a present or future cardinal, was named by the pope
to the civil government of Rome; but his jurisdiction
has been reduced to a narrow compass; and in the days
of freedom, the right or exercise was derived from
the senate and people. IV. After the revival
of the senate, the conscript fathers (if I may
use the expression) were invested with the legislative
and executive power; but their views seldom reached
beyond the present day; and that day was most frequently
disturbed by violence and tumult. In its utmost
plenitude, the order or assembly consisted of fifty-six
senators, the most eminent of whom were distinguished
by the title of counsellors: they were nominated,
perhaps annually, by the people; and a previous choice
of their electors, ten persons in each region, or parish,
might afford a basis for a free and permanent constitution.
The popes, who in this tempest submitted rather to
bend than to break, confirmed by treaty the establishment
and privileges of the senate, and expected from time,
peace, and religion, the restoration of their government.
The motives of public and private interest might sometimes
draw from the Romans an occasional and temporary sacrifice
of their claims; and they renewed their oath of allegiance
to the successor of St. Peter and Constantine, the
lawful head of the church and the republic.
The union and vigor of a public council
was dissolved in a lawless city; and the Romans soon
adopted a more strong and simple mode of administration.
They condensed the name and authority of the senate
in a single magistrate, or two colleagues; and as
they were changed at the end of a year, or of six
months, the greatness of the trust was compensated
by the shortness of the term. But in this transient
reign, the senators of Rome indulged their avarice
and ambition: their justice was perverted by
the interest of their family and faction; and as they
punished only their enemies, they were obeyed only
by their adherents. Anarchy, no longer tempered
by the pastoral care of their bishop, admonished the
Romans that they were incapable of governing themselves;
and they sought abroad those blessings which they were
hopeless of finding at home. In the same age,
and from the same motives, most of the Italian republics
were prompted to embrace a measure, which, however
strange it may seem, was adapted to their situation,
and productive of the most salutary effects.
They chose, in some foreign but friendly city, an
impartial magistrate of noble birth and unblemished
character, a soldier and a statesman, recommended
by the voice of fame and his country, to whom they
delegated for a time the supreme administration of
peace and war. The compact between the governor
and the governed was sealed with oaths and subscriptions;
and the duration of his power, the measure of his
stipend, the nature of their mutual obligations, were
defined with scrupulous precision. They swore
to obey him as their lawful superior: he pledged
his faith to unite the indifference of a stranger
with the zeal of a patriot. At his choice, four
or six knights and civilians, his assessors in arms
and justice, attended the Podesta, who
maintained at his own expense a decent retinue of
servants and horses: his wife, his son, his brother,
who might bias the affections of the judge, were left
behind: during the exercise of his office he
was not permitted to purchase land, to contract an
alliance, or even to accept an invitation in the house
of a citizen; nor could he honorably depart till he
had satisfied the complaints that might be urged against
his government.
Part III.
It was thus, about the middle of the
thirteenth century, that the Romans called from Bologna
the senator Brancaleone, whose fame and merit
have been rescued from oblivion by the pen of an English
historian. A just anxiety for his reputation,
a clear foresight of the difficulties of the task,
had engaged him to refuse the honor of their choice:
the statutes of Rome were suspended, and his office
prolonged to the term of three years. By the
guilty and licentious he was accused as cruel; by
the clergy he was suspected as partial; but the friends
of peace and order applauded the firm and upright
magistrate by whom those blessings were restored.
No criminals were so powerful as to brave, so obscure
as to elude, the justice of the senator. By his
sentence two nobles of the Annibaldi family were executed
on a gibbet; and he inexorably demolished, in the
city and neighborhood, one hundred and forty towers,
the strong shelters of rapine and mischief. The
bishop, as a simple bishop, was compelled to reside
in his diocese; and the standard of Brancaleone was
displayed in the field with terror and effect.
His services were repaid by the ingratitude of a people
unworthy of the happiness which they enjoyed.
By the public robbers, whom he had provoked for their
sake, the Romans were excited to depose and imprison
their benefactor; nor would his life have been spared,
if Bologna had not possessed a pledge for his safety.
Before his departure, the prudent senator had required
the exchange of thirty hostages of the noblest families
of Rome: on the news of his danger, and at the
prayer of his wife, they were more strictly guarded;
and Bologna, in the cause of honor, sustained the
thunders of a papal interdict. This generous
resistance allowed the Romans to compare the present
with the past; and Brancaleone was conducted from
the prison to the Capitol amidst the acclamations
of a repentant people. The remainder of his government
was firm and fortunate; and as soon as envy was appeased
by death, his head, enclosed in a precious vase, was
deposited on a lofty column of marble.
The impotence of reason and virtue
recommended in Italy a more effectual choice:
instead of a private citizen, to whom they yielded
a voluntary and precarious obedience, the Romans elected
for their senator some prince of independent power,
who could defend them from their enemies and themselves.
