of his deliverance and restoration; and the court of Avignon was
persuaded, that the successful rebel could alone appease and reform the
anarchy of the metropolis. After a solemn profession of fidelity, the
Roman tribune was sent into Italy, with the title of senator; but the
death of Baroncelli appeared to supersede the use of his mission; and
the legate, Cardinal Albornoz, [53] a consummate statesman, allowed him
with reluctance, and without aid, to undertake the perilous experiment.
His first reception was equal to his wishes: the day of his entrance was
a public festival; and his eloquence and authority revived the laws of
the good estate. But this momentary sunshine was soon clouded by his own
vices and those of the people: in the Capitol, he might often regret
the prison of Avignon; and after a second administration of four months,
Rienzi was massacred in a tumult which had been fomented by the Roman
barons. In the society of the Germans and Bohemians, he is said to have
contracted the habits of intemperance and cruelty: adversity had chilled
his enthusiasm, without fortifying his reason or virtue; and that
youthful hope, that lively assurance, which is the pledge of success,
was now succeeded by the cold impotence of distrust and despair. The
tribune had reigned with absolute dominion, by the choice, and in the
hearts, of the Romans: the senator was the servile minister of a foreign
court; and while he was suspected by the people, he was abandoned by the
prince. The legate Albornoz, who seemed desirous of his ruin, inflexibly
refused all supplies of men and money; a faithful subject could no
longer presume to touch the revenues of the apostolical chamber; and
the first idea of a tax was the signal of clamor and sedition. Even his
justice was tainted with the guilt or reproach of selfish cruelty: the
most virtuous citizen of Rome was sacrificed to his jealousy; and in the
execution of a public robber, from whose purse he had been assisted, the
magistrate too much forgot, or too much remembered, the obligations of
the debtor. [54] A civil war exhausted his treasures, and the patience
of the city: the Colonna maintained their hostile station at Palestrina;
and his mercenaries soon despised a leader whose ignorance and fear
were envious of all subordinate merit. In the death, as in the life, of
Rienzi, the hero and the coward were strangely mingled. When the Capitol
was invested by a furious multitude, when he was basely deserted by his
civil and military servants, the intrepid senator, waving the banner of
liberty, presented himself on the balcony, addressed his eloquence to
the various passions of the Romans, and labored to persuade them, that
in the same cause himself and the republic must either stand or fall.
His oration was interrupted by a volley of imprecations and stones; and
after an arrow had transpierced his hand, he sunk into abject despair,
and fled weeping to the inner chambers, from whence he was let down by a
sheet before the windows of the prison. Destitute of aid or hope, he was
besieged till the evening: the doors of the Capitol were destroyed with
axes and fire; and while the senator attempted to escape in a plebeian
habit, he was discovered and dragged to the platform of the palace, the
fatal scene of his judgments and executions. A whole hour, without voice
or motion, he stood amidst the multitude half naked and half dead:
their rage was hushed into curiosity and wonder: the last feelings of
reverence and compassion yet struggled in his favor; and they might have
prevailed, if a bold assassin had not plunged a dagger in his breast.
He fell senseless with the first stroke: the impotent revenge of
his enemies inflicted a thousand wounds: and the senator's body was
abandoned to the dogs, to the Jews, and to the flames. Posterity will
compare the virtues and failings of this extraordinary man; but in a
long period of anarchy and servitude, the name of Rienzi has often been
celebrated as the deliverer of his country, and the last of the Roman
patriots. [55]
[Footnote 53: ∆gidius, or Giles Albornoz, a noble Spaniard, archbishop
of Toledo, and cardinal legate in Italy, (A.D. 1353--1367,) restored, by
his arms and counsels, the temporal dominion of the popes. His life has
been separately written by Sepulveda; but Dryden could not reasonably
suppose, that his name, or that of Wolsey, had reached the ears of the
Mufti in Don Sebastian.]
[Footnote 54: From Matteo Villani and Fortifiocca, the P. du CerÁeau (p.
344--394) has extracted the life and death of the chevalier Montreal,
the life of a robber and the death of a hero. At the head of a free
company, the first that desolated Italy, he became rich and formidable
be had money in all the banks,--60,000 ducats in Padua alone.]
