A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY

Click image for larger version.

A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY

(476-1900)

BY

HENRY DWIGHT SEDGWICK

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge

COPYRIGHT 1905 BY HENRY DWIGHT SEDGWICK
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published November 1905

TO
H. D. S., C. D. S., R. M. S., W. E. S.,
A. C. S., F. M. S., and T. S.

O passi graviora ...
... forsan et hæc 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 brief 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 object has been to put in high relief those achievements which make Italy so charming and so interesting to the world, and to give what space was possible to the great men to whom these achievements are due.

H. D. S.

New York, October 1, 1905.

CONTENTS

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 Cæsars by a Barbarian general in the Imperial service, 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 conquerors in the long struggle which they had carried on for centuries with the Roman Empire.

That Empire, at the period of its greatness, embraced all the countries around the Mediterranean Sea; it was the political embodiment of the Mediterranean civilization. In Europe, to the northeast, it reached as far as the Rhine and the Danube; it included England. Beyond the Rhine and the Danube 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 bureaucracy; the other, a collection of tribes of Teutonic blood, bound together in a very simple form of society, and essentially democratic in character.

The Empire, composed of many races, Etruscan, Ligurian, Iberian, Celtic, Basque, Greek, Egyptian, and divers others, had been created and maintained by the military and administrative genius of Rome. Over all these people Roman law and Roman order 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 everywhere 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 Catholic 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, taxes, tribute had flowed into Rome. Even after the seat of government had been removed to Constantinople (A. D. 330), visitors from the new capital 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 laborious life of the freemen of ancient Rome was gone; the regular occupations of production had been abandoned to serfs and slaves; moderate incomes and plain 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 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 exigencies of the Empire grew; great numbers of officials 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 necessity of military action, and then the adult male population constituted the army. Their buildings were of the humblest character, their clothes rude, their arts primitive; they could neither read nor write, and their men cared for little besides hunting and fighting. They were, however, a free, self-respecting, self-governing people, electing their king, and meeting in one great assembly to enact their laws. On the Roman borders the Barbarians had become Christians, unfortunately not Trinitarians, but mere Arians, heretics in the eyes of the orthodox Catholics; so their Christianity hardly served to smooth their relations with the Romans.

The differences between these two divisions of Europe were about as great as between ourselves and the Don Cossacks. A Roman gentleman living in Gaul, for example, would have a villa in Auvergne, built high upon 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 portico that overlooked a lake, a winter drawing-room, a summer parlour, etc. In this agreeable place, in his times of leisure, the owner 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 philosophy. The pleasant, luxurious life of Roman gentlemen 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 kings were superb athletes, sparing at table, and attentive to their kingly duties. The Barbarian elders admired Roman civilization, but were "stiff and lumpish in body and mind." The young men, six feet or more in height, with long, yellow hair, were great eaters of garlic and indelicate viands; they went about 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.

It would be a mistake, however, to draw a very sharp line between these two opposing divisions of 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 Constantinople, Trier, or Milan, and were well accustomed 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 Cæsar, and for several centuries the Empire had prevailed; but social disintegration 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, lay "nerveless, dead, unsceptred," open to any takers; and takers came. The Visigoths, under Alaric, captured the city in 410 and were merciful; the Vandals, under 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 the civilized world. St. Jerome, who had gone to the wilderness near Bethlehem in order to meditate upon the prophets, wrote: "My voice is choked and my sobs 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 same time, be the cradle and grave of her people; that all the coasts of Asia, Egypt, and Africa should be filled 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 city 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 Alemanni, England by Angles and Saxons, Africa by the Vandals; and, with the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, Italy, too, became the prize of a Barbarian 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 process had, indeed, as I have intimated, begun before the fall of the Empire. For several generations Barbarians had not only been received as colonists and taken as soldiers, but even whole tribes had been admitted within the Roman boundaries. Imperial statesmen had realized that the Empire could only be upheld by an infusion of Barbarian virility, and they had favoured the process. But assimilation 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 dominion 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 legitimacy 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 Empires, 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 the western countries of Europe had been overrun by the Barbarians, the Emperor at Constantinople remained the supreme and sole source of authority and law. The very Barbarians could not free themselves from this theory, however little heed they 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 necessary to speak of a rising power which already constituted the most important element in the situation. The Church was not only the one vigorous body in Italy, but it had already begun to foreshadow its future greatness. In the time of Constantine (323-337) and his immediate successors, the bishops of Rome 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, the 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 advantage from the absence of a temporal prince; whereas their chief rivals, the patriarchs of Constantinople, were wholly 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 city, and the head of the Church became the most important personage there. It was so generally acknowledged that Roman bishops were entitled to that precedence in rank over other bishops, which Rome enjoyed over other cities, that in 344 an Ecumenical Council submitted a most important question to the decision of the Roman See. One hundred years later the great pope, Leo I, merely gave utterance 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 Christianity 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 East, 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 Christendom contributed immensely to the cause of European civilization. Partly by good fortune, partly by her success in making her cause prevail, Rome was always orthodox. She remained staunchly Trinitarian. She fought the Arians, who believed that the Son, created by the Father, could not be identical with Him and could not have existed from the beginning. She fought 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 days ecclesiastical affairs were inseparable from political affairs; 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 Barbarian successors, we shall find that in their endeavours to establish an Italian kingdom they were confronted by a threefold task,—to blend the Barbarian conquerors 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 Romulus Augustulus, and give whatever interest there is 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 government 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.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Rome in the Middle Ages, Gregorovius, vol. i, pp. 167, 168.

CHAPTER II

THE OSTROGOTHS (489-553)

The Ostrogoths were a fine people; and historians have 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 indicate 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 warlike people, and had given much trouble to the Eastern Emperors, who had been obliged not only to bestow upon them territory, but also to pay tribute. The reigning Emperor eagerly seized the first opportunity 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 thousand persons all told, effected their tedious emigration in 488-489. It was an easy matter to defeat the unstable Odoacer, and the Latins made no resistance. 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 stable 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, Ferrara, Milan, Bergamo, Verona, Aquileia; on the east coast, Ravenna, Rimini, Ancona; on the west coast and in the centre, Genoa, Pisa, Lucca, Perugia, Spoleto, Rome, Benevento, Naples, Salerno, Amalfi; and in the south, the old Greek cities. All the ordinary business of life was in Roman hands; lawyers, physicians, weavers, spinners, carpenters, masons, cobblers, 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 both time and statesmanship before the two races would understand each other, share occupations, inter-marry, and feel themselves countrymen.

Theodoric's policy falls under three heads,—relations 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 under Gothic law. He employed as his chief counsellor 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. Spirito, a baptistery, and a mausoleum still testify to his presence. When the State had been put in order, Theodoric 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, comprising within herself all the cherished marvels of the universe, so that it may in truth be said, Rome is herself one great marvel."[2] He renewed the distribution 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 successful in his relations with the Latin people.

Dealings with the Emperor were more difficult. Immediately after his victory over Odoacer, Theodoric had asked the Emperor for the regalia (the crown jewels and Imperial vestments) of the West, which had been sent to Constantinople upon the deposition 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 fundamental 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 concealed beneath the surface, and for about thirty years his relations with the Empire, with some interruptions, were amicable enough.

Before speaking of Theodoric's relations with the Church, which were a matter of politics, and had to be considered by him on general grounds of policy, it is necessary to speak of the relations between the Church and the Emperor, for the latter affected the former. There were always difficulties, active or latent, between the Roman Church and the Empire. There was jealousy between old Rome and new Constantinople. There was misunderstanding between the Latin and Greek mind. There was friction 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 first thirty years of Theodoric's reign, his period of success and prosperity, there was discord between Pope and Emperor, a kind of schism. The Byzantine Emperors, often men of cultivation, living in the most civilized city of the world, interested themselves in theology, and liked nothing better than to tinker with the Faith. To this, also, they were pushed by political needs. Their subjects were divided 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, incensed by this trifling with orthodoxy, and by the assumption of an Imperial right to interfere in matters 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 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 the period of this breach between Empire and Papacy, the Gothic king had managed his relations with the Church very prudently. Although an Arian (like all Barbarians except the Franks), he was exceedingly just to the Catholics. He carefully refrained from taking part in the domestic affairs of the Church, until he was compelled to do so in the interest 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 Theodoric 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 attain 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, Theodoric had no serious trouble.