Charles of Anjou and Provence, the most ambitious and
warlike monarch of the age, accepted at the same time
the kingdom of Naples from the pope, and the office
of senator from the Roman people. As he passed
through the city, in his road to victory, he received
their oath of allegiance, lodged in the Lateran palace,
and smoothed in a short visit the harsh features of
his despotic character. Yet even Charles was
exposed to the inconstancy of the people, who saluted
with the same acclamations the passage of his
rival, the unfortunate Conradin; and a powerful avenger,
who reigned in the Capitol, alarmed the fears and
jealousy of the popes. The absolute term of his
life was superseded by a renewal every third year;
and the enmity of Nicholas the Third obliged the Sicilian
king to abdicate the government of Rome. In his
bull, a perpetual law, the imperious pontiff asserts
the truth, validity, and use of the donation of Constantine,
not less essential to the peace of the city than to
the independence of the church; establishes the annual
election of the senator; and formally disqualifies
all emperors, kings, princes, and persons of an eminent
and conspicuous rank. This prohibitory clause
was repealed in his own behalf by Martin the Fourth,
who humbly solicited the suffrage of the Romans.
In the presence, and by the authority, of the people,
two electors conferred, not on the pope, but on the
noble and faithful Martin, the dignity of senator,
and the supreme administration of the republic,
to hold during his natural life, and to exercise at
pleasure by himself or his deputies. About fifty
years afterwards, the same title was granted to the
emperor Lewis of Bavaria; and the liberty of Rome
was acknowledged by her two sovereigns, who accepted
a municipal office in the government of their own
metropolis.
In the first moments of rebellion,
when Arnold of Brescia had inflamed their minds against
the church, the Romans artfully labored to conciliate
the favor of the empire, and to recommend their merit
and services in the cause of Cæsar. The style
of their ambassadors to Conrad the Third and Frederic
the First is a mixture of flattery and pride, the
tradition and the ignorance of their own history.
After some complaint of his silence and neglect, they
exhort the former of these princes to pass the Alps,
and assume from their hands the Imperial crown.
“We beseech your majesty not to disdain the humility
of your sons and vassals, not to listen to the accusations
of our common enemies; who calumniate the senate as
hostile to your throne, who sow the seeds of discord,
that they may reap the harvest of destruction.
The pope and the Sicilian are united in an
impious league to oppose our liberty and your
coronation. With the blessing of God, our zeal
and courage has hitherto defeated their attempts.
Of their powerful and factious adherents, more especially
the Frangipani, we have taken by assault the houses
and turrets: some of these are occupied by our
troops, and some are levelled with the ground.
The Milvian bridge, which they had broken, is restored
and fortified for your safe passage; and your army
may enter the city without being annoyed from the
castle of St. Angelo. All that we have done,
and all that we design, is for your honor and service,
in the loyal hope, that you will speedily appear in
person, to vindicate those rights which have been
invaded by the clergy, to revive the dignity of the
empire, and to surpass the fame and glory of your
predecessors. May you fix your residence in Rome,
the capital of the world; give laws to Italy, and
the Teutonic kingdom; and imitate the example of Constantine
and Justinian, who, by the vigor of the senate
and people, obtained the sceptre of the earth.”
But these splendid and fallacious wishes were
not cherished by Conrad the Franconian, whose eyes
were fixed on the Holy Land, and who died without
visiting Rome soon after his return from the Holy Land.
His nephew and successor, Frederic
Barbarossa, was more ambitious of the Imperial crown;
nor had any of the successors of Otho acquired such
absolute sway over the kingdom of Italy. Surrounded
by his ecclesiastical and secular princes, he gave
audience in his camp at Sutri to the ambassadors of
Rome, who thus addressed him in a free and florid
oration: “Incline your ear to the queen
of cities; approach with a peaceful and friendly mind
the precincts of Rome, which has cast away the yoke
of the clergy, and is impatient to crown her legitimate
emperor. Under your auspicious influence, may
the primitive times be restored. Assert the prerogatives
of the eternal city, and reduce under her monarchy
the insolence of the world. You are not ignorant,
that, in former ages, by the wisdom of the senate,
by the valor and discipline of the equestrian order,
she extended her victorious arms to the East and West,
beyond the Alps, and over the islands of the ocean.
By our sins, in the absence of our princes, the noble
institution of the senate has sunk in oblivion; and
with our prudence, our strength has likewise decreased.
We have revived the senate, and the equestrian order:
the counsels of the one, the arms of the other, will
be devoted to your person and the service of the empire.
Do you not hear the language of the Roman matron?
You were a guest, I have adopted you as a citizen;
a Transalpine stranger, I have elected you for my
sovereign; and given you myself, and all that
is mine. Your first and most sacred duty is to
swear and subscribe, that you will shed your blood
for the republic; that you will maintain in peace
and justice the laws of the city and the charters
of your predecessors; and that you will reward with
five thousand pounds of silver the faithful senators
who shall proclaim your titles in the Capitol.
With the name, assume the character, of Augustus.”
The flowers of Latin rhetoric were not yet exhausted;
but Frederic, impatient of their vanity, interrupted
the orators in the high tone of royalty and conquest.