[Footnote 55: The exile, second government, and death of Rienzi, are
minutely related by the anonymous Roman, who appears neither his friend
nor his enemy, (l. iii. c. 12--25.) Petrarch, who loved the _tribune_,
was indifferent to the fate of the _senator_.]
The first and most generous wish of Petrarch was the restoration of a
free republic; but after the exile and death of his plebeian hero,
he turned his eyes from the tribune, to the king, of the Romans. The
Capitol was yet stained with the blood of Rienzi, when Charles the
Fourth descended from the Alps to obtain the Italian and Imperial
crowns. In his passage through Milan he received the visit, and repaid
the flattery, of the poet-laureate; accepted a medal of Augustus; and
promised, without a smile, to imitate the founder of the Roman monarchy.
A false application of the name and maxims of antiquity was the source
of the hopes and disappointments of Petrarch; yet he could not overlook
the difference of times and characters; the immeasurable distance
between the first CÊsars and a Bohemian prince, who by the favor of
the clergy had been elected the titular head of the German aristocracy.
Instead of restoring to Rome her glory and her provinces, he had bound
himself by a secret treaty with the pope, to evacuate the city on the
day of his coronation; and his shameful retreat was pursued by the
reproaches of the patriot bard. [56]
[Footnote 56: The hopes and the disappointment of Petrarch are agreeably
described in his own words by the French biographer, (MÈmoires, tom.
iii. p. 375--413;) but the deep, though secret, wound was the coronation
of Zanubi, the poet-laureate, by Charles IV.]
After the loss of liberty and empire, his third and more humble wish was
to reconcile the shepherd with his flock; to recall the Roman bishop
to his ancient and peculiar diocese. In the fervor of youth, with the
authority of age, Petrarch addressed his exhortations to five successive
popes, and his eloquence was always inspired by the enthusiasm of
sentiment and the freedom of language. [57] The son of a citizen of
Florence invariably preferred the country of his birth to that of his
education; and Italy, in his eyes, was the queen and garden of the
world. Amidst her domestic factions, she was doubtless superior to
France both in art and science, in wealth and politeness; but the
difference could scarcely support the epithet of barbarous, which he
promiscuously bestows on the countries beyond the Alps. Avignon, the
mystic Babylon, the sink of vice and corruption, was the object of his
hatred and contempt; but he forgets that her scandalous vices were not
the growth of the soil, and that in every residence they would adhere to
the power and luxury of the papal court. He confesses that the successor
of St. Peter is the bishop of the universal church; yet it was not on
the banks of the RhÙne, but of the Tyber, that the apostle had fixed
his everlasting throne; and while every city in the Christian world was
blessed with a bishop, the metropolis alone was desolate and forlorn.
Since the removal of the Holy See, the sacred buildings of the Lateran
and the Vatican, their altars and their saints, were left in a state
of poverty and decay; and Rome was often painted under the image of a
disconsolate matron, as if the wandering husband could be reclaimed by
the homely portrait of the age and infirmities of his weeping spouse.
[58] But the cloud which hung over the seven hills would be dispelled by
the presence of their lawful sovereign: eternal fame, the prosperity of
Rome, and the peace of Italy, would be the recompense of the pope
who should dare to embrace this generous resolution. Of the five whom
Petrarch exhorted, the three first, John the Twenty-second, Benedict
the Twelfth, and Clement the Sixth, were importuned or amused by
the boldness of the orator; but the memorable change which had been
attempted by Urban the Fifth was finally accomplished by Gregory the
Eleventh. The execution of their design was opposed by weighty and
almost insuperable obstacles. A king of France, who has deserved the
epithet of wise, was unwilling to release them from a local dependence:
the cardinals, for the most part his subjects, were attached to the
language, manners, and climate of Avignon; to their stately palaces;
above all, to the wines of Burgundy. In their eyes, Italy was foreign
or hostile; and they reluctantly embarked at Marseilles, as if they had
been sold or banished into the land of the Saracens. Urban the Fifth
resided three years in the Vatican with safety and honor: his sanctity
was protected by a guard of two thousand horse; and the king of Cyprus,
the queen of Naples, and the emperors of the East and West, devoutly
saluted their common father in the chair of St. Peter. But the joy of
Petrarch and the Italians was soon turned into grief and indignation.