About the year 524 the crafty Justinian, strong in his complete reconciliation with the Papacy, felt the time ripe to set 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 approval of the Pope, and was most effective in alienating the Arian Goths from the Catholic Latins. Theodoric, who had been consistently tolerant to Catholics, was very angry and threatened to retaliate by suppressing the Catholic ritual throughout Italy. This threat threw the Papacy into closer alliance 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 rule gradually drew together: 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 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 console 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 mathematics from the Greek, and had written on philosophy 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 consulted. 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 acts of oppression to which the Romans were subjected. The 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 get their goods. How often have I protected and defended wretches from the innumerable calumnies of the Barbarians who wished to devour them."[3] To this Roman defence must be opposed the statement of a contemporary historian: "Everything about the Barbarians, even the very smell of them, was hateful to the Romans; nevertheless it often happened that they, especially the poor, preferred the oppression of the Barbarians to that of the Imperial officials. The rich Romans impose taxes but they do not pay them; they make the poor pay them. And when peradventure the taxes are diminished the relief goes not to the poor but to the rich; so that, when it is a matter of paying it concerns the people, and when it comes to the matter of reducing taxes it is as if the rich were the only persons taxed at all. Not Franks, Huns, Vandals, nor Goths behave so shamelessly."

In spite of trials and executions Theodoric's anger and suspicion increased; he compelled the Pope to go to Constantinople to ask that the Arians be treated fairly and the Arian churches restored. The Pope returned having obtained some favours for the Catholics, but nothing for the Arians; whereupon Theodoric threw him into prison, and kept him there till he died (526). He then nominated a successor, who was promptly elected by the frightened Romans. This high-handed action stimulated discontent so much that it seemed as if the time for a Byzantine invasion had come, but Justinian, not having fully spun his web, delayed. Perhaps he feared Theodoric and wished to wait for his death. He did not have to wait long. That summer Theodoric died, and with him Italy's best hopes died too.

With Theodoric's death ended the possibility of a Gothic monarchy. Even in his reign a process of deterioration had set in among the young generation. The decadent civilization of Italy wrought with fatal effect upon the simple Goths; the luxurious ways, the idle habits, even the refinements of the Latins, robbed them of their vigour and independence of character. The conquerors became divided among themselves; some inclined to the old Gothic traditions, some to the Latin ways. The royal house affords a conspicuous instance of this deterioration; the boy king succumbed to debauchery, his mother fell a victim to her Latin sympathies, and his cousin, last of the royal line, a student of literature and philosophy, showed himself perfectly incapable of action and was deposed by his soldiers. Justinian, the spider, had been biding his opportunity; now it had surely come. The Goths were disintegrated; the Papacy and Latin people were with him; and his great general, Belisarius, fresh from the brilliant conquest of the Vandal kingdom in Africa, was ready for the task. In 535 the war for the reconquest of Italy began.

The Goths were confused, divided, and without a leader, whereas Belisarius was a man of military genius, and his army was composed of veterans. The issue could not remain long in doubt. Naples, Rome, and finally Ravenna, fell, and the reconquest would have been complete, but that Justinian, jealous of a too successful general, recalled Belisarius. The Goths improved their respite, and their king, Totila, a very valiant soldier, for a time retrieved their falling fortunes. Justinian, however, who had a remarkable knowledge of men, appointed general-in-chief an extraordinary little old man, Narses, who, devoid of all military experience, had passed his life in the Imperial civil service. Narses handled his men as if he had been born and bred in a camp, and, after a comparatively brief campaign in which Totila was killed, compelled the last remnant of the Gothic army to surrender (553).

Thus ended the first attempt to erect a Barbarian kingdom in Italy. Its failure proved that without the support of the Catholic Church it was impossible to establish a kingdom of Italy, for the Church controlled the Latin people, and though these never fought, they had an hundred ways of helping friends and hindering foes.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Rome in the Middle Ages, Gregorovius, vol. i, p. 296.

[3] Le invasioni barbariche, Villari, pp. 167, 168, translated.

CHAPTER III

THE LOMBARD INVASION (568)

The Imperial dominion over all Italy had lasted scarce a dozen years before another Barbarian nation, the Lombards, came and repeated the experiment in which the Goths had failed. The period of Lombard dominion lasted two hundred years (568-774). It is rather an uninteresting time; nevertheless, like most history, it has a dramatic side. It makes a play for four characters. The Lombards occupy the larger part of the stage, but the protagonist is the Papacy. The Empire is the third character. Finally, the Franks come in and dispossess the Lombards. The plot, though it must spread over several chapters, is simple.

The scene of the play was pitiful. For nearly twenty years (535-553) Italy had been one perpetual battlefield; whichever side won, the unfortunate natives had to lodge and feed a foreign army, and endure all the insolence of a brutal soldiery. Plague, pestilence, and famine followed. The ordinary business of life came to a stop. Houses, churches, aqueducts went to ruin; roads were left unmended, rivers undiked. Great tracts of fertile land were abandoned. Cattle roamed without herdsmen, harvests withered up, grapes shrivelled on the vines. From lack of food came the pest. Mothers abandoned sick babies, sons left their fathers' bodies unburied. The inhabitants of the cities fared no better. Rome, for instance, had been captured five times. Before the war her population had been 250,000; at its close not one tenth was left. It is said that in one period every living thing deserted the city, and for forty days the ancient mistress of the world lay like a city of the dead. With peace came some respite; but the frightful squeeze of Byzantine taxation was as bad as Barbarian conquest. Italy sank into ignorance and misery. The Latin inhabitants hardly cared who their masters were. They never had spirit enough to take arms and fight, but meekly bowed their heads. Such was the scene on which these three great actors, the Lombards, the Papacy, and the Empire, played their parts. It is now time to describe the actors. We give precedence to the Empire, as is its due.

This remnant of the Roman Empire, with its capital on the confines of Europe and Asia, was an anomalous thing. It is a wonder that it continued to exist at all. In fact, there is no better evidence of the immense solidity of Roman political organization than the prolonged life of the Eastern Empire. The countries under its sway, Thrace, Illyria, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, had no bond to hold them together, except common submission to one central authority. By the end of the sixth century, the Roman Empire was really Greek. The Greek language was spoken almost exclusively in Constantinople, Latin having dropped even from official use. Yet the Empire was still regarded as the Roman Empire, and was looked up to by the young Barbarian kingdoms of Europe with the respect which they deemed due to the Empire of Augustus and Trajan. For instance, a king of the Franks addresses the Emperor thus: "Glorious, pious, perpetual, renowned, triumphant Lord, ever Augustus, my father Maurice, Imperator," and is content to be called in return, "Childipert, glorious man, king of the Franks." Yet it must be remembered that Constantinople at this time was the chief city of Europe. Greek thought and Greek art lingered there. Justinian had just built St. Sophia. In fact, Constantinople continued for centuries to be the most civilized city in the world.

The Imperial government was an autocracy; all the reins, civil, military, ecclesiastical, were gathered into the hands of the Emperor. Its foreign policy was to repel its enemies, Persians to the east, Avars to the north, Arabs to the south; its domestic policy was to hold its provinces together and to extort money. The Emperors, many of whom were able men, usually spent such time as could be spared from questions of national defence and of finance in the study of theology, for at Constantinople the problems of government were in great measure religious. Next to the actual physical needs of life, the main interest of the people was religion. A statesman who sought to preserve the Empire whole, of necessity endeavoured to hold together its incohesive parts by means of religious unity. This political need of religious unity is the explanation, in the main, of the frequent theological edicts and enactments.

The Emperors governed Italy, after the reconquest, by an Imperial lieutenant, the Exarch, who resided at Ravenna, under a system of administration preserved in mutilated form from times prior to the fall of Romulus Augustulus. An attempt was made to keep civil and military affairs separate, but the pressure 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 generals. 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 preferred the Greeks to the Lombards, partly because of their common Greco-Roman civilization, partly because 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 prepared for a contest. The recall of Narses removed from Italy the last bulwark against Barbarian invasion. 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 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 pleasant 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, Alboin, cannot be compared in any respect with Theodoric. Moreover, Theodoric came, nominally at 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 conquered the whole peninsula. They overran the North and strips of territory down the centre within a few years, and afterwards gradually spread little by little; but they never conquered the South, the duchy of Rome, or the Adriatic coast. For the greater part of the two hundred years during which the 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, Sinigaglia; 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 confederation of three dozen duchies; and that of these duchies, Spoleto, a little north of Rome, and Benevento, 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 hunting 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 impossible to avoid the consequences of daily contact with a far more developed people, and their manners 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 another 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 780), 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 character was political incompetence. It would have required but a little steadiness of purpose, a little political foresight, a little spurt of energy, to conquer 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 scars. Each city, with the territory immediately around it, began to regard itself as a separate state, with no sense of duty towards a common country; each cultivated individuality and jealousy of its neighbours, until these qualities, gradually growing during two hundred years, presented insuperable difficulties to the formation of an Italian national kingdom.