“Famous indeed have been the fortitude and wisdom
of the ancient Romans; but your speech is not seasoned
with wisdom, and I could wish that fortitude were conspicuous
in your actions. Like all sublunary things, Rome
has felt the vicissitudes of time and fortune.
Your noblest families were translated to the East,
to the royal city of Constantine; and the remains of
your strength and freedom have long since been exhausted
by the Greeks and Franks. Are you desirous of
beholding the ancient glory of Rome, the gravity of
the senate, the spirit of the knights, the discipline
of the camp, the valor of the legions? you will find
them in the German republic. It is not empire,
naked and alone, the ornaments and virtues of empire
have likewise migrated beyond the Alps to a more deserving
people: they will be employed in your defence,
but they claim your obedience. You pretend that
myself or my predecessors have been invited by the
Romans: you mistake the word; they were not invited,
they were implored. From its foreign and domestic
tyrants, the city was rescued by Charlemagne and Otho,
whose ashes repose in our country; and their dominion
was the price of your deliverance. Under that
dominion your ancestors lived and died. I claim
by the right of inheritance and possession, and who
shall dare to extort you from my hands? Is the
hand of the Franks and Germans enfeebled by age?
Am I vanquished? Am I a captive? Am I not
encompassed with the banners of a potent and invincible
army? You impose conditions on your master; you
require oaths: if the conditions are just, an
oath is superfluous; if unjust, it is criminal.
Can you doubt my equity? It is extended to the
meanest of my subjects. Will not my sword be
unsheathed in the defence of the Capitol? By that
sword the northern kingdom of Denmark has been restored
to the Roman empire. You prescribe the measure
and the objects of my bounty, which flows in a copious
but a voluntary stream. All will be given to patient
merit; all will be denied to rude importunity.”
Neither the emperor nor the senate could maintain
these lofty pretensions of dominion and liberty.
United with the pope, and suspicious of the Romans,
Frederic continued his march to the Vatican; his coronation
was disturbed by a sally from the Capitol; and if
the numbers and valor of the Germans prevailed in
the bloody conflict, he could not safely encamp in
the presence of a city of which he styled himself
the sovereign. About twelve years afterwards,
he besieged Rome, to seat an antipope in the chair
of St. Peter; and twelve Pisan galleys were introduced
into the Tyber: but the senate and people were
saved by the arts of negotiation and the progress
of disease; nor did Frederic or his successors reiterate
the hostile attempt. Their laborious reigns were
exercised by the popes, the crusades, and the independence
of Lombardy and Germany: they courted the alliance
of the Romans; and Frederic the Second offered in the
Capitol the great standard, the Caroccio of
Milan. After the extinction of the house of Swabia,
they were banished beyond the Alps: and their
last coronations betrayed the impotence and poverty
of the Teutonic Cæsars.
Under the reign of Adrian, when the
empire extended from the Euphrates to the ocean, from
Mount Atlas to the Grampian hills, a fanciful historian
amused the Romans with the picture of their ancient
wars. “There was a time,” says Florus,
“when Tibur and Præneste, our summer retreats,
were the objects of hostile vows in the Capitol, when
we dreaded the shades of the Arician groves, when
we could triumph without a blush over the nameless
villages of the Sabines and Latins, and even
Corioli could afford a title not unworthy of a
victorious general.” The pride of his contemporaries
was gratified by the contrast of the past and the
present: they would have been humbled by the prospect
of futurity; by the prediction, that after a thousand
years, Rome, despoiled of empire, and contracted to
her primæval limits, would renew the same hostilities,
on the same ground which was then decorated with her
villas and gardens. The adjacent territory on
either side of the Tyber was always claimed, and sometimes
possessed, as the patrimony of St. Peter; but the
barons assumed a lawless independence, and the cities
too faithfully copied the revolt and discord of the
metropolis. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
the Romans incessantly labored to reduce or destroy
the contumacious vassals of the church and senate;
and if their headstrong and selfish ambition was moderated
by the pope, he often encouraged their zeal by the
alliance of his spiritual arms. Their warfare
was that of the first consuls and dictators, who were
taken from the plough. The assembled in arms
at the foot of the Capitol; sallied from the gates,
plundered or burnt the harvests of their neighbors,
engaged in tumultuary conflict, and returned home after
an expedition of fifteen or twenty days. Their
sieges were tedious and unskilful: in the use
of victory, they indulged the meaner passions of jealousy
and revenge; and instead of adopting the valor, they
trampled on the misfortunes, of their adversaries.
The captives, in their shirts, with a rope round their
necks, solicited their pardon: the fortifications,
and even the buildings, of the rival cities, were demolished,
and the inhabitants were scattered in the adjacent
villages. It was thus that the seats of the cardinal
bishops, Porto, Ostia, Albanum, Tusculum, Præneste,
and Tibur or Tivoli, were successively overthrown by
the ferocious hostility of the Romans. Of these,
Porto and Ostia, the two keys of the Tyber, are
still vacant and desolate: the marshy and unwholesome
banks are peopled with herds of buffaloes, and the
river is lost to every purpose of navigation and trade.
