of Rome and Union were pronounced with abhorrence. The patriarch Joseph
was indeed removed: his place was filled by Veccus, an ecclesiastic of
learning and moderation; and the emperor was still urged by the same
motives, to persevere in the same professions. But in his private
language PalÊologus affected to deplore the pride, and to blame the
innovations, of the Latins; and while he debased his character by
this double hypocrisy, he justified and punished the opposition of
his subjects. By the joint suffrage of the new and the ancient Rome,
a sentence of excommunication was pronounced against the obstinate
schismatics; the censures of the church were executed by the sword of
Michael; on the failure of persuasion, he tried the arguments of prison
and exile, of whipping and mutilation; those touchstones, says an
historian, of cowards and the brave. Two Greeks still reigned in ∆tolia,
Epirus, and Thessaly, with the appellation of despots: they had yielded
to the sovereign of Constantinople, but they rejected the chains of the
Roman pontiff, and supported their refusal by successful arms. Under
their protection, the fugitive monks and bishops assembled in hostile
synods; and retorted the name of heretic with the galling addition of
apostate: the prince of Trebizond was tempted to assume the forfeit
title of emperor; [339] and even the Latins of Negropont, Thebes, Athens,
and the Morea, forgot the merits of the convert, to join, with open or
clandestine aid, the enemies of PalÊologus. His favorite generals,
of his own blood, and family, successively deserted, or betrayed, the
sacrilegious trust. His sister Eulogia, a niece, and two female cousins,
conspired against him; another niece, Mary queen of Bulgaria, negotiated
his ruin with the sultan of Egypt; and, in the public eye, their treason
was consecrated as the most sublime virtue. [34] To the pope's nuncios,
who urged the consummation of the work, PalÊologus exposed a naked
recital of all that he had done and suffered for their sake. They were
assured that the guilty sectaries, of both sexes and every rank, had
been deprived of their honors, their fortunes, and their liberty; a
spreading list of confiscation and punishment, which involved many
persons, the dearest to the emperor, or the best deserving of his favor.
They were conducted to the prison, to behold four princes of the royal
blood chained in the four corners, and shaking their fetters in an agony
of grief and rage. Two of these captives were afterwards released; the
one by submission, the other by death: but the obstinacy of their two
companions was chastised by the loss of their eyes; and the Greeks,
the least adverse to the union, deplored that cruel and inauspicious
tragedy. [35] Persecutors must expect the hatred of those whom they
oppress; but they commonly find some consolation in the testimony of
their conscience, the applause of their party, and, perhaps, the success
of their undertaking. But the hypocrisy of Michael, which was prompted
only by political motives, must have forced him to hate himself, to
despise his followers, and to esteem and envy the rebel champions by
whom he was detested and despised. While his violence was abhorred at
Constantinople, at Rome his slowness was arraigned, and his sincerity
suspected; till at length Pope Martin the Fourth excluded the Greek
emperor from the pale of a church, into which he was striving to reduce
a schismatic people. No sooner had the tyrant expired, than the union
was dissolved, and abjured by unanimous consent; the churches were
purified; the penitents were reconciled; and his son Andronicus, after
weeping the sins and errors of his youth most piously denied his father
the burial of a prince and a Christian. [36]
[Footnote 339: According to Fallmarayer he had always maintained this
title.--M.]
[Footnote 34: This frank and authentic confession of Michael's
distress is exhibited in barbarous Latin by Ogerius, who signs himself
Protonotarius Interpretum, and transcribed by Wading from the MSS. of
the Vatican, (A.D. 1278, No. 3.) His annals of the Franciscan order,
the Fratres Minores, in xvii. volumes in folio, (Rome, 1741,) I have now
accidentally seen among the waste paper of a bookseller.]
[Footnote 35: See the vith book of Pachymer, particularly the chapters
1, 11, 16, 18, 24--27. He is the more credible, as he speaks of this
persecution with less anger than sorrow.]
[Footnote 36: Pachymer, l. vii. c. 1--ii. 17. The speech of Andronicus
the Elder (lib. xii. c. 2) is a curious record, which proves that if
the Greeks were the slaves of the emperor, the emperor was not less the
slave of superstition and the clergy.]