In spite of their political incompetence the Lombards left their mark on Italy, especially on Lombardy 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 (568-700)

One 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 precedence 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 was compact of many elements, secular and spiritual. From the ills of the world men betook themselves with southern impulsiveness to things religious; they sought refuge, order, security in the Church. In the greater interests of life among the Latins the rising ecclesiastical fabric had no competitor. Paganism had vanished before Christianity, philosophy before theology. Literature, art, science had perished. Italy had ceased to be 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 patriotism. 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 provincial 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 immense moral and spiritual services, the Church had the support of two potent forces, ignorance and superstition. 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 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 Corsica. In extent they covered as much as eighteen hundred square miles, and yielded an enormous income. 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 Lombards and Greeks, we find the Popes actually ruling the duchy of Rome.

The corner-stone of the great papal power, however, was laid by the genius of one man, who organized the monastic sentiment of the sixth century and put it to the support of the Papacy. There had been monks in Italy long before St. Benedict (480-544), 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 derived 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 own 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 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 different 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 monastery the palace is a prison; compared with the quiet there this life is a tempest."[4]

What Benedict did for the monastic orders, another great man, St. Gregory (540-604), 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 interesting 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, in which he rose to the high office of prefect of the city; but, dissatisfied with civil life, he abandoned it and became a monk. He wanted to give himself up wholly to a monastic life, but deemed it his duty 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 590 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 religion 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 threatened 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 paymaster of the soldiers." He kept up the courage of the Romans, and tried to draw spiritual good out of their plight. It was impossible for a contemporary eye to see that under present wretchedness lay germinating 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 Franks, Alemanni, and Lombards. It was Gregory who saw the handsome fairhaired boys from England standing in the market-place and said, "Non Angli sed angeli." 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 Columbanus: "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 languishing 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 Emperor 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, superintending the management of farms, stables, and orchards. He founded monasteries, he supported hospitals and asylums.

Benedict and Gregory are the two great figures of this period, and, though no worthy successor followed for several generations, they did their work so well that the Papacy, like a great growing oak, continued to spread 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 Emperor. The whole ecclesiastical organization throughout the Empire was subject to the Imperial will, just as the civil or military service was. The Papacy did not 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 between 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 concord 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 Lombards 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 Lombards to Christianity, and intervals of peace followed, during which the Lombard king saluted the Pope as "Most Holy Father," and the Pope replied "My well-beloved Son."

FOOTNOTE:

[4] Le cronache italiane del medio evo descritte, Ugo Balzani (translated).

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 ecclesiastical 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 political 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 defenceless 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 religious prophet, and by the force of genius constructed 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 cohered, 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 inspiration of the slogan, "Before you 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, Jerusalem, 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 vigorous Emperor, Leo the Isaurian (717-741), took the radical step. It was necessarily religious, for, in Constantinople, political action always took a religious complexion. Leo issued a decree forbidding the use of images in churches and in Christian worship (726). Those in place he ordered broken. He acted no doubt from high motives, thinking to ennoble 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 country 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, as most hurt in conscience by the decree, and in pocket by the taxation, was the natural head of resistance. The Exarch attempted to arrest him, but both Latins and Lombards rallied to his defence. In some 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 in the matter of maintaining the images he stood like a rock. His successor, Gregory III (731-741), went farther, and took decisive action. He convoked a synod, which expelled every image-breaker from the Church (731). This was tantamount to a direct excommunication of the Emperor, and a declaration of papal independence. The Emperor 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 faithful to the Empire and shared its fortunes for several hundred years more. Ecclesiastically they were removed 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 consequence that it must be recounted in some detail. While the Empire and the Papacy were quarrelling over ecclesiastical matters, western Europe had been changing. The Frankish kingdom had been established 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 Papacy had cut loose from the Empire and saw itself defenceless against the Lombards, it had no alternative 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 Christianity. 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 strengthened 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 power that could help them, the Franks. Every time the Lombard king made a hostile move, the Pope cried aloud 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 but 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 wished to strengthen his position by the support of the Papacy. He sent messengers to the Pope, Zacharias, to ask advice; and the Pope, according 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 monastery, and Pippin became king of the Franks (751). Without accepting the monkish chronicler's statement, 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 obligation; 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 and 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 sovereignty, called for a great return. Pippin promised that the Adriatic provinces, taken by the Lombards from the Byzantines, should be ceded by the Lombards 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 give to Silvester the Lateran palace and a plot of ground around it. This little donation grew in legend like a grain of mustard seed, and 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 territory; 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 foundation of fact. That was enough. It is quite unnecessary 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 Cæsar 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 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 Imperial 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 Rome, and all the provinces, places, and cities of Italy and the western regions, to the most blessed Pontiff and universal Pope, Silvester; and we ordain by our pragmatic constitution that they shall be governed by him and his successors, and we grant that they shall remain under the authority of the holy Roman Church."[5]

The date of this document and many statements in it are anachronisms and errors. It was composed about the time of Pippin's Donation, probably by somebody connected with the papal chancery, and may be considered to be a pious forgery representing the facts as the writer deemed they were or else 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.

FOOTNOTE:

[5] Italy and her Invaders, T. Hodgkin, vol. vii, pp. 149-151; Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages, Ernest F. Henderson, pp. 319-329.

CHAPTER VI

CHARLEMAGNE (768-814)

The papal theory embodied in the Donation of Constantine was obviously crammed with seeds of future strife; for the present, however, the fortunes 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, Desiderius, 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 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 justified; 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 advanced within fifty miles of the city. This time Charlemagne acted in conformity with the papal entreaties. He crossed the Alps, routed the Lombard army, 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 Donation. 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 restore 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, Lombards, Romans. How were such widespread territories 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 Cæsars. 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 network 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 the still vigorous Roman tradition. The idea of nationality was as yet undeveloped; Europe had known no other political system than common subjection to the Roman Empire, and all notions of civilization were of a civilization on the Roman pattern. When the Roman Empire in the West had decayed, the Church had adopted the Imperial organization 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 Rome, for the seat of government had been set at Constantinople, at Milan, and at Ravenna; and since the days of the early Cæsars, it had not been necessary 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 government 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. The very titles which the Frankish kings had gradually 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 Lombards, 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, restlessly 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 difficulty 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 successor of Cæsar Augustus. But that Empire was virtually Greek, and the Emperor no more like Cæsar Augustus than like Hercules. The city by the Tiber had as good title to be the Imperial city as her younger rival by the Bosphorus; the Roman Republic (whatever that ill-defined title may mean), represented by the Pope, had as fair a claim to elect the Emperor, as the army and office-holders at Constantinople. In fact, to Papal and Roman eyes, the rights of Rome were much greater than those of Constantinople.

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 difficulty of an existing Roman Empire and assumed the Imperial title, Emperor of the Romans. History moves more slowly. Charlemagne was a Frank, accustomed 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 certain reluctance. Unexpectedly and in quick succession, events in Constantinople swept away the theoretic 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 escaped and fled to Charlemagne in Germany. His enemies followed and charged him with various crimes. Charlemagne sent him back to Rome in the company of some great nobles, who were commissioned 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 according to the jurisprudence of the time was necessarily followed by acquittal; and the Pope's innocence 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 Christendom 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. Obviously it was time for the Imperial dignity to be added to Imperial power.