Some reasons of public or private moment, his own impatience or the
prayers of the cardinals, recalled Urban to France; and the approaching
election was saved from the tyrannic patriotism of the Romans. The
powers of heaven were interested in their cause: Bridget of Sweden, a
saint and pilgrim, disapproved the return, and foretold the death, of
Urban the Fifth: the migration of Gregory the Eleventh was encouraged
by St. Catharine of Sienna, the spouse of Christ and ambassadress of
the Florentines; and the popes themselves, the great masters of human
credulity, appear to have listened to these visionary females. [59] Yet
those celestial admonitions were supported by some arguments of temporal
policy. The residents of Avignon had been invaded by hostile violence:
at the head of thirty thousand robbers, a hero had extorted ransom and
absolution from the vicar of Christ and the sacred college; and the
maxim of the French warriors, to spare the people and plunder the
church, was a new heresy of the most dangerous import. [60] While the
pope was driven from Avignon, he was strenuously invited to Rome. The
senate and people acknowledged him as their lawful sovereign, and laid
at his feet the keys of the gates, the bridges, and the fortresses;
of the quarter at least beyond the Tyber. [61] But this loyal offer
was accompanied by a declaration, that they could no longer suffer
the scandal and calamity of his absence; and that his obstinacy would
finally provoke them to revive and assert the primitive right of
election. The abbot of Mount Cassin had been consulted, whether he would
accept the triple crown [62] from the clergy and people: "I am a citizen
of Rome," [63] replied that venerable ecclesiastic, "and my first law is,
the voice of my country." [64]
[Footnote 57: See, in his accurate and amusing biographer, the
application of Petrarch and Rome to Benedict XII. in the year 1334,
(MÈmoires, tom. i. p. 261--265,) to Clement VI. in 1342, (tom. ii. p.
45--47,) and to Urban V. in 1366, (tom. iii. p. 677--691:) his praise
(p. 711--715) and excuse (p. 771) of the last of these pontiffs. His
angry controversy on the respective merits of France and Italy may be
found, Opp. p. 1068--1085.]
[Footnote 58:
Squalida sed quoniam facies, neglectaque cult˚
CÊsaries; multisque malis lassata senectus
Eripuit solitam effigiem: vetus accipe nomen;
Roma vocor. (Carm. l. 2, p. 77.)
He spins this allegory beyond all measure or patience. The Epistles to
Urban V in prose are more simple and persuasive, (Senilium, l. vii. p.
811--827 l. ix. epist. i. p. 844--854.)]
[Footnote 59: I have not leisure to expatiate on the legends of St.
Bridget or St. Catharine, the last of which might furnish some amusing
stories. Their effect on the mind of Gregory XI. is attested by the
last solemn words of the dying pope, who admonished the assistants,
ut caverent ab hominibus, sive viris, sive mulieribus, sub specie
religionis loquentibus visiones sui capitis, quia per tales ipse
seductus, &c., (Baluz. Not ad Vit. Pap. Avenionensium, tom. i. p.
1224.)]
[Footnote 60: This predatory expedition is related by Froissard,
(Chronique, tom. i. p. 230,) and in the life of Du Guesclin, (Collection
GÈnÈrale des MÈmoires Historiques, tom. iv. c. 16, p. 107--113.) As
early as the year 1361, the court of Avignon had been molested by
similar freebooters, who afterwards passed the Alps, (MÈmoires sur
PÈtrarque, tom. iii. p. 563--569.)]
[Footnote 61: Fleury alleges, from the annals of Odericus Raynaldus,
the original treaty which was signed the 21st of December, 1376, between
Gregory XI. and the Romans, (Hist. EcclÈs. tom. xx. p. 275.)]
[Footnote 62: The first crown or regnum (Ducange, Gloss. Latin. tom. v.
p. 702) on the episcopal mitre of the popes, is ascribed to the gift of
Constantine, or Clovis. The second was added by Boniface VIII., as the
emblem not only of a spiritual, but of a temporal, kingdom. The three
states of the church are represented by the triple crown which was
introduced by John XXII. or Benedict XII., (MÈmoires sur PÈtrarque, tom.
i. p. 258, 259.)]
[Footnote 63: Baluze (Not. ad Pap. Avenion. tom. i. p. 1194, 1195)
produces the original evidence which attests the threats of the Roman
ambassadors, and the resignation of the abbot of Mount Cassin, qui,
ultro se offerens, respondit se civem Romanum esse, et illud velle quod
ipsi vellent.]
