Those Who Dislike to Understand What They Read.
Years had passed away, and the death of the Roman boy, amidst more noble
and less excusable slaughter, was soon forgotten,--forgotten almost
by the parents of the slain, in the growing fame and fortunes of their
eldest son,--forgotten and forgiven never by that son himself.
But, between that prologue of blood, and the political drama which
ensues,--between the fading interest, as it were, of a dream, and the
more busy, actual, and continuous excitements of sterner life,--this may
be the most fitting time to place before the reader a short and rapid
outline of the state and circumstances of that city in which the
principal scenes of this story are laid;--an outline necessary, perhaps,
to many, for a full comprehension of the motives of the actors, and the
vicissitudes of the plot.
Despite the miscellaneous and mongrel tribes that had forced their
settlements in the City of the Caesars, the Roman population retained
an inordinate notion of their own supremacy over the rest of the world;
and, degenerated from the iron virtues of the Republic, possessed all
the insolent and unruly turbulence which characterised the Plebs of the
ancient Forum. Amongst a ferocious, yet not a brave populace, the
nobles supported themselves less as sagacious tyrants than as relentless
banditti. The popes had struggled in vain against these stubborn and
stern patricians. Their state derided, their command defied, their
persons publicly outraged, the pontiff-sovereigns of the rest of Europe
resided, at the Vatican, as prisoners under terror of execution.
When, thirty-eight years before the date of the events we are about to
witness, a Frenchman, under the name of Clement V., had ascended the
chair of St. Peter, the new pope, with more prudence than valour, had
deserted Rome for the tranquil retreat of Avignon; and the luxurious
town of a foreign province became the court of the Roman pontiff, and
the throne of the Christian Church.
Thus deprived of even the nominal check of the papal presence, the power
of the nobles might be said to have no limits, save their own caprice,
or their mutual jealousies and feuds. Though arrogating through fabulous
genealogies their descent from the ancient Romans, they were, in
reality, for the most part, the sons of the bolder barbarians of the
North; and, contaminated by the craft of Italy, rather than imbued with
its national affections, they retained the disdain of their foreign
ancestors for a conquered soil and a degenerate people. While the rest
of Italy, especially in Florence, in Venice, and in Milan, was fast and
far advancing beyond the other states of Europe in civilisation and in
art, the Romans appeared rather to recede than to improve;--unblest by
laws, unvisited by art, strangers at once to the chivalry of a warlike,
and the graces of a peaceful, people. But they still possessed the
sense and desire of liberty, and, by ferocious paroxysms and desperate
struggles, sought to vindicate for their city the title it still assumed
of “the Metropolis of the World.” For the last two centuries they had
known various revolutions--brief, often bloody, and always unsuccessful.
Still, there was the empty pageant of a popular form of government. The
thirteen quarters of the city named each a chief; and the assembly of
these magistrates, called Caporioni, by theory possessed an authority
they had neither the power nor the courage to exert. Still there was the
proud name of Senator; but, at the present time, the office was confined
to one or to two persons, sometimes elected by the pope, sometimes by
the nobles. The authority attached to the name seems to have had no
definite limit; it was that of a stern dictator, or an indolent puppet,
according as he who held it had the power to enforce the dignity he
assumed. It was never conceded but to nobles, and it was by the nobles
that all the outrages were committed. Private enmity alone was gratified
whenever public justice was invoked: and the vindication of order was
but the execution of revenge.
Holding their palaces as the castles and fortresses of princes, each
asserting his own independency of all authority and law, and planting
fortifications, and claiming principalities in the patrimonial
territories of the Church, the barons of Rome made their state still
more secure, and still more odious, by the maintenance of troops of
foreign (chiefly of German) mercenaries, at once braver in disposition,
more disciplined in service, and more skilful in arms, than even the
freest Italians of that time. Thus they united the judicial and the
military force, not for the protection, but for the ruin of Rome. Of
these barons, the most powerful were the Orsini and Colonna; their feuds
were hereditary and incessant, and every day witnessed the fruits of
their lawless warfare, in bloodshed, in rape, and in conflagration.
The flattery or the friendship of Petrarch, too credulously believed by
modern historians, has invested the Colonna, especially of the date now
entered upon, with an elegance and a dignity not their own. Outrage,
fraud, and assassination, a sordid avarice in securing lucrative offices
to themselves, an insolent oppression of their citizens, and the
most dastardly cringing to power superior to their own (with but few
exceptions), mark the character of the first family of Rome. But,
wealthier than the rest of the barons, they were, therefore, more
luxurious, and, perhaps, more intellectual; and their pride was
flattered in being patrons of those arts of which they could never
have become the professors. From these multiplied oppressors the Roman
citizens turned with fond and impatient regret to their ignorant and
dark notions of departed liberty and greatness. They confounded the
times of the Empire with those of the Republic; and often looked to the
Teutonic king, who obtained his election from beyond the Alps, but his
title of emperor from the Romans, as the deserter of his legitimate
trust and proper home; vainly imagining that, if both the Emperor and
the Pontiff fixed their residence in Rome, Liberty and Law would again
seek their natural shelter beneath the resuscitated majesty of the Roman
people.