On Christmas 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 the Vatican hill. They walked through the Aurelian gate and across the bridge over the Tiber, then turning to the left, followed the colonnade which extended all the way from Hadrian's Mausoleum to the atrium of the basilica. There they mounted the broad flight of marble steps, at the top of which 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 seventy 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 Charlemagne 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 Teuton and Roman in political union so powerfully affected the history of mediæval Europe. Charlemagne 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 inheritance, and under them his Empire crumbled away and resolved itself into incipient nations. That Empire, in theory the restored Roman Empire, was in fact strictly Teutonic, though buttressed by the Roman 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 endeavoured 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. Under these sons he appointed counts and bishops, as local governors. He maintained his central authority by means of deputies (missi dominici), who traversed the whole Empire, two by two, a bishop and a count together. The maintenance 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 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 definitely set off, they could not agree; each wished to be master. The relations between the two constitute the great axis on which mediæval 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-labourers in the great task of reconstructing Europe. But once the coronation over, the two undefined authorities jostled each other. Charlemagne, to whom government was as much a religious as a secular matter, though he had accepted his Imperial crown at the hands of the Pope, did not regard papal participation necessary 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 of the Tiber. But with Charlemagne's weak successors the astute Papacy scored hit after hit. Louis the Pious submitted to be recrowned by the Pope, so did his son, Lothair, and his grandson Louis II; and their two successors were also crowned by the Pope. This sequence of palpable hits won this bout and secured for the Papacy beyond dispute 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 detriment of the papal defence. This third player is the Roman people, who believed that the Senatus Populusque Romanus still possessed their ancient prerogatives, 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 anomalous 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 Emperor as its temporal lord, was likewise concerned. The fact was that no definite method of papal election 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; subsequently 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 the election; which was then submitted to the Emperor, or his representative, for scrutiny and confirmation. The submission of the Roman election to the examination of a Byzantine Emperor had never been acceptable in Rome, and after the breach over iconoclasm, the practice ceased. Naturally, on the revival of the Roman Empire in the West, the new Emperors claimed the old Imperial right of supervision; 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 election 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 approval of the Emperor. What was done at the following election is not known, but at the second the Pope was not consecrated until the Emperor had ratified the proceedings. Thereafter the Imperial right was acknowledged in theory, though in practice the elected Pontiffs did not always wait for Imperial confirmation.

With the fall of the Carlovingian Empire the fencing match ceased for lack of an Imperial contestant. The score stood thus: each had succeeded in the attack, the Papacy had won its right to bestow 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 interregnum knowing that when the Empire shall be revived, the match will begin anew and the combatants, with foils unbated and envenomed, will fight 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 Papacy, 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 investigate 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. The Pope, "professing," as his enemies said, "to be imperator of the whole world," seized his opportunity; he espoused the cause of the innocent queen, annulled the fraudulent proceedings, and excommunicated 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 excommunicated and banished, and the papal legate conducted the divorced queen back to the royal palace. Thus the Papacy not only established a great precedent 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 coincided with righteousness; but it was the righteousness 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 vagrant, enters a village huddled at the foot of a hill, on which stands a great castle where a drunken lord revels with his mistresses, and recounts to the assembled peasants, serfs, and slaves, how the Holy 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 authority 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 probably 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 action 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 desired. There was nothing the Papacy wanted more than that its central government should act directly everywhere, and that all bishops should be dependent 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 advantage 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. Theretofore Church law had consisted of a collection of precepts taken from the Bible, from the early Fathers, 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 decretals 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 Donation of Constantine, of which I have spoken. Others were papal decretals, which purported to come from Popes of the third and second centuries, and to prove that papal jurisdiction over other bishoprics had been exercised almost as far back as the time of St. Peter. These new appearing documents placed the Pope not only above kings, but above metropolitans and provincial synods, and justified Nicholas in acting directly in the case of the West Frankish bishop, in the King of Lorraine's matrimonial affairs, and also in assuming to act as "imperator of the whole world." These documents, known as the Isidorian Decretals, were probably composed by some priest in France, not long before their use by Nicholas. For six hundred years they were believed to be genuine, and during that time rendered the Papacy great service by ranging the sentiment of law throughout Europe (at least until the revival of Roman law) on the side of the Papacy in its struggle with the Empire.

CHAPTER VIII

THE DEGRADATION OF ITALY (867-962)

These triumphs were due to the brilliant vigour of Pope Nicholas; but that triumphant position could not last, it was fictitious. The Papacy needed the support of a strong secular power, and when the Carlovingian Empire dissolved, it had nothing to rest on, neither genius nor military force, and fell into deep degradation.

To illustrate that degradation one episode will suffice; but there must first be a word of prologue. The Papacy, as has been said, occupied an anomalous position. From this sprang many troubles. As soon as the pressure of Imperial authority was removed, the Papacy tended to become the prize of municipal politics, and different parties in Rome (if the turbulent mobs may be called so) struggled to get possession of it. One party, with interests centred on local matters, indifferent to the greatness of the Papacy and its European character, and willing to have the Pope a mere local ruler, directed its efforts to getting rid of all Imperial and foreign control. The opposite party, with conflicting interests, wished for Imperial control, and constituted a kind of Imperial party, less from any large views, than in the hope of deriving advantages from Imperial support. Strife between the two parties was the normal condition, and often ended in riot and civil war. In this state of affairs, a certain Pope Formosus (891-896), 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 nothing, 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 pontifical 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 mediæval 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 Christendom 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.

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 Italian 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, 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 Rome, inhabited by a race of comparatively pure Latin blood. This domain, included in the Donations of Pippin and of Charlemagne, nominally subject to the Papacy under the suzerainty of the Empire, was really in the possession of petty nobles, who knew no law except force and craft. South of this so-called papal domain lay the duchy of Spoleto and the Lombard duchy of Benevento, and farther south a few principalities, such as Naples, Amalfi, 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 better 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 Empire and the Papacy. The clergy, whose duty it was to maintain learning, failed utterly. Even in the happiest days of the Carlovingian Empire, Charlemagne had found it necessary to enact blunt rules for their guidance. "Let the priests, according to the Apostles' 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 provisions or hay in the church."[6] 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 grammarian 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 historic truth on which these chroniclers acted gives an inkling of the mediæval attitude towards facts. Father Agnello, a priest of Ravenna, one of these chroniclers, says 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 he did about his predecessors,' listen to the reason. 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 eight hundred years and more, because my brethren here have begged me and compelled me. I have put down whatever I found the Bishops had undoubtedly done, and whatever I heard from the oldest men living, but where I could not find any historical account, nor anything about their lives in any way, then, in order to leave no blanks in the holy succession 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."[7]

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 himself 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 degenerate church, by a gross clergy, and by waxing ignorance, Italy might seem to have had its cup 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 marauders hovered round Rome and harried the country-side, 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 fortresses. It seemed as if Italy were to undergo the fate of Spain and become a Mohammedan Emirate.

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 south,—Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi. Pope Leo himself 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 Rome and set to work on the walls which Pope Leo was building round the Vatican hill to protect St. Peter's; and Rome, imitating the days of Scipio Africanus, 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 century, 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 Indian raids in the old French-English war. Separate villages and lonely monasteries suffered most. Some good came out of the evil, however, for the chroniclers relate how the abbots and their terrified brethren spent days and nights fasting and in prayer.

Such was the condition of Italy when the Imperial Carlovingian line came to an end. The omnipresence of anarchy was a permanent argument for the need of an Imperial restoration. But the country 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. Arnulf, 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 expedition was barren of consequences, but it gives us another glimpse of the anomalous nature of the 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 between 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 the alternative of calling in a foreign power. This was the constant papal policy.

Another instance of Roman republicanism, or disobedience (as one chooses), throws further light on the nature of this thorn in the papal side. Not long after Arnulf's expedition, two women, Theodora and Marozia, mother and daughter, played a great part not only in Roman but also in Italian politics. These two women ruled the city and appointed 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 disappeared 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 Colonna, 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 usurpers, 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 Renaissance finally established their temporal power in the city of Rome.

By the middle of the tenth century the disintegration 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 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 become 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 suggested the only possible answer,—in the eastern portion of the Frankish Empire, the kingdom of Germany. 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. Its 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 Carlovingian 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 Italy was highly romantic. A lovely lady, the widow of one Italian pretender to the throne of Italy, was pestered with offers of marriage from another 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 contrived to escape, and sent piteous messages for help to the great Otto, then a widower. Discontented factions in the north, and others suffering from oppression, including the Pope who had been rudely roused to the need of Imperial support, also sent messengers 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, inherited 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 Romans, 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Italy and her Invaders, Hodgkin, vol. viii, p. 289.

[7] Le cronache italiane del medio evo descritte, Balzani (translated).

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 tradition 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 big 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 unwarlike. Their union affords the strongest testimony to the strength of the Roman tradition. This ill-assorted pair, married in obedience to the will of dead generations, could not live together in peace. The theory of a world conjointly ruled by a supreme secular sovereign and a supreme ecclesiastical sovereign could not be put into successful practice. The Empire was German, the Papacy Italian, and by their very natures they were antagonistic.