II. In the distress of the Latins, the walls and towers of
Constantinople had fallen to decay: they were restored and fortified by
the policy of Michael, who deposited a plenteous store of corn and salt
provisions, to sustain the siege which he might hourly expect from the
resentment of the Western powers. Of these, the sovereign of the Two
Sicilies was the most formidable neighbor: but as long as they were
possessed by Mainfroy, the bastard of Frederic the Second, his monarchy
was the bulwark, rather than the annoyance, of the Eastern empire. The
usurper, though a brave and active prince, was sufficiently employed
in the defence of his throne: his proscription by successive popes had
separated Mainfroy from the common cause of the Latins; and the forces
that might have besieged Constantinople were detained in a crusade
against the domestic enemy of Rome. The prize of her avenger, the crown
of the Two Sicilies, was won and worn by the brother of St Louis, by
Charles count of Anjou and Provence, who led the chivalry of France on
this holy expedition. [37] The disaffection of his Christian subjects
compelled Mainfroy to enlist a colony of Saracens whom his father had
planted in Apulia; and this odious succor will explain the defiance of
the Catholic hero, who rejected all terms of accommodation. "Bear this
message," said Charles, "to the sultan of Nocera, that God and the sword
are umpire between us; and that he shall either send me to paradise,
or I will send him to the pit of hell." The armies met: and though I
am ignorant of Mainfroy's doom in the other world, in this he lost his
friends, his kingdom, and his life, in the bloody battle of Benevento.
Naples and Sicily were immediately peopled with a warlike race of
French nobles; and their aspiring leader embraced the future conquest of
Africa, Greece, and Palestine. The most specious reasons might point his
first arms against the Byzantine empire; and PalÊologus, diffident of
his own strength, repeatedly appealed from the ambition of Charles to
the humanity of St. Louis, who still preserved a just ascendant over the
mind of his ferocious brother. For a while the attention of that brother
was confined at home by the invasion of Conradin, the last heir to
the imperial house of Swabia; but the hapless boy sunk in the unequal
conflict; and his execution on a public scaffold taught the rivals of
Charles to tremble for their heads as well as their dominions. A second
respite was obtained by the last crusade of St. Louis to the African
coast; and the double motive of interest and duty urged the king of
Naples to assist, with his powers and his presence, the holy enterprise.
The death of St. Louis released him from the importunity of a virtuous
censor: the king of Tunis confessed himself the tributary and vassal of
the crown of Sicily; and the boldest of the French knights were free
to enlist under his banner against the Greek empire. A treaty and a
marriage united his interest with the house of Courtenay; his daughter
Beatrice was promised to Philip, son and heir of the emperor Baldwin; a
pension of six hundred ounces of gold was allowed for his maintenance;
and his generous father distributed among his aliens the kingdoms and
provinces of the East, reserving only Constantinople, and one day's
journey round the city for the imperial domain. [38] In this perilous
moment, PalÊologus was the most eager to subscribe the creed, and
implore the protection, of the Roman pontiff, who assumed, with
propriety and weight, the character of an angel of peace, the common
father of the Christians. By his voice, the sword of Charles was chained
in the scabbard; and the Greek ambassadors beheld him, in the pope's
antechamber, biting his ivory sceptre in a transport of fury, and deeply
resenting the refusal to enfranchise and consecrate his arms. He appears
to have respected the disinterested mediation of Gregory the Tenth; but
Charles was insensibly disgusted by the pride and partiality of Nicholas
the Third; and his attachment to his kindred, the Ursini family,
alienated the most strenuous champion from the service of the church.
The hostile league against the Greeks, of Philip the Latin emperor, the
king of the Two Sicilies, and the republic of Venice, was ripened into
execution; and the election of Martin the Fourth, a French pope, gave a
sanction to the cause. Of the allies, Philip supplied his name; Martin,
a bull of excommunication; the Venetians, a squadron of forty galleys;
and the formidable powers of Charles consisted of forty counts, ten
thousand men at arms, a numerous body of infantry, and a fleet of more
than three hundred ships and transports. A distant day was appointed for
assembling this mighty force in the harbor of Brindisi; and a previous
attempt was risked with a detachment of three hundred knights, who
invaded Albania, and besieged the fortress of Belgrade. Their defeat
might amuse with a triumph the vanity of Constantinople; but the more
sagacious Michael, despairing of his arms, depended on the effects of
a conspiracy; on the secret workings of a rat, who gnawed the bowstring
[39] of the Sicilian tyrant.