[Footnote 64: The return of the popes from Avignon to Rome, and their
reception by the people, are related in the original lives of Urban
V. and Gregory XI., in Baluze (Vit. Paparum Avenionensium, tom. i. p.
363--486) and Muratori, (Script. Rer. Italicarum, tom. iii. P. i.
p. 613--712.) In the disputes of the schism, every circumstance was
severely, though partially, scrutinized; more especially in the great
inquest, which decided the obedience of Castile, and to which Baluze,
in his notes, so often and so largely appeals from a MS. volume in the
Harley library, (p. 1281, &c.)]
If superstition will interpret an untimely death, [65] if the merit of
counsels be judged from the event, the heavens may seem to frown on a
measure of such apparent season and propriety. Gregory the Eleventh did
not survive above fourteen months his return to the Vatican; and his
decease was followed by the great schism of the West, which distracted
the Latin church above forty years. The sacred college was then composed
of twenty-two cardinals: six of these had remained at Avignon; eleven
Frenchmen, one Spaniard, and four Italians, entered the conclave in the
usual form. Their choice was not yet limited to the purple; and their
unanimous votes acquiesced in the archbishop of Bari, a subject of
Naples, conspicuous for his zeal and learning, who ascended the throne
of St. Peter under the name of Urban the Sixth. The epistle of the
sacred college affirms his free, and regular, election; which had been
inspired, as usual, by the Holy Ghost; he was adored, invested, and
crowned, with the customary rites; his temporal authority was obeyed at
Rome and Avignon, and his ecclesiastical supremacy was acknowledged in
the Latin world. During several weeks, the cardinals attended their new
master with the fairest professions of attachment and loyalty; till the
summer heats permitted a decent escape from the city. But as soon as
they were united at Anagni and Fundi, in a place of security, they
cast aside the mask, accused their own falsehood and hypocrisy,
excommunicated the apostate and antichrist of Rome, and proceeded to
a new election of Robert of Geneva, Clement the Seventh, whom they
announced to the nations as the true and rightful vicar of Christ. Their
first choice, an involuntary and illegal act, was annulled by fear of
death and the menaces of the Romans; and their complaint is justified
by the strong evidence of probability and fact. The twelve French
cardinals, above two thirds of the votes, were masters of the election;
and whatever might be their provincial jealousies, it cannot fairly be
presumed that they would have sacrificed their right and interest to a
foreign candidate, who would never restore them to their native country.
In the various, and often inconsistent, narratives, [66] the shades
of popular violence are more darkly or faintly colored: but the
licentiousness of the seditious Romans was inflamed by a sense of their
privileges, and the danger of a second emigration. The conclave was
intimidated by the shouts, and encompassed by the arms, of thirty
thousand rebels; the bells of the Capitol and St. Peter's rang an alarm:
"Death, or an Italian pope!" was the universal cry; the same threat was
repeated by the twelve bannerets or chiefs of the quarters, in the
form of charitable advice; some preparations were made for burning the
obstinate cardinals; and had they chosen a Transalpine subject, it is
probable that they would never have departed alive from the Vatican. The
same constraint imposed the necessity of dissembling in the eyes of
Rome and of the world; the pride and cruelty of Urban presented a more
inevitable danger; and they soon discovered the features of the tyrant,
who could walk in his garden and recite his breviary, while he heard
from an adjacent chamber six cardinals groaning on the rack. His
inflexible zeal, which loudly censured their luxury and vice, would have
attached them to the stations and duties of their parishes at Rome; and
had he not fatally delayed a new promotion, the French cardinals would
have been reduced to a helpless minority in the sacred college. For
these reasons, and the hope of repassing the Alps, they rashly violated
the peace and unity of the church; and the merits of their double choice
are yet agitated in the Catholic schools. [67] The vanity, rather than
the interest, of the nation determined the court and clergy of France.
[68] The states of Savoy, Sicily, Cyprus, Arragon, Castille, Navarre, and
Scotland were inclined by their example and authority to the obedience
of Clement the Seventh, and after his decease, of Benedict the
Thirteenth. Rome and the principal states of Italy, Germany, Portugal,
England, [69] the Low Countries, and the kingdoms of the North, adhered
to the prior election of Urban the Sixth, who was succeeded by Boniface
the Ninth, Innocent the Seventh, and Gregory the Twelfth.