The hills, which afford a shady retirement from the
autumnal heats, have again smiled with the blessings
of peace; Frescati has arisen near the ruins of Tusculum;
Tibur or Tivoli has resumed the honors of a city,
and the meaner towns of Albano and Palestrina are
decorated with the villas of the cardinals and princes
of Rome. In the work of destruction, the ambition
of the Romans was often checked and repulsed by the
neighboring cities and their allies: in the first
siege of Tibur, they were driven from their camp;
and the battles of Tusculum and Viterbo might
be compared in their relative state to the memorable
fields of Thrasymene and Cannæ. In the first
of these petty wars, thirty thousand Romans were overthrown
by a thousand German horse, whom Frederic Barbarossa
had detached to the relief of Tusculum: and if
we number the slain at three, the prisoners at two,
thousand, we shall embrace the most authentic and
moderate account. Sixty-eight years afterwards
they marched against Viterbo in the ecclesiastical
state with the whole force of the city; by a rare
coalition the Teutonic eagle was blended, in the adverse
banners, with the keys of St. Peter; and the pope’s
auxiliaries were commanded by a count of Thoulouse
and a bishop of Winchester. The Romans were discomfited
with shame and slaughter: but the English prelate
must have indulged the vanity of a pilgrim, if he
multiplied their numbers to one hundred, and their
loss in the field to thirty, thousand men. Had
the policy of the senate and the discipline of the
legions been restored with the Capitol, the divided
condition of Italy would have offered the fairest
opportunity of a second conquest. But in arms,
the modern Romans were not above, and in arts,
they were far below, the common level of the
neighboring republics. Nor was their warlike spirit
of any long continuance; after some irregular sallies,
they subsided in the national apathy, in the neglect
of military institutions, and in the disgraceful and
dangerous use of foreign mercenaries.
Ambition is a weed of quick and early
vegetation in the vineyard of Christ. Under the
first Christian princes, the chair of St. Peter was
disputed by the votes, the venality, the violence,
of a popular election: the sanctuaries of Rome
were polluted with blood; and, from the third to the
twelfth century, the church was distracted by the
mischief of frequent schisms. As long as the final
appeal was determined by the civil magistrate, these
mischiefs were transient and local: the merits
were tried by equity or favor; nor could the unsuccessful
competitor long disturb the triumph of his rival.
But after the emperors had been divested of their
prerogatives, after a maxim had been established that
the vicar of Christ is amenable to no earthly tribunal,
each vacancy of the holy see might involve Christendom
in controversy and war. The claims of the cardinals
and inferior clergy, of the nobles and people, were
vague and litigious: the freedom of choice was
overruled by the tumults of a city that no longer owned
or obeyed a superior. On the decease of a pope,
two factions proceeded in different churches to a
double election: the number and weight of votes,
the priority of time, the merit of the candidates,
might balance each other: the most respectable
of the clergy were divided; and the distant princes,
who bowed before the spiritual throne, could not distinguish
the spurious, from the legitimate, idol. The emperors
were often the authors of the schism, from the political
motive of opposing a friendly to a hostile pontiff;
and each of the competitors was reduced to suffer
the insults of his enemies, who were not awed by conscience,
and to purchase the support of his adherents, who
were instigated by avarice or ambition a peaceful
and perpetual succession was ascertained by Alexander
the Third, who finally abolished the tumultuary
votes of the clergy and people, and defined the right
of election in the sole college of cardinals.
The three orders of bishops, priests, and deacons,
were assimilated to each other by this important privilege;
the parochial clergy of Rome obtained the first rank
in the hierarchy: they were indifferently chosen
among the nations of Christendom; and the possession
of the richest bénéfices, of the most important
bishoprics, was not incompatible with their title
and office. The senators of the Catholic church,
the coadjutors and legates of the supreme pontiff,
were robed in purple, the symbol of martyrdom or royalty;
they claimed a proud equality with kings; and their
dignity was enhanced by the smallness of their number,
which, till the reign of Leo the Tenth, seldom exceeded
twenty or twenty-five persons. By this wise regulation,
all doubt and scandal were removed, and the root of
schism was so effectually destroyed, that in a period
of six hundred years a double choice has only once
divided the unity of the sacred college. But as
the concurrence of two thirds of the votes had been
made necessary, the election was often delayed by
the private interest and passions of the cardinals;
and while they prolonged their independent reign, the
Christian world was left destitute of a head.
A vacancy of almost three years had preceded the elevation
of George the Tenth, who resolved to prevent the future
abuse; and his bull, after some opposition, has been
consecrated in the code of the canon law. Nine
days are allowed for the obsequies of the deceased
pope, and the arrival of the absent cardinals; on
the tenth, they are imprisoned, each with one domestic,
in a common apartment or conclave, without any
separation of walls or curtains: a small window
is reserved for the introduction of necessaries; but
the door is locked on both sides and guarded by the
magistrates of the city, to seclude them from all correspondence
with the world. If the election be not consummated
in three days, the luxury of their table is contracted
to a single dish at dinner and supper; and after the
eighth day, they are reduced to a scanty allowance
of bread, water, and wine. During the vacancy
of the holy see, the cardinals are prohibited from
touching the revenues, or assuming, unless in some
rare emergency, the government of the church:
all agreements and promises among the electors are
formally annulled; and their integrity is fortified
by their solemn oath and the prayers of the Catholics.
