King Pedro believed that every man had a price, and, on Du Guesclin’s

pretence that he might be bought over, stole secretly one night to

the Frenchman’s tent. Here he found his hated brother with some of

his courtiers who cried aloud ‘Look, Señor, it is your enemy.’ ‘I am!

I am!’ screamed Pedro furiously, seeing he was betrayed, and flung

himself on his brother, while the latter struck at him with his dagger.

Over and over they rolled in the half-light of a tallow candle, until

Pedro, who had gained the upper hand, fumbled for his poignard with

which to strike a fatal blow. Then, according to the old ballad, Du

Guesclin interfered. ‘I neither make king nor mar king, but I serve my

master,’ he said, and turned Pedro over on his back, enabling those

who were standing by to dispatch him with their knives. The tale, if

creditable to Du Guesclin’s loyalty, is hardly so to his love of fair

play, but the murdered king had lived like a wild animal, and it is

difficult to feel any regret that he died like one instead of in battle

as a knight.

The House of Trastamara was now established on the Castilian throne by

the triumphant Henry II. Some years later it gave also a king to its

eastern neighbour, when the royal House of Aragon had become extinct

in the male line. This was the Infante Ferdinand, a man of mature

judgement, who had already won golden opinions for his honesty and

statesmanship when acting as guardian for his young nephew, John II of

Castile.

Both kingdoms, but more especially Castile, were to remain victims of

civil wars and of frequent periods of anarchy for another half-century.

John II, deprived of his uncle’s wise guidance, devoted his time

to composing love-songs and surrendered his weak will to a royal

favourite, Alvaro de Luna, without whose consent, tradition says, he

dared not even go to bed. The result was incessant turbulence, for

the nobles hated the arrogant and all-powerful upstart, who managed

the court as he pleased, and steadily added to his own estates and

revenues. Yet, having brought about his downfall and death, they had no

better government with which to replace his tyranny.

[Sidenote: Henry IV of Castile]

Under John’s son and successor Castile fared even worse; for Henry IV

was not merely weak but vicious, so that he rolled the crown in the

mire of scandal and degradation. Government of any sort was now at

an end. ‘Our swords’, wrote a contemporary Castilian, recalling this

time of nightmare, ‘were employed, not to defend the boundaries of

Christendom, but to rip up the entrails of our country.... He was most

esteemed among us who was strongest in violence: justice and peace were

far removed.’

In their efforts to save something of their lives and fortunes

from this wreck, towns and villages formed _Hermandades_ or

‘brotherhoods’--that is, troops of armed men who pursued and punished

criminals; but these leagues without support from the crown were not

strong enough to deal with the worst offenders, the wealthy nobles, who

could cover their misdeeds with lavish bribery or threats.

[Sidenote: Ferdinand and Isabel]

At this moment in Castile’s history, when she had sunk to a depth from

which she could not save herself, Henry IV died, and was succeeded

on the throne by his sister, Isabel, a girl in years but already a

statesman in outlook and discretion. Henry IV had attempted to secure

personal advantages in his lifetime by arranging various marriages for

Isabel, first with a French prince, then with the King of Portugal,

and finally with one of his own worthless favourites, and his sister

had won his dislike by her steady refusal to agree to any of these

alliances. Secretly, indeed, she had married her cousin Ferdinand, heir

to the throne of Aragon, a youth already distinguished for his military

abilities and shrewd common sense.

As joint rulers of Castile and Aragon Isabel and Ferdinand dominated

Spain, and were able to impose their will even on the most powerful

of their rebellious subjects, taking back the crown lands that had

been recklessly given away, organizing a _Santa Hermandad_, or ‘Holy

Brotherhood’, on the model of previous local efforts to ensure order,

and themselves holding supreme tribunals to judge important cases of

robbery and murder. In this display of authority the land not merely

acquiesced but rejoiced, utterly weary of an independence the misuse of

which had produced licence instead of freedom.