The absence of the pope and the papal court served greatly to impoverish
the citizens; and they had suffered yet more visibly by the depredations
of hordes of robbers, numerous and unsparing, who infested Romagna,
obstructing all the public ways, and were, sometimes secretly,
sometimes, openly, protected by the barons, who often recruited their
banditti garrisons by banditti soldiers.
But besides the lesser and ignobler robbers, there had risen in Italy
a far more formidable description of freebooters. A German, who assumed
the lofty title of the Duke Werner, had, a few years prior to the period
we approach, enlisted and organised a considerable force, styled “The
Great Company,” with which he besieged cities and invaded states,
without any object less shameless than that of pillage. His example was
soon imitated: numerous “Companies,” similarly constituted, devastated
the distracted and divided land. They appeared, suddenly raised, as if
by magic, before the walls of a city, and demanded immense sums as the
purchase of peace. Neither tyrant nor common wealth maintained a force
sufficient to resist them; and if other northern mercenaries were
engaged to oppose them, it was only to recruit the standards of the
freebooters with deserters. Mercenary fought not mercenary--nor German,
German: and greater pay, and more unbridled rapine, made the tents of
the “Companies” far more attractive than the regulated stipends of a
city, or the dull fortress and impoverished coffers of a chief. Werner,
the most implacable and ferocious of all these adventurers, and who had
so openly gloried in his enormities as to wear upon his breast a silver
plate, engraved with the words, “Enemy to God, to Pity, and to Mercy,”
had not long since ravaged Romagna with fire and sword. But, whether
induced by money, or unable to control the fierce spirits he had
raised, he afterwards led the bulk of his company back to Germany. Small
detachments, however, remained, scattered throughout the land, waiting
only an able leader once more to re-unite them: amongst those who
appeared most fitted for that destiny was Walter de Montreal, a Knight
of St. John, and gentleman of Provence, whose valour and military genius
had already, though yet young, raised his name into dreaded celebrity;
and whose ambition, experience, and sagacity, relieved by certain
chivalric and noble qualities, were suited to enterprises far greater
and more important than the violent depredations of the atrocious
Werner. From these scourges, no state had suffered more grievously than
Rome. The patrimonial territories of the pope,--in part wrested from him
by petty tyrants, in part laid waste by these foreign robbers,--yielded
but a scanty supply to the necessities of Clement VI., the most
accomplished gentleman and the most graceful voluptuary of his time; and
the good father had devised a plan, whereby to enrich at once the Romans
and their pontiff.
Nearly fifty years before the time we enter upon, in order both to
replenish the papal coffers and pacify the starving Romans, Boniface
VIII. had instituted the Festival of the Jubilee, or Holy Year; in fact,
a revival of a Pagan ceremonial. A plenary indulgence was promised
to every Catholic who, in that year, and in the first year of every
succeeding century, should visit the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul.
An immense concourse of pilgrims, from every part of Christendom, had
attested the wisdom of the invention; “and two priests stood night and
day, with rakes in their hands, to collect without counting the heaps
of gold and silver that were poured on the altar of St. Paul.” (Gibbon,
vol. xii. c. 59.)
It is not to be wondered at that this most lucrative festival should,
ere the next century was half expired, appear to a discreet pontiff
to be too long postponed. And both pope and city agreed in thinking it
might well bear a less distant renewal. Accordingly, Clement VI. had
proclaimed, under the name of the Mosaic Jubilee, a second Holy Year
for 1350--viz., three years distant from that date at which, in the
next chapter, my narrative will commence. This circumstance had a great
effect in whetting the popular indignation against the barons, and
preparing the events I shall relate; for the roads were, as I before
said, infested by the banditti, the creatures and allies of the barons.
And if the roads were not cleared, the pilgrims might not attend. It
was the object of the pope’s vicar, Raimond, bishop of Orvietto (bad
politician and good canonist), to seek, by every means, to remove all
impediment between the offerings of devotion and the treasury of St.
Peter.
Such, in brief, was the state of Rome at the period we are about to
examine. Her ancient mantle of renown still, in the eyes of Italy and of
Europe, cloaked her ruins. In name, at least, she was still the queen
of the earth; and from her hands came the crown of the emperor of the
north, and the keys of the father of the church. Her situation was
precisely that which presented a vase and glittering triumph to
bold ambition,--an inspiring, if mournful, spectacle to determined
patriotism,--and a fitting stage for that more august tragedy which
seeks its incidents, selects its actors, and shapes its moral, amidst
the vicissitudes and crimes of nations.