Some articles of inconvenient or superfluous rigor
have been gradually relaxed, but the principle of
confinement is vigorous and entire: they are
still urged, by the personal motives of health and
freedom, to accelerate the moment of their deliverance;
and the improvement of ballot or secret votes has
wrapped the struggles of the conclave in the
silky veil of charity and politeness. By these
institutions the Romans were excluded from the election
of their prince and bishop; and in the fever of wild
and precarious liberty, they seemed insensible of
the loss of this inestimable privilege. The emperor
Lewis of Bavaria revived the example of the great
Otho. After some negotiation with the magistrates,
the Roman people were assembled in the square
before St. Peter’s: the pope of Avignon,
John the Twenty-second, was deposed: the choice
of his successor was ratified by their consent and
applause. They freely voted for a new law, that
their bishop should never be absent more than three
months in the year, and two days’ journey from
the city; and that if he neglected to return on the
third summons, the public servant should be degraded
and dismissed. But Lewis forgot his own debility
and the prejudices of the times: beyond the precincts
of a German camp, his useless phantom was rejected;
the Romans despised their own workmanship; the antipope
implored the mercy of his lawful sovereign; and
the exclusive right of the cardinals was more firmly
established by this unseasonable attack.
Had the election been always held
in the Vatican, the rights of the senate and people
would not have been violated with impunity. But
the Romans forgot, and were forgotten. in the absence
of the successors of Gregory the Seventh, who did
not keep as a divine precept their ordinary residence
in the city and diocese. The care of that diocese
was less important than the government of the universal
church; nor could the popes delight in a city in which
their authority was always opposed, and their person
was often endangered. From the persecution of
the emperors, and the wars of Italy, they escaped
beyond the Alps into the hospitable bosom of France;
from the tumults of Rome they prudently withdrew to
live and die in the more tranquil stations of Anagni,
Perugia, Viterbo, and the adjacent cities. When
the flock was offended or impoverished by the absence
of the shepherd, they were recalled by a stern admonition,
that St. Peter had fixed his chair, not in an obscure
village, but in the capital of the world; by a ferocious
menace, that the Romans would march in arms to destroy
the place and people that should dare to afford them
a retreat. They returned with timorous obedience;
and were saluted with the account of a heavy debt,
of all the losses which their desertion had occasioned,
the hire of lodgings, the sale of provisions, and
the various expenses of servants and strangers who
attended the court. After a short interval of
peace, and perhaps of authority, they were again banished
by new tumults, and again summoned by the imperious
or respectful invitation of the senate. In these
occasional retreats, the exiles and fugitives of the
Vatican were seldom long, or far, distant from the
metropolis; but in the beginning of the fourteenth
century, the apostolic throne was transported, as it
might seem forever, from the Tyber to the Rhône;
and the cause of the transmigration may be deduced
from the furious contest between Boniface the Eighth
and the king of France. The spiritual arms of
excommunication and interdict were repulsed by the
union of the three estates, and the privileges of
the Gallican church; but the pope was not prepared
against the carnal weapons which Philip the Fair had
courage to employ. As the pope resided at Anagni,
without the suspicion of danger, his palace and person
were assaulted by three hundred horse, who had been
secretly levied by William of Nogaret, a French minister,
and Sciarra Colonna, of a noble but hostile family
of Rome. The cardinals fled; the inhabitants of
Anagni were seduced from their allegiance and gratitude;
but the dauntless Boniface, unarmed and alone, seated
himself in his chair, and awaited, like the conscript
fathers of old, the swords of the Gauls.
Nogaret, a foreign adversary, was content to execute
the orders of his master: by the domestic enmity
of Colonna, he was insulted with words and blows;
and during a confinement of three days his life was
threatened by the hardships which they inflicted on
the obstinacy which they provoked. Their strange
delay gave time and courage to the adherents of the
church, who rescued him from sacrilegious violence;
but his imperious soul was wounded in the vital part;
and Boniface expired at Rome in a frenzy of rage and
revenge. His memory is stained with the glaring
vices of avarice and pride; nor has the courage of
a martyr promoted this ecclesiastical champion to
the honors of a saint; a magnanimous sinner, (say
the chronicles of the times,) who entered like a fox,
reigned like a lion, and died like a dog. He was
succeeded by Benedict the Eleventh, the mildest of
mankind. Yet he excommunicated the impious emissaries
of Philip, and devoted the city and people of Anagni
by a tremendous curse, whose effects are still visible
to the eyes of superstition.
Part IV.