Otto's empire was by no means universal, but its suzerainty was acknowledged by Bohemia, Moravia, Poland, Denmark, perhaps by Hungary, and sometimes 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 Pavia, 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 themselves. Italy was still less a political unit. It had no marks of nationality, except its geographical position, its ancient tradition, and a tardily forming language; but even this lingua volgare, 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 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 fundamentally 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 monastery; 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 entertained 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 resembled his grandmother, Marozia, gives a good picture of the nature of the benefits which the Empire conferred on the Papacy: "While these things were taking place, the constellation of Cancer, hot from the enkindling rays of Ph[oe]bus, kept the Emperor 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 secret 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, Cæsar, 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 up 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 Babylonians, nor the Indians. He [the Pope] is no longer one of that kind, which come in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravening wolves; he rages so openly, does his diabolical misdeeds so manifestly, that we need not beat about the bush.' The Emperor answered: 'We deem it just that the accusations should be stated one by one, and after that we will take counsel together of what we ought 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, cardinal-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 deacons, 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 testified that he had set buildings on fire, armed with helmet and breastplate, and girt with a sword. All, priests and laymen, cried out that he had drunk a toast to the devil. They said that while playing dice he had invoked the aid of Jupiter, Venus, and other demons. They declared that he had not celebrated matins, nor observed the canonical hours, and that he did not cross himself.

"When the Emperor had heard all this, he bade me, Liutprand, bishop of Cremona, interpret to the 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 disliked by good men. And for this reason we entertain 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 impiety. 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 accusation 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 affirmed 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."[8] Nevertheless, John was deposed and a good Pope put in his stead.

Otto's successors, one after the other, followed his 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 movement 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 bound to be. The first reformers gathered at Cluny, about the beginning of the tenth century. From there disciples went far and wide, purging old monasteries and founding new. After a time the reformers passed beyond the early stage of mere moral revolt against godless living, formed a party, and put forward a creed. The party represented antagonism 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 ordination 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 lay 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, holding 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 power. If 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 obligations, 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 become hereditary. When the reformers took the matter up, they found that in practice the kings did not wait for a canonical election of episcopal candidates, but invested their henchmen in return for money or some service which had no savour of sanctity. The episcopal office, as St. Peter Damian complained, was got "by flattering the king, studying his inclination, obeying his beck, applauding every word that fell from his mouth, by acting the parasite and playing the buffoon." The real difficulty lay in the double nature of the episcopal office, half ecclesiastical 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.

FOOTNOTE:

[8] Le cronache italiane del medio evo descritte, Balzani, p. 123.

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 evident 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 German 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 began.

Among the crowd that thronged to Cluny eager for a higher life, was a young Tuscan from Orvieto, Hildebrand by name, of plebeian birth. Small of stature, vehement in spirit, passionate in feeling and action, he was confident in himself and yet sensitive to sympathy. This lad became an eager scholar, but in spite of erudition and fondness for study, he was essentially a man of action, a born leader of men. "What he taught by word he proved by example." He believed absolutely in the tenets of the reformers. He believed with his whole being that the Church was a divine institution to save men's souls, and he could not endure the idea of secular powers and worldly influences intermeddling with God's fabric. His career exhibits the power of a man of genius, who devotes his whole life to what for him is the highest end, and is able to use human enthusiasm for good as his implement.

Hildebrand has been called the Julius Cæsar of the Papacy. He went to Rome about 1048. From that time papal policy became definite, vigorous, stamped with an antique Roman stamp; and open conflict with the Empire was the inevitable result. Hildebrand's first care was to protect the Papacy from the petty-minded Roman faction; he supported papal candidates of high character and even secured the appointment of a German, sagaciously foreseeing that ecclesiastical patriotism would be stronger than national patriotism. These Popes put Hildebrand's views into execution.

Now that the Papacy had been rescued from the Roman faction, the next step was to free it from the Egyptian bondage of subjection to the Empire. Hildebrand was ready to strike whenever a fair opportunity should come. It soon came. The Emperor died, leaving his son Henry IV, a little boy, his successor on the German throne and heir to the Empire. A long minority seemed to reveal the hand of Providence. Hildebrand acted. It had long been obvious that one cause of papal subjection to Roman faction and Imperial tyrant had been the uncertainty of the electoral body. Emperors, Roman nobles, and Roman rabble, all had certain historic electoral rights. Hildebrand resolved to dispossess them all. A synod was held, which declared that the election of the Pope lay in the hands of the cardinals (1059). Some right of approval was left to the Roman people, some right of sanction to the Emperor, but the right of original election was vested in the cardinals, and this gradually developed into an absolute and exclusive right of election. This act was an act of rebellion towards the Empire, a declaration of independence. Hildebrand said that he strove to make the Church "free, pure, and catholic." This action made it free.

It was not to be expected that the Empire would acquiesce tamely in this rebellion. Imperialists and Romans made common cause against the clerical rebels. But the height of the conflict was not reached till Hildebrand himself was elevated to the Papacy (1073), becoming Gregory VII. He immediately took the offensive. Burning with conviction himself, he appealed to the general enthusiasm both in the Church and throughout the Empire for the cause of God; he ruthlessly denounced simony and proclaimed principles of papal sovereignty absolute and universal. "The Roman Church was founded by God alone; she never has erred and never will err, and no man is a Catholic who is not at peace with her. The Roman bishop alone is universal. He may depose bishops and reinstate them, he may transfer them from one see to another, he may depose emperors, and may absolve the subjects of the unjust from their allegiance. No synod without his consent is general; no episcopal chapter, no book, canonical without his authority. No man may sit in judgment on his decrees, but he may judge the decrees of all." Here certainly was a second Julius Cæsar in ambition. Gregory claimed feudal supremacy over Bohemia, Russia, Hungary, Spain, Corsica, Sardinia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Poland, Scandinavia, and England. Such claims were vague and shadowy; but the claims to interfere between the German king and the German episcopate and clergy were definite and direct. The Papacy declared its own supremacy, and the Imperial duty of obedience.

Gregory had immense moral support at his back, yet moral support would not have sufficed to protect him from the king's anger. Nor would Gregory have ventured on so haughty a course, had he not had allies of another character. These allies were four in number, and require some description. First in importance come the Normans. For years bands of Norman warriors, pious folk, had passed through Southern Italy on their way to the Holy Land. Once a handful had helped a prince of Salerno to repel a Saracen attack. The prince, so the story goes, delighted with their valour, begged them to invite their compatriots to come. The invitation was readily accepted. Bands of gentlemen adventurers came, fought against Saracens, or Greeks, or the independent dukes and princes of Southern Italy, first as mercenaries in anybody's pay, and afterwards on their own account. They soon conquered a domain, and reached out in all directions. Some drove out the last Byzantines and acquired Southern Italy; some crossed to Sicily, performed prodigies of valour against the Saracens, and finally conquered the whole island (1060-90). In their raids northward they trespassed upon papal territory and came into collision with the Church. St. Peter's sword was drawn and brandished, but ineffectually. The Popes then concluded that martial deeds did not become them; and the Normans, on their part, were pious folk; so together they formed a happy solution. The Normans had possession of Southern Italy and Sicily, but merely by right of conquest; they were in the midst of an alien and far more numerous subject people, and wished for a legal title. The Popes, unable to acquire actual possession, did have, thanks to the Donation of Constantine, a legal title, derived, so they claimed, from the original source of legal titles, the Roman Empire. The mode of agreement was obvious; the Popes conferred Southern Italy and Sicily as feuds upon their liegemen the Norman chiefs, and they in return acknowledged the Popes as their lords suzerain. In this manner, "by the grace of God and St. Peter," the Normans founded the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which for centuries after the Norman line died out continued to acknowledge the overlordship of the Papacy. The Normans were often disobedient vassals, but they knew that the Empire regarded them as robbers, and in the wars between Empire and Papacy remained loyal to their lords the Popes.

The second papal ally was Countess Matilda (1046-1115), mistress of the Marquisate of Tuscany and other domains, which stretched from the papal boundaries up across the Po to Lombardy, and like her mother, her predecessor in title, a brave, capable, devout woman. As the Normans were a defence to the Papacy on the south, so these ladies constituted a bulwark on the north, and often rendered incalculable service to the Popes of this period. Matilda's devotion to Gregory was boundless. "Like a second Martha, she ministered unto him, and as Mary hearkened unto Christ, so did she, attentive and assiduous, hearken to all the words of the Holy Father." She and her mother make clear one source of papal strength. They show us the attitude of the women, who, from sentiments of morality, piety, and superstition, took the religious side of the quarrel, and did not rest till fathers, brothers, husbands, and lovers had also espoused it. One act of feminine devotion fixes Matilda in the memory. Her domains consisted of marquisates, counties, baronies, and various feudal estates, held as feuds of the Empire, over which on her death she had no power of disposition, and also of large private estates, which she was free to give or devise. All these, Imperial feuds and private estates, she gave or rather attempted to give to the Church. This Donation, the most important since that of Charlemagne, gave fresh causes of quarrel between Papacy and Empire. The Papacy attempted to make good its claim to the Imperial feuds; and the Empire, finding it impossible to discover the boundaries between the two species of territories, also claimed the whole.