[Footnote 65: Can the death of a good man be esteemed a punishment
by those who believe in the immortality of the soul? They betray the
instability of their faith. Yet as a mere philosopher, I cannot agree
with the Greeks, on oi Jeoi jilousin apoqnhskei neoV, (Brunck, PoetÊ
Gnomici, p. 231.) See in Herodotus (l. i. c. 31) the moral and pleasing
tale of the Argive youths.]
[Footnote 66: In the first book of the Histoire du Concile de Pise,
M. Lenfant has abridged and compared the original narratives of the
adherents of Urban and Clement, of the Italians and Germans, the French
and Spaniards. The latter appear to be the most active and loquacious,
and every fact and word in the original lives of Gregory XI. and Clement
VII. are supported in the notes of their editor Baluze.]
[Footnote 67: The ordinal numbers of the popes seems to decide the
question against Clement VII. and Benedict XIII., who are boldly
stigmatized as antipopes by the Italians, while the French are content
with authorities and reasons to plead the cause of doubt and toleration,
(Baluz. in PrÊfat.) It is singular, or rather it is not singular, that
saints, visions and miracles should be common to both parties.]
[Footnote 68: Baluze strenuously labors (Not. p. 1271--1280) to justify
the pure and pious motives of Charles V. king of France: he refused to
hear the arguments of Urban; but were not the Urbanists equally deaf to
the reasons of Clement, &c.?]
[Footnote 69: An epistle, or declamation, in the name of Edward III.,
(Baluz. Vit. Pap. Avenion. tom. i. p. 553,) displays the zeal of the
English nation against the Clementines. Nor was their zeal confined to
words: the bishop of Norwich led a crusade of 60,000 bigots beyond sea,
(Hume's History, vol. iii. p. 57, 58.)]
From the banks of the Tyber and the RhÙne, the hostile pontiffs
encountered each other with the pen and the sword: the civil and
ecclesiastical order of society was disturbed; and the Romans had
their full share of the mischiefs of which they may be arraigned as the
primary authors. [70] They had vainly flattered themselves with the hope
of restoring the seat of the ecclesiastical monarchy, and of relieving
their poverty with the tributes and offerings of the nations; but
the separation of France and Spain diverted the stream of lucrative
devotion; nor could the loss be compensated by the two jubilees which
were crowded into the space of ten years. By the avocations of the
schism, by foreign arms, and popular tumults, Urban the Sixth and his
three successors were often compelled to interrupt their residence in
the Vatican. The Colonna and Ursini still exercised their deadly feuds:
the bannerets of Rome asserted and abused the privileges of a republic:
the vicars of Christ, who had levied a military force, chastised their
rebellion with the gibbet, the sword, and the dagger; and, in a friendly
conference, eleven deputies of the people were perfidiously murdered
and cast into the street. Since the invasion of Robert the Norman,
the Romans had pursued their domestic quarrels without the dangerous
interposition of a stranger. But in the disorders of the schism, an
aspiring neighbor, Ladislaus king of Naples, alternately supported
and betrayed the pope and the people; by the former he was declared
_gonfalonier_, or general, of the church, while the latter submitted to
his choice the nomination of their magistrates. Besieging Rome by
land and water, he thrice entered the gates as a Barbarian conqueror;
profaned the altars, violated the virgins, pillaged the merchants,
performed his devotions at St. Peter's, and left a garrison in the
castle of St. Angelo. His arms were sometimes unfortunate, and to
a delay of three days he was indebted for his life and crown: but
Ladislaus triumphed in his turn; and it was only his premature death
that could save the metropolis and the ecclesiastical state from the
ambitious conqueror, who had assumed the title, or at least the powers,
of king of Rome. [71]
[Footnote 70: Besides the general historians, the Diaries of Delphinus
Gentilia Peter Antonius, and Stephen Infessura, in the great collection
of Muratori, represented the state and misfortunes of Rome.]
[Footnote 71: It is supposed by Giannone (tom. iii. p. 292) that
he styled himself Rex RomÊ, a title unknown to the world since the
expulsion of Tarquin. But a nearer inspection has justified the reading
of Rex R_a_mÊ, of Rama, an obscure kingdom annexed to the crown of
Hungary.]