After his decease, the tedious and
equal suspense of the conclave was fixed by the dexterity
of the French faction. A specious offer was made
and accepted, that, in the term of forty days, they
would elect one of the three candidates who should
be named by their opponents. The archbishop of
Bourdeaux, a furious enemy of his king and country,
was the first on the list; but his ambition was known;
and his conscience obeyed the calls of fortune and
the commands of a benefactor, who had been informed
by a swift messenger that the choice of a pope was
now in his hands. The terms were regulated in
a private interview; and with such speed and secrecy
was the business transacted, that the unanimous conclave
applauded the elevation of Clement the Fifth.
The cardinals of both parties were soon astonished
by a summons to attend him beyond the Alps; from whence,
as they soon discovered, they must never hope to return.
He was engaged, by promise and affection, to prefer
the residence of France; and, after dragging his court
through Poitou and Gascony, and devouring, by his
expense, the cities and convents on the road, he finally
reposed at Avignon, which flourished above seventy
years the seat of the Roman pontiff and the metropolis
of Christendom. By land, by sea, by the Rhône,
the position of Avignon was on all sides accessible;
the southern provinces of France do not yield to Italy
itself; new palaces arose for the accommodation of
the pope and cardinals; and the arts of luxury were
soon attracted by the treasures of the church.
They were already possessed of the adjacent territory,
the Venaissin county, a populous and fertile spot;
and the sovereignty of Avignon was afterwards purchased
from the youth and distress of Jane, the first queen
of Naples and countess of Provence, for the inadequate
price of fourscore thousand florins. Under
the shadow of a French monarchy, amidst an obedient
people, the popes enjoyed an honorable and tranquil
state, to which they long had been strangers:
but Italy deplored their absence; and Rome, in solitude
and poverty, might repent of the ungovernable freedom
which had driven from the Vatican the successor of
St. Peter. Her repentance was tardy and fruitless:
after the death of the old members, the sacred college
was filled with French cardinals, who beheld Rome
and Italy with abhorrence and contempt, and perpetuated
a series of national, and even provincial, popes,
attached by the most indissoluble ties to their native
country.
The progress of industry had produced
and enriched the Italian republics: the æra
of their liberty is the most flourishing period of
population and agriculture, of manufactures and commerce;
and their mechanic labors were gradually refined into
the arts of elegance and genius. But the position
of Rome was less favorable, the territory less fruitful:
the character of the inhabitants was debased by indolence
and elated by pride; and they fondly conceived that
the tribute of subjects must forever nourish the metropolis
of the church and empire. This prejudice was
encouraged in some degree by the resort of pilgrims
to the shrines of the apostles; and the last legacy
of the popes, the institution of the holy year,
was not less beneficial to the people than to the
clergy. Since the loss of Palestine, the gift
of plenary indulgences, which had been applied to
the crusades, remained without an object; and the
most valuable treasure of the church was sequestered
above eight years from public circulation. A new
channel was opened by the diligence of Boniface the
Eighth, who reconciled the vices of ambition and avarice;
and the pope had sufficient learning to recollect
and revive the secular games which were celebrated
in Rome at the conclusion of every century. To
sound without danger the depth of popular credulity,
a sermon was seasonably pronounced, a report was artfully
scattered, some aged witnesses were produced; and on
the first of January of the year thirteen hundred,
the church of St. Peter was crowded with the faithful,
who demanded the customary indulgence of the holy
time. The pontiff, who watched and irritated their
devout impatience, was soon persuaded by ancient testimony
of the justice of their claim; and he proclaimed a
plenary absolution to all Catholics who, in the course
of that year, and at every similar period, should
respectfully visit the apostolic churches of St. Peter
and St. Paul. The welcome sound was propagated
through Christendom; and at first from the nearest
provinces of Italy, and at length from the remote kingdoms
of Hungary and Britain, the highways were thronged
with a swarm of pilgrims who sought to expiate their
sins in a journey, however costly or laborious, which
was exempt from the perils of military service.
All exceptions of rank or sex, of age or infirmity,
were forgotten in the common transport; and in the
streets and churches many persons were trampled to
death by the eagerness of devotion. The calculation
of their numbers could not be easy nor accurate; and
they have probably been magnified by a dexterous clergy,
well apprised of the contagion of example: yet
we are assured by a judicious historian, who assisted
at the ceremony, that Rome was never replenished with
less than two hundred thousand strangers; and another
spectator has fixed at two millions the total concourse
of the year. A trifling oblation from each individual
would accumulate a royal treasure; and two priests
stood night and day, with rakes in their hands, to
collect, without counting, the heaps of gold and silver
that were poured on the altar of St. Paul. It
was fortunately a season of peace and plenty; and
if forage was scarce, if inns and lodgings were extravagantly
dear, an inexhaustible supply of bread and wine, of
meat and fish, was provided by the policy of Boniface
and the venal hospitality of the Romans. From
a city without trade or industry, all casual riches
will speedily evaporate: but the avarice and
envy of the next generation solicited Clement the Sixth
to anticipate the distant period of the century.