The third papal ally is to be found in the cities of Lombardy, which had now become rich and important. In these cities, especially in Milan, which was easily first commercially and politically, trade had created a burgher class which already gave evidence of a desire for political power. In Milan itself there was extreme political instability; archbishop, nobles, gentry, artisans, and populace were all ready for a general scrimmage on the slightest provocation. The clergy were numerous and very rich; sons of noblemen held the fat benefices, and almost all led irreligious lives and held celibacy in the meanest esteem. Simony was the rule. In Hildebrand's time the passion for religious reform swept over the lower classes of the city. A new sect arose, the Patarini (ragamuffins), a species of Puritans, who took up the cry against clerical laxity and immorality, and denounced married priests. Religious excitement set fire to social and economic discontent; populace and nobles flew to arms; there were riots and civil war. Several eminent men, close friends of Hildebrand, became popular leaders; and the contest of people and Patarini against nobles and married clergy became an episode in the general strife between Papal and Imperial parties. Similar tumults, caused half by class enmity, half by the passion for religious reform, took place in 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, looking to the Pope.

Gregory's fourth ally was the rebellious nobility 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 archbishoprics, 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 irreconcilable natures of Empire and Papacy had not rendered 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 Gregory wrote to him that he must renounce the claim of investiture, and humbly present himself in person before the papal presence and beg absolution 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 German 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:—

"This greeting you have deserved from the confusion you have caused, for in every rank of the Church you have brought confusion instead of honour, 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 slaves, you have trampled them down under your feet. By trampling them down you have got favour from the vulgar 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 destroy.... We have borne all this and have striven to maintain the honour of the Apostolic See. But you have construed our humility as fear, and for that reason you have not feared to rise up against our royal power, and have even dared to threaten that you would take it from us; as if we 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, but not you to the priesthood. You have mounted by these steps; by craft—abominable in a monk—you have come into money, by money to favour, by favour to the sword, by the sword to the seat of peace; and from the seat of peace you have confounded peace. You have armed subjects against those over them; you, the unelect, have held our bishops, 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 anathematized, 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 religion, 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 forever."[9]

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 obtained 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 before Gregory, who lifted him up and bade him submit 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 broke and ate; then turning to Henry, said, "Do thou, my son, as I have done." The king did not dare to invoke the judgment of God; he humbled himself, resigned his crown into Gregory's hands, and swore to remain a private person until he should be judged by a council. He was then absolved (1077).

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 for 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 deposed by his rebellious son; and the question of lay 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 recognized 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 representative, and that bishops should receive their fiefs in a separate ceremony, by touch of the royal sceptre, in token of holding them from the Empire. 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.

FOOTNOTE:

[9] Select Mediæval Documents, Shailer Mathews, translated.

CHAPTER XI

TRADE AGAINST FEUDALISM (1152-1190)

The last chapter dealt with the struggle between the two great mediæval institutions, the Empire and the 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 Italian imagination. Valiant, resolute, energetic, bountiful 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 to a chivalric generation out of place in a world which had begun to deem buying and selling matters of greater consequence than chivalry and crusades. He thought himself entitled to all the Imperial rights that had been exercised by the Ottos; and, measuring his own prerogatives by their standard, 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 peninsula; in fact, it pervaded the maritime cities before it pervaded the Lombard cities, and can best be described by means of a description of them.

The southern cities bloomed earlier than their northern sisters. Amalfi, now a little fishing village which clings to the steep slopes of the Gulf of Salerno, 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; she gave a maritime code to the Mediterranean and Ionian seas, and circulated coin of her 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 medicinal 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. Naples, 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 wars with the Saracens, drove them from Sardinia, captured the Balearic 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 usages 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 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 became her rival and enemy. Genoa, too, was devoted to commerce and established settlements in Constantinople, in the Crimea, in Cyprus and Syria, in Majorca 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 origin 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 developed strength and independence, and took into their own hands the election of their Doge (697). The city of the Rivo Alto, the Venice of to-day, was begun about 800. Thirty years later the body of St. Mark the Evangelist was brought from Alexandria, and the foundations of St. Mark's basilica were laid over his bones. Politically Venice maintained her allegiance, shifting and time-serving though it was, true to Constantinople, not from sentiment, but because Constantinople was the first city in the world, the 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 religion, war, and commerce in one profitable whole.

These maritime cities constantly fought one another; 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 virtually began with trade, rested upon trade, and flourished with trade. This trade, which, beginning between 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 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 market-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 crossroad it found itself enmeshed in feudal prerogatives and 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 enlarged 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 consideration, the petty nobles made common cause with them; and the 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 city walls for part of the year and be hostages for their own good behaviour, and were thus converted from enemies into leading citizens. The consequence of these changes was that the former government by a bishop, which in course of time had supplanted the old Carlovingian system of government by a count, was superseded in its turn by a much more popular form of government. The bishop's authority was narrowly limited, the executive 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 aristocratic element. By Barbarossa's time the government of the cities had ceased to be feudal, and had become communal. There was inevitable antagonism between Lombardy and the Holy Roman Empire. The league of Lombard cities embodied the revolt of trade against the feudal system, of merchants 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 distrust 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 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 authority 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 circumstances: "The Milanese, tricky and proud, came to meet us with a thousand disloyal excuses and reasons, 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 finest 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 us. When we crossed the river Ticino in order to go to Novara, we captured two bridges which they had fortified with castles, and after the army had crossed, destroyed them. Then we dismantled three of their fortresses ... and after we had celebrated Christmas with great merriment, we marched by way of Vercelli and Turin to the Po; we crossed the river and destroyed the strong city of Chieri, and burned Asti. This done, we laid siege to Tortona, most strongly fortified both by art and nature; and on the third day, having captured the suburbs, 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 surrender, not without losing a number of our men."[10]

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 convoked 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 representatives 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 lawyers.

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 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 accordance with Barbarossa's expectation, in favour of the Imperial side. The feudal nobles were delighted. 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 sovereignty." In accordance with the spirit of this principle, the regalia, tolls, taxes, forfeits, and exactions of various kinds, were defined, and the right to appoint the executive magistrates in the communes adjudged to the Emperor. In substance the decision of the jurists was the restoration of the Imperial rights as they had been under the Ottos, when the communes were in their infancy.

Frederick's legal triumph was complete, but such a decision could only be sustained by force. The cities would not accept it; they preferred war. In the course of one campaign Milan was razed to the ground (1162), so literally, that Frederick dated his letters post destructionem Mediolani, "after the destruction 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 Emperor 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 decision of the lawyers at Roncaglia. Frederick frankly accepted defeat. A ceremonious conference was held at Venice. At the portal of St. Mark's, Pope Alexander 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) definitely closed the war. The Emperor relinquished all but nominal rights of sovereignty over the confederate cities. They were to elect their municipal officers, and, with comparatively unimportant exceptions, to administer justice and manage their own affairs. Trade had conquered feudalism. The Middle 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 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 temporary occupation of an Imperial army; and since the Normans had established their kingdom, Southern 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.

FOOTNOTE:

[10] Storia d'Italia, Cappelletti, pp. 99, 100.

CHAPTER XII

TRIUMPH OF THE PAPACY (1198-1216)

Gregory VII was well named the Julius Cæsar of the Papacy. His great conception of a sovereign ecclesiastical power, supreme over Europe, was destined to be realized. For in the fulness of time came Innocent III, the Augustus Cæsar 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 interval 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 Barbarossa 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 Normans 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 reluctant Pope to crown him Emperor. He determined to be Emperor in Italy in fact, and to accomplish 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. Matters looked black for the Guelfs, 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 nobleman, 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 master traits), the tenacity, the adroitness, the political genius of the Romans. He was educated at the universities of Bologna and Paris, where he studied law, theology, and scholastic philosophy. The stormy period of the struggle between Alexander and Barbarossa brought character and talents quickly to the front. Before he was twenty he had distinguished himself, before he was thirty he had been made a cardinal, and at thirty-seven he was elected Pope. According to the practice instituted by the deposed scamp, John XII, of taking a new name, Lothair assumed the title of Innocent III.