[Footnote 37: The best accounts, the nearest the time, the most full
and entertaining, of the conquest of Naples by Charles of Anjou, may
be found in the Florentine Chronicles of Ricordano Malespina, (c.
175--193,) and Giovanni Villani, (l. vii. c. 1--10, 25--30,) which are
published by Muratori in the viiith and xiiith volumes of the Historians
of Italy. In his Annals (tom. xi. p. 56--72) he has abridged these great
events which are likewise described in the Istoria Civile of Giannone.
tom. l. xix. tom. iii. l. xx.]
[Footnote 38: Ducange, Hist. de C. P. l. v. c. 49--56, l. vi. c. 1--13.
See Pachymer, l. iv. c. 29, l. v. c. 7--10, 25 l. vi. c. 30, 32, 33, and
Nicephorus Gregoras, l. iv. 5, l. v. 1, 6.]
[Footnote 39: The reader of Herodotus will recollect how miraculously
the Assyrian host of Sennacherib was disarmed and destroyed, (l. ii. c.
141.)]
Among the proscribed adherents of the house of Swabia, John of Procida
forfeited a small island of that name in the Bay of Naples. His birth
was noble, but his education was learned; and in the poverty of exile,
he was relieved by the practice of physic, which he had studied in the
school of Salerno. Fortune had left him nothing to lose, except life;
and to despise life is the first qualification of a rebel. Procida was
endowed with the art of negotiation, to enforce his reasons and disguise
his motives; and in his various transactions with nations and men, he
could persuade each party that he labored solely for _their_ interest.
The new kingdoms of Charles were afflicted by every species of fiscal
and military oppression; [40] and the lives and fortunes of his Italian
subjects were sacrificed to the greatness of their master and the
licentiousness of his followers. The hatred of Naples was repressed by
his presence; but the looser government of his vicegerents excited the
contempt, as well as the aversion, of the Sicilians: the island was
roused to a sense of freedom by the eloquence of Procida; and he
displayed to every baron his private interest in the common cause. In
the confidence of foreign aid, he successively visited the courts of
the Greek emperor, and of Peter king of Arragon, [41] who possessed the
maritime countries of Valentia and Catalonia. To the ambitious Peter a
crown was presented, which he might justly claim by his marriage with
the sister [419] of Mainfroy, and by the dying voice of Conradin, who from
the scaffold had cast a ring to his heir and avenger. PalÊologus was
easily persuaded to divert his enemy from a foreign war by a rebellion
at home; and a Greek subsidy of twenty-five thousand ounces of gold was
most profitably applied to arm a Catalan fleet, which sailed under a
holy banner to the specious attack of the Saracens of Africa. In the
disguise of a monk or beggar, the indefatigable missionary of revolt
flew from Constantinople to Rome, and from Sicily to Saragossa: the
treaty was sealed with the signet of Pope Nicholas himself, the enemy
of Charles; and his deed of gift transferred the fiefs of St. Peter from
the house of Anjou to that of Arragon. So widely diffused and so freely
circulated, the secret was preserved above two years with impenetrable
discretion; and each of the conspirators imbibed the maxim of Peter, who
declared that he would cut off his left hand if it were conscious of the
intentions of his right. The mine was prepared with deep and dangerous
artifice; but it may be questioned, whether the instant explosion of
Palermo were the effect of accident or design.
[Footnote 40: According to Sabas Malaspina, (Hist. Sicula, l. iii. c.
16, in Muratori, tom. viii. p. 832,) a zealous Guelph, the subjects of
Charles, who had reviled Mainfroy as a wolf, began to regret him as a
lamb; and he justifies their discontent by the oppressions of the French
government, (l. vi. c. 2, 7.) See the Sicilian manifesto in Nicholas
Specialis, (l. i. c. 11, in Muratori, tom. x. p. 930.)]