The gracious pontiff complied with their wishes; afforded
Rome this poor consolation for his loss; and justified
the change by the name and practice of the Mosaic
Jubilee. His summons was obeyed; and the number,
zeal, and liberality of the pilgrims did not yield
to the primitive festival. But they encountered
the triple scourge of war, pestilence, and famine:
many wives and virgins were violated in the castles
of Italy; and many strangers were pillaged or murdered
by the savage Romans, no longer moderated by the presence
of their bishops. To the impatience of the popes
we may ascribe the successive reduction to fifty, thirty-three,
and twenty-five years; although the second of these
terms is commensurate with the life of Christ.
The profusion of indulgences, the revolt of the Protestants,
and the decline of superstition, have much diminished
the value of the jubilee; yet even the nineteenth and
last festival was a year of pleasure and profit to
the Romans; and a philosophic smile will not disturb
the triumph of the priest or the happiness of the
people.
In the beginning of the eleventh century,
Italy was exposed to the feudal tyranny, alike oppressive
to the sovereign and the people. The rights of
human nature were vindicated by her numerous republics,
who soon extended their liberty and dominion from
the city to the adjacent country. The sword of
the nobles was broken; their slaves were enfranchised;
their castles were demolished; they assumed the habits
of society and obedience; their ambition was confined
to municipal honors, and in the proudest aristocracy
of Venice on Genoa, each patrician was subject to
the laws. But the feeble and disorderly government
of Rome was unequal to the task of curbing her rebellious
sons, who scorned the authority of the magistrate
within and without the walls. It was no longer
a civil contention between the nobles and plebeians
for the government of the state: the barons asserted
in arms their personal independence; their palaces
and castles were fortified against a siege; and their
private quarrels were maintained by the numbers of
their vassals and retainers. In origin and affection,
they were aliens to their country: and a
genuine Roman, could such have been produced, might
have renounced these haughty strangers, who disdained
the appellation of citizens, and proudly styled themselves
the princes, of Rome. After a dark series of
revolutions, all records of pedigree were lost; the
distinction of surnames was abolished; the blood of
the nations was mingled in a thousand channels; and
the Goths and Lombards, the Greeks and Franks, the
Germans and Normans, had obtained the fairest possessions
by royal bounty, or the prerogative of valor.
These examples might be readily presumed; but the
elevation of a Hebrew race to the rank of senators
and consuls is an event without a parallel in the long
captivity of these miserable exiles. In the time
of Leo the Ninth, a wealthy and learned Jew was converted
to Christianity, and honored at his baptism with the
name of his godfather, the reigning Pope. The
zeal and courage of Peter the son of Leo were signalized
in the cause of Gregory the Seventh, who intrusted
his faithful adherent with the government of Adrian’s
mole, the tower of Crescentius, or, as it is now called,
the castle of St. Angelo. Both the father and
the son were the parents of a numerous progeny:
their riches, the fruits of usury, were shared with
the noblest families of the city; and so extensive
was their alliance, that the grandson of the proselyte
was exalted by the weight of his kindred to the throne
of St. Peter. A majority of the clergy and people
supported his cause: he reigned several years
in the Vatican; and it is only the eloquence of St.
Bernard, and the final triumph of Innocence the Second,
that has branded Anacletus with the epithet of antipope.
After his defeat and death, the posterity of Leo is
no longer conspicuous; and none will be found of the
modern nobles ambitious of descending from a Jewish
stock. It is not my design to enumerate the Roman
families which have failed at different periods, or
those which are continued in different degrees of
splendor to the present time. The old consular
line of the Frangipani discover their name in
the generous act of breaking or dividing bread
in a time of famine; and such benevolence is more
truly glorious than to have enclosed, with their allies
the Corsi, a spacious quarter of the city in
the chains of their fortifications; the Savelli,
as it should seem a Sabine race, have maintained their
original dignity; the obsolete surname of the Capizucchi
is inscribed on the coins of the first senators; the
Conti preserve the honor, without the estate,
of the counts of Signia; and the Annibaldi
must have been very ignorant, or very modest, if they
had not descended from the Carthaginian hero.
But among, perhaps above, the peers
and princes of the city, I distinguish the rival houses
of Colonna and Ursini, whose private story is an essential
part of the annals of modern Rome. I. The name
and arms of Colonna have been the theme of much
doubtful etymology; nor have the orators and antiquarians
overlooked either Trajan’s pillar, or the columns
of Hercules, or the pillar of Christ’s flagellation,
or the luminous column that guided the Israelites
in the desert. Their first historical appearance
in the year eleven hundred and four attests the power
and antiquity, while it explains the simple meaning,
of the name. By the usurpation of Cavæ, the
Colonna provoked the arms of Paschal the Second; but
they lawfully held in the Campagna of Rome the hereditary
fiefs of Zagarola and Colonna; and the
latter of these towns was probably adorned with some
lofty pillar, the relic of a villa or temple.