Under the guidance of Innocent III (1198-1216), the Papacy attained the full meridian of its glory. When this great Pope, lawyer, theologian, statesman, 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 independence, 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, Innocent got into his own hands the appointment of the senate and of the city governor, and thereby control 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 reëstablishing 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 Germans out, or forced them to swear allegiance to the Holy See.

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 exception 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 domains.

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 Frederick, who, 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 probably would have had no kingdom, and in his oath of fealty he 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 be found ungrateful for your benefits—God forbid—since, next to Divine Grace, to your protection we are indebted not only for land but also for life."

In this way Innocent established the Papacy in Italy; sovereign, suzerain, protector or ally, he was the head of the Italian Guelfs and practically of Italy. 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 Venice for transportation. When they came to pay the bill they did not have the money, and the Venetians insisted that they should help them recapture 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 Emperor 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 temptation, for the Venetians baited their hook with golden promises; they sailed to Constantinople and restored the wronged Emperor. Matters did not go smoothly, however. Misunderstanding with the Greeks led to disagreements, disagreements to quarrels, and quarrels to war. The Latin Crusaders assaulted Constantinople, carried it by storm, and plundered houses, palaces, churches, shrines, everything; then, with appetites whetted by petty spoils, seized the frail Empire itself (1204). They divided Thrace, Macedonia, Greece, the islands of the Ægean 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 Burgundian 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 Crusaders for having preferred the things of earth to those of Heaven, and bade them ask God's pardon for the profanation of holy places; but he admitted the advantage that would arise from reconciling the Greeks, schismatics since the days of Leo the Iconoclast, with the Roman See. So his legate bestowed the purple on a suppliant Emperor in the city of Constantinople.

In Germany Innocent also appears as the giver and withholder of crowns. On the death of Henry VI there was a disputed election. The Hohenstaufen party, dreading a long minority, passed over the baby Frederick, and nominated Philip, Henry's brother; the rival party, the German Guelfs, nominated Otto of Brunswick, a nephew of Richard C[oe]ur-de-lion. Civil war followed, and both parties appealed to Innocent who, after deliberation, supported Otto, but exacted a high price. Otto was obliged to guarantee to the Pope the strip of territory from Rome to Ravenna, and those portions of Matilda's domains which were not fiefs of the Empire, 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 Lombard and Tuscan cities. This guarantee of Otto laid the first real foundation of the Papal States. Hitherto, vague Donations had given pretexts for claims; but Otto's deed was a definite Imperial grant, and conveyed an unquestionable title. In spite of Innocent'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 duties. He turned into a complete Ghibelline, broke 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 precedent, pledged himself as follows: "We, Frederick the Second, by Divine favour and mercy, King of the Romans, ever Augustus, and King of Sicily ... recognizing the grace given to us by God, we have also before our eyes the immense and innumerable benefits rendered by you, most dear lord and reverend father, our protector and benefactor, lord Innocent, by God's grace most venerable Pontiff; through your benefaction, labour, and guardianship, we have been brought up, cherished, and advanced, ever since our mother, the Empress Constance of happy memory, threw us upon your care, almost from birth. To you, most blessed father, and to all your Catholic successors, and to the Holy Roman Church, our special mother, we shall 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; not a whit from these shall we take away, rather add, that our devotion may shine the more."[11] Frederick promised that he would not interfere in the election of bishops, and that the candidate canonically elected should be installed. He confirmed the papal title to the Papal States. "I vow, 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 Innocent blessed, success and prosperity followed; where 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 admonished. Servia, Bulgaria, even remote Armenia, received 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 brilliance 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 humbler 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 Roman Church, with its sacerdotalism, forms, sacraments, 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 regarded 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, rallying 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.

Thus Innocent sat supreme. He had created a papal kingdom where his predecessors had asserted impotent claims; he had confirmed the Two Sicilies in their dependency upon the Holy See; he had put the Papacy at the head of the Guelf party in Italy, and had made that party almost national; he had enforced the power of the Church throughout Europe, had given crowns to the Kings of Aragon and of England, to the Emperors of Germany and of Constantinople. No such spectacle had been seen since the reign of Charlemagne; none such was to be seen again till the coming of Napoleon. The conception of Europe as an ecclesiastical organization had reached its fullest expression.

FOOTNOTE:

[11] Select Mediæval Documents, Mathews, p. 115, translated.

CHAPTER XIII

ST. FRANCIS (1182-1226)

In spite of the dazzling success achieved by Innocent, matters were not well with the Church in Italy. Corruption threatened it from within, heresy from without. 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. Worship 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 the heretics were numerous enough to elect their consul. At Piacenza priests had been driven out, and the city left unshepherded for three years. In Orvieto there had been grave disorders. In Assisi a heretic had been elected podestà (governor).

The great Innocent knitted his brows; he knew well that his noisy triumphs, which echoed over the Tagus, the Thames, the Rhine, and the Golden Horn, were of no avail, if heretics sapped and mined the Church within. It seemed as if the great ecclesiastical fabric, to which he had given the devotion of a life, was tottering from corner-stone to apex; when, one day, a cardinal came to him and said, "I have found a most perfect man, who wishes to live according to the Holy Gospel, and to observe evangelical perfection in all things. I believe that through him the Lord intends to reform His Holy Church in all the world." Innocent was interested, and bade the man be brought before him. This man was Francis Bernadone, known to us as St. Francis, the leader of a small band of Umbrian pilgrims from Assisi, who asked permission to follow literally the example of Jesus Christ. The Pope hesitated. To the cardinals, men of the world, this young man and his pilgrims were fools and their faith nonsense. "But," argued a believer, "if you assert that it is novel, irrational, impossible to observe the perfection of the Gospel, and to take a vow to do so, are you not guilty of blasphemy against Christ, the author of the Gospel?" Thinking the matter over, the Pope dreamed a dream. He beheld the Church of St. John Lateran, the episcopal church of the bishops of Rome, leaning in ruin and about to fall, when a monk, poor and mean in appearance, bent under it and propped it with his back. Innocent awoke and said to himself, "This Francis is the holy monk by whose help the Church of God shall be lifted up and stand again." So he said to Francis and his followers, "Go brethren, God be with you. Preach repentance to all as He shall give you inspiration. And when Almighty God shall have made you multiply in numbers and in grace, come back to us, and we will entrust you with greater things."

So St. Francis, "true servant of God and faithful follower of Jesus Christ," went about his ministry with the blessing of the Church. To the people of Assisi, of Umbria, and afterwards of all Central Italy, his life was a revelation of Christianity. He imparted the gospel anew, as fresh as when it had first been given under the Syrian stars. He embodied peace, gentleness, courtesy, and self-sacrifice. It is not too much to say that he saved the Catholic Church, and put off the Protestant Reformation for three hundred years. His example and influence raised the standard of conduct within the Church; and his love, his devotion, his insistence on the essential parts of Christ's teaching, and his dislike of worldly pomps, deprived heresy of all its weapons. He satisfied the widespread religious hunger better than heresy did. He was so characteristically Italian, and his ministry throws so much light on the state of Italy at the opening of the thirteenth century, that it is worth while to dwell for a few pages on his doings.

Assisi, built for safety on a hill and protected by great walls and gates, was a good example of a little mediæval town. In the centre was the piazza, on which fronted a Roman temple to Minerva, haughtily scornful of its mediæval surroundings. Hard by was the cathedral, where every baby was taken for baptism. On the tiptop of the hill stood a huge castle, where the feudal baron dwelt with his ruffianly soldiers and received his feudal lord, the Emperor, when he stopped at Assisi on his way to Rome. In Francis's boyhood, the people, aided by Pope Innocent, had driven out the German count, and had formed themselves into a free commune, save 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 bourgeoisie, 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 opportunity. 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 poverty, dirt brought the pest, Crusaders brought leprosy. At the gates of the town stood lazar-houses, and in remote spots lepers in the earlier stages of disease gathered together. Yet, despite war, pest, and leprosy, life in Umbria could never have been wholly sad. Certainly the sons of the well-to-do enjoyed themselves and whiled away the time carelessly. Sometimes a great personage stopped on his Romeward way; sometimes strolling players exhibited 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 fêtes champêtres and dances. Francis, 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 themselves to praising God, comforting the wretched, and tending lepers. The abbot of the neighbouring Benedictine 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 degli Angeli (St. Mary of the Angels), so called because the songs of angels were heard there, was the cradle of the Franciscan Order. It was a tiny building, twenty feet wide and thirty long, with a steep pitched roof, plain walls, and big, round-arched door, and was sadly dilapidated. St. Francis and his friends built 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 daughter 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-abnegation. He followed the New Testament literally, superstitiously 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 answered: "After you have the psalter you will covet and long for a breviary; and when you possess a breviary you will sit on a chair like a great prelate, and say to thy brother, fetch me my breviary." 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 possessed passion, the great 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 his disciples he was Jesus come again. Joy and happiness 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, especially of birds. He wished the ox and the ass, companions 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 flew down over the roof of the house where he lay, and all flying together wheeled in circles round the roof and singing sweetly seemed to be praising God."