[Footnote 41: See the character and counsels of Peter, king of Arragon,
in Mariana, (Hist. Hispan. l. xiv. c. 6, tom. ii. p. 133.) The reader
for gives the Jesuit's defects, in favor, always of his style, and often
of his sense.]
[Footnote 419: Daughter. See Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 517.--M.]
On the vigil of Easter, a procession of the disarmed citizens visited
a church without the walls; and a noble damsel was rudely insulted by a
French soldier. [42] The ravisher was instantly punished with death; and
if the people was at first scattered by a military force, their numbers
and fury prevailed: the conspirators seized the opportunity; the flame
spread over the island; and eight thousand French were exterminated in
a promiscuous massacre, which has obtained the name of the Sicilian
Vespers. [43] From every city the banners of freedom and the church
were displayed: the revolt was inspired by the presence or the soul
of Procida and Peter of Arragon, who sailed from the African coast
to Palermo, was saluted as the king and savior of the isle. By the
rebellion of a people on whom he had so long trampled with impunity,
Charles was astonished and confounded; and in the first agony of grief
and devotion, he was heard to exclaim, "O God! if thou hast decreed
to humble me, grant me at least a gentle and gradual descent from the
pinnacle of greatness!" His fleet and army, which already filled the
seaports of Italy, were hastily recalled from the service of the Grecian
war; and the situation of Messina exposed that town to the first storm
of his revenge. Feeble in themselves, and yet hopeless of foreign
succor, the citizens would have repented, and submitted on the assurance
of full pardon and their ancient privileges. But the pride of the
monarch was already rekindled; and the most fervent entreaties of the
legate could extort no more than a promise, that he would forgive the
remainder, after a chosen list of eight hundred rebels had been yielded
to his discretion. The despair of the Messinese renewed their courage:
Peter of Arragon approached to their relief; [44] and his rival was
driven back by the failure of provision and the terrors of the equinox
to the Calabrian shore. At the same moment, the Catalan admiral, the
famous Roger de Loria, swept the channel with an invincible squadron:
the French fleet, more numerous in transports than in galleys, was
either burnt or destroyed; and the same blow assured the independence of
Sicily and the safety of the Greek empire. A few days before his death,
the emperor Michael rejoiced in the fall of an enemy whom he hated and
esteemed; and perhaps he might be content with the popular judgment,
that had they not been matched with each other, Constantinople and Italy
must speedily have obeyed the same master. [45] From this disastrous
moment, the life of Charles was a series of misfortunes: his capital was
insulted, his son was made prisoner, and he sunk into the grave without
recovering the Isle of Sicily, which, after a war of twenty years,
was finally severed from the throne of Naples, and transferred, as an
independent kingdom, to a younger branch of the house of Arragon. [46]
[Footnote 42: After enumerating the sufferings of his country, Nicholas
Specialis adds, in the true spirit of Italian jealousy, QuÊ omnia et
graviora quidem, ut arbitror, patienti animo Siculi tolerassent,
nisi (quod primum cunctis dominantibus cavendum est) alienas fminas
invasissent, (l. i. c. 2, p. 924.)]
[Footnote 43: The French were long taught to remember this bloody
lesson: "If I am provoked, (said Henry the Fourth,) I will breakfast
at Milan, and dine at Naples." "Your majesty (replied the Spanish
ambassador) may perhaps arrive in Sicily for vespers."]
[Footnote 44: This revolt, with the subsequent victory, are related by
two national writers, Bartholemy ‡ Neocastro (in Muratori, tom. xiii.,)
and Nicholas Specialis (in Muratori, tom. x.,) the one a contemporary,
the other of the next century. The patriot Specialis disclaims the name
of rebellion, and all previous correspondence with Peter of Arragon,
(nullo communicato consilio,) who _happened_ to be with a fleet and army
on the African coast, (l. i. c. 4, 9.)]
[Footnote 45: Nicephorus Gregoras (l. v. c. 6) admires the wisdom of
Providence in this equal balance of states and princes. For the honor
of PalÊologus, I had rather this balance had been observed by an Italian
writer.]
[Footnote 46: See the Chronicle of Villani, the xith volume of the
Annali d'Italia of Muratori, and the xxth and xxist books of the Istoria
Civile of Giannone.]
Chapter LXII: Greek Emperors Of Nice And Constantinople.--Part III.