They likewise possessed one moiety of the neighboring
city of Tusculum, a strong presumption of their descent
from the counts of Tusculum, who in the tenth century
were the tyrants of the apostolic see. According
to their own and the public opinion, the primitive
and remote source was derived from the banks of the
Rhine; and the sovereigns of Germany were not
ashamed of a real or fabulous affinity with a noble
race, which in the revolutions of seven hundred years
has been often illustrated by merit and always by
fortune. About the end of the thirteenth century,
the most powerful branch was composed of an uncle
and six bothers, all conspicuous in arms, or in the
honors of the church. Of these, Peter was elected
senator of Rome, introduced to the Capitol in a triumphal
car, and hailed in some vain acclamations with
the title of Cæsar; while John and Stephen were declared
marquis of Ancona and count of Romagna, by Nicholas
the Fourth, a patron so partial to their family, that
he has been delineated in satirical portraits, imprisoned
as it were in a hollow pillar. After his decease
their haughty behavior provoked the displeasure of
the most implacable of mankind. The two cardinals,
the uncle and the nephew, denied the election of Boniface
the Eighth; and the Colonna were oppressed for a moment
by his temporal and spiritual arms. He proclaimed
a crusade against his personal enemies; their estates
were confiscated; their fortresses on either side
of the Tyber were besieged by the troops of St. Peter
and those of the rival nobles; and after the ruin of
Palestrina or Præneste, their principal seat, the
ground was marked with a ploughshare, the emblem of
perpetual desolation. Degraded, banished, proscribed,
the six brothers, in disguise and danger, wandered
over Europe without renouncing the hope of deliverance
and revenge. In this double hope, the French
court was their surest asylum; they prompted and directed
the enterprise of Philip; and I should praise their
magnanimity, had they respected the misfortune and
courage of the captive tyrant. His civil acts
were annulled by the Roman people, who restored the
honors and possessions of the Colonna; and some estimate
may be formed of their wealth by their losses, of their
losses by the damages of one hundred thousand gold
florins which were granted them against the accomplices
and heirs of the deceased pope. All the spiritual
censures and disqualifications were abolished
by his prudent successors; and the fortune of
the house was more firmly established by this transient
hurricane. The boldness of Sciarra Colonna was
signalized in the captivity of Boniface, and long afterwards
in the coronation of Lewis of Bavaria; and by the
gratitude of the emperor, the pillar in their arms
was encircled with a royal crown. But the first
of the family in fame and merit was the elder Stephen,
whom Petrarch loved and esteemed as a hero superior
to his own times, and not unworthy of ancient Rome.
Persecution and exile displayed to the nations his
abilities in peace and war; in his distress he was
an object, not of pity, but of reverence; the aspect
of danger provoked him to avow his name and country;
and when he was asked, “Where is now your fortress?”
he laid his hand on his heart, and answered, “Here.”
He supported with the same virtue the return of prosperity;
and, till the ruin of his declining age, the ancestors,
the character, and the children of Stephen Colonna,
exalted his dignity in the Roman republic, and at the
court of Avignon. II. The Ursini migrated
from Spoleto; the sons of Ursus, as
they are styled in the twelfth century, from some eminent
person, who is only known as the father of their race.
But they were soon distinguished among the nobles
of Rome, by the number and bravery of their kinsmen,
the strength of their towers, the honors of the senate
and sacred college, and the elevation of two popes,
Celestin the Third and Nicholas the Third, of their
name and lineage. Their riches may be accused
as an early abuse of nepotism: the estates of
St. Peter were alienated in their favor by the liberal
Celestin; and Nicholas was ambitious for their
sake to solicit the alliance of monarchs; to found
new kingdoms in Lombardy and Tuscany; and to invest
them with the perpetual office of senators of Rome.
All that has been observed of the greatness of the
Colonna will likewise redeemed to the glory of the
Ursini, their constant and equal antagonists in the
long hereditary feud, which distracted above two hundred
and fifty years the ecclesiastical state. The
jealously of preeminence and power was the true ground
of their quarrel; but as a specious badge of distinction,
the Colonna embraced the name of Ghibelines and the
party of the empire; the Ursini espoused the title
of Guelphs and the cause of the church. The eagle
and the keys were displayed in their adverse banners;
and the two factions of Italy most furiously raged
when the origin and nature of the dispute were long
since forgotten. After the retreat of the popes
to Avignon they disputed in arms the vacant republic;
and the mischiefs of discord were perpetuated by the
wretched compromise of electing each year two rival
senators. By their private hostilities the city
and country were desolated, and the fluctuating balance
inclined with their alternate success. But none
of either family had fallen by the sword, till the
most renowned champion of the Ursini was surprised
and slain by the younger Stephen Colonna. His
triumph is stained with the reproach of violating
the truce; their defeat was basely avenged by the
assassination, before the church door, of an innocent
boy and his two servants. Yet the victorious Colonna,
with an annual colleague, was declared senator of
Rome during the term of five years. And the muse
of Petrarch inspired a wish, a hope, a prediction,
that the generous youth, the son of his venerable
hero, would restore Rome and Italy to their pristine
glory; that his justice would extirpate the wolves
and lions, the serpents and bears, who labored
to subvert the eternal basis of the marble column.
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