His disciples went forth from their headquarters, the Portiuncula, 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 undyed cloth, with cords about their waists and sandals on their feet; the sister Clares, shut up in nunneries, and dressed most simply; 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 eternal life was poverty. Even in his lifetime after his Order had become popular, there was grumbling and opposition; and after his death, the literal observance 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, dedicated 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 violating 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 ourselves.

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 aggravated by the union of the crowns of Sicily and Germany. Innocent had been pushed by circumstances into supporting Frederick's claim to Germany, and though he had striven to prevent the natural consequences 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 extreme 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 the Emperor, but hated Milan; Florence and the other Tuscan cities, except Ghibelline Pisa and Siena, which hated Florence, were Guelf; Rome was split in two; the Colonna, the Frangipani, and other great families were generally Ghibelline, though permanent allegiance was unfashionable, while the Orsini and others were Guelf. The Gray Friars, who swarmed from the Alps 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 extravagance, 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 English chronicler called him. Impetuous, terrible, voluptuous, refined, he was a kind of Cæsarian Byron. In most ways he outstripped contemporary thought; in many ways he outstripped contemporary sympathy. 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, which had fallen back into infidel hands, and incessantly 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 promise, 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; Frederick 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 preëminently counts that they took their name from their title), and a near relation to Innocent III. His indomitable character proved his kinship. Blameless in private life, a warm friend to St. Francis, deeply versed in ecclesiastical affairs, he had a benign face and noble presence; in fact, to quote the gentle Pope Honorius, he was "a Cedar of Lebanon in the Park of the Church." But, in spite of his virtue, his training, and his fourscore years, he was a very Hotspur, fiery, impatient, and headstrong. It was he who had put the crusader's cross into Frederick's hands and had received his crusader's vow; and now, having bottled up his wrath during 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 fleet set sail. A few days later word was brought that Frederick had put about and disembarked in Italy.

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 displaced by whirlwinds and tempests, is so continuously 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, nourishes 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 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 Imperial dignity, believing that he would be a rod of defence, and a staff for her old age."

The encyclical then proceeds to recount Frederick'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 prosperously 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 you 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 Sicily to Scotland. Frederick in answer wrote letters to the kings of Europe, saying that the Roman Church was 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 tributary. 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 became tributary to her. Likewise all have the example of many other princes, whose lands and persons she squeezed under an interdict till she had reduced them to similar servitude. We pass over her simony, her unheard-of exactions, 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 up himself 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 exposed to death and disinheritance, so that he, after the Roman fashion, should gulp down his impudent throat the fatter morsels. In this way, under the 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 excommunicate, to reprimand, to punish,—not to save the fruitful seed of God's word, 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 business about the going, and about the Church and about the Empire, detained us, not counting sickness. 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, so 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. Outwardly, however, peace was observed, and Frederick really went on the promised crusade; and, though in Syria he found Patriarch, Templars, Hospitallers, and Franciscans all turned against him, he succeeded in making a treaty by which Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem were ceded to him, and he crowned himself king in Jerusalem. In the mean time hostilities 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 respective jurisdictions, at length made peace, and Frederick was enabled to go back to his consuetas delicias, 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 gossip 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 fighting Islam, hobnobbed with Mohammedans and seemed to find them more sympathetic than Christians.

Frederick's real consuetæ deliciæ were of another kind. In his Sicilian court we catch the first 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 mathematics, philosophy, and in general learning. But poetry was his favourite pleasure. The Italian language, 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 Italian 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 chivalric 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. Frederick 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 great sportsman, 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 exalting royal authority over feudal prerogatives and 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 behaviour, 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 instinctively that a civilization so happy in the good things of this world, so lax on many points of morality, so careless of the Roman ecclesiastical system, was a perpetual menace to it. In the nature of things, the peace that had been made with Frederick could not last long.

The breach happened in the North. The Lombard 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 themselves for the struggle. The Pope took part, and a second time excommunicated Frederick, enumerating a score of sins. A later Pope held a council at Lyons (a place of safety), excommunicated Frederick 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 Enzio, 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. Enzio spent twenty-three years in prison and there 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 continued 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 Frederick's death the old mediæval Empire practically ceased; and Italy, instead of being an Imperial province, 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 Frederick's descendants were his lawful heir, a baby, Conradin, and an illegitimate son, Manfred. Manfred, who had inherited the charm, the address, the energy and brilliance of his father, succeeded in establishing himself in the Two Sicilies, at first as regent for his nephew, and afterwards, for in those troubled times a regency was precarious, as king in his own right. But the Popes were resolved not to undergo a repetition of the danger they had experienced from Frederick, and laid their plans to destroy the last of the "viper's brood," as they called Frederick's family. They followed the old precedent, set in the days when the Papacy had been in danger from the Lombards, and invited a French prince, 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. Florence made him podestà; 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. Manfred 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 kingdom, was also defeated, taken prisoner, and, after a mock trial for treason, put to death. Thus the Papacy 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 MEDIÆVAL PAPACY (1303)

We are now coming out of the Middle Ages, and the dawn of a new era grows more and more apparent. The Empire, embodiment of an old outworn theory, has already fallen, and its victorious rival, the Papacy, in so far as it embodies the mediæval 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 untouched, it looked as potent and sovereign, and spoke with as lofty a tone, as in the days of Innocent; 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 France had come into being, and flushed with a sense of power and importance, determined to take that part in European politics which it regarded as its due. In angry self-confidence the young kingdom confronted the overweening Papacy, savagely tore off its giant's robe, and laid bare its real weakness.

Boniface VIII (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 heroic. He sits with his rochet and tiara on, his right hand raised with two fingers extended as if blessing,—an unusual occupation,—and looks far more of this world than of the other. His contemporary, the Florentine historian, Villani, 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 memory, 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 obedience, its history would have been different. The rebellious commune and the rebellious barons were constantly on the watch for favourable opportunities to revolt, or, as they regarded it, to assert their rights and liberties, and Boniface's first struggle came with the great House of Colonna. The Colonnas were haughty; he was imperious. They hinted that he was not legally Pope; he excommunicated them, proclaimed a crusade, captured and destroyed 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 himself 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 Palestine was completely lost, Rome reasserted herself as the pilgrims' city, and crowds again visited the Roman basilicas. Eager to encourage a practice which he saw would increase the prestige and the income of the Holy See, Boniface issued his Bull of Jubilee which promised remission of sins to all pilgrims who should visit the basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul during the year.

Pious folk came from everywhere; on an average there were two hundred thousand at a time. They gave their offerings so generously that, as an eyewitness says, "Day and night two priests stood beside the altar in St. Paul's, holding rakes in their hands, raking in the money." It was noticed, however, that 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 vehement language, issued a bull, which deserves to be quoted as it sums up the extreme papal doctrine and also incidentally reveals how completely he misunderstood the drift of public opinion. "We are compelled, 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.... 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 sufferance 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, therefore, resists this power thus ordained by God, resists the ordination of God. Indeed, we declare, announce, 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 him, 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 dispute.

The crafty king, however, had determined on other means of revenge than decrees, accusations, and burning bulls; he devised a plot to kidnap Boniface and fetch him prisoner to France. One William Nogaret, 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 Colonna, and the two arranged the details of the plot. There were many conspirators, for not only the Colonnas were eager to revenge themselves, but numerous 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 excommunicated, he proposed to excommunicate the King of France. Two days before the day set for the excommunication, 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 conspirators broke into the episcopal palace, where they found the valiant old man seated on a throne, in his pontifical 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 dagger 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 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 dramatically 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 permanently. 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, arrogance, and hate; but these Avignonese Popes, though some of them were good men, suffered the papal court to become a place of amusement, banqueting, and dissipation.