Thus it was that a strong monarchy, such as Louis XI was able to

establish in France at the end of the Hundred Years’ War, and the

Tudors in England after the Wars of the Roses, was also organized and

maintained in Spain. Under its despotic sway many popular liberties

were lost, but peace was gained at home, and glory and honour abroad

above all expectations. The perpetual crusade against the Moors had

always touched the imagination of Europe--now its crowning achievement,

the Conquest of Granada, dazzled their eyes with all the pageantry and

pomp of victory so dear to mediaeval minds.

Hardly was this wonder told when news came that a Genoese adventurer

had discovered, in the name of Isabel and Ferdinand, a Spanish empire

of almost fabulous wealth beyond the Atlantic.[37] To these triumphs

were added conquests in Italy, fruits of Ferdinand’s Aragonese

ambitions.

The glory of Spain belongs to modern not to mediaeval history; but

just as a man or woman is a development of the child, so this, the

first nation in Europe as she became in the sixteenth century, proved

the outcome of the qualities and vices of an earlier age. Above all

things she became, as we should expect, a nation of warriors, inspired

with ardour for the Catholic Faith, arrogant and ambitious. To her

strength was added a fatal weakness bred of conceit and a narrow

outlook, that is the intolerance that admired Ferdinand and Isabel’s

ruthless Inquisition and rejoiced in the expulsion of thousands of

thrifty Jews and Moors.

Spain was a born conqueror among nations, but what she conquered she

had learned neither the sympathy nor adaptability to govern. Thus the

empire won by her courage and endurance was destined to slip from her

grasp.

_Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73._

Saracen rule in Spain 711-1031

The Cid (died) 1099

James I of Aragon 1213-76

Pedro III of Aragon 1276-85

Alfonso X of Castile 1252-84

Pedro I of Castile 1350-69

John II of Castile 1407-54

Henry IV of Castile 1454-74

Isabel I of Castile 1474-1504

Ferdinand II of Aragon 1479-1516

XX

CENTRAL AND NORTHERN EUROPE IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES

[Sidenote: Rudolf I]

The accession of Rudolf of Habsburg[38] as King of the Romans in 1273

is a turning-point in the history of mediaeval Germany. Hitherto

private or imperial ambitions had prevented even well-intentioned

emperors from exerting their full strength against anarchy at home;

while a few like Frederick II had deliberately ignored German

interests. The result had been a steady process of disintegration,

perpetuating racial and class feuds; but now at last the tradition was

broken and an Emperor chosen who was willing to forgo the glory of

dominating Rome and Lombardy in order to build up a nation north of the

Alps.

The election itself was somewhat of a surprise; for Rudolf belonged to

an obscure and far from wealthy family, owning territory in Alsace and

amongst the Swiss mountains. What is interesting to the modern world is

that the man who did most to influence the Electors in their choice,

and thus helped to plant a Habsburg with his feet on the ladder of

greatness, was a Hohenzollern.

Count Rudolf at the time of his election was a middle-aged man of

considerable military experience, kindly, simple, and resolute. He had

won the affection of his own vassals by helping them in their struggles

against the unjust demands of local tyrants, such as feudal bishops

or the barons who built castles amongst the crags and sent out armed

retainers to waylay merchants and travellers. One tale records how,

with an apparently small force, he advanced boldly against a robber

fastness, thus encouraging the garrison to issue out and attack him.

When the robbers approached, however, they found to their horror that

each of their mounted opponents had another armed man seated behind

him, and so, hopelessly outnumbered as well as outwitted, they were

forced to surrender or fly.

Rudolf needed all his military ability when he was chosen Emperor; for

the most powerful ruler in central Europe at that time, King Ottocar

of Bohemia, refused to recognize him, being furious that he himself

had not received a single vote, while an obscure count from the Swiss

mountains had been elected his master. The truth was that Ottocar was

well known to be arrogant and bad-tempered, so that all the Electors

were afraid of him; and there was general rejoicing when, in a battle

against King Rudolf near Vienna, he was killed and the throne of

Bohemia passed to his son, a boy of twelve.

This victory was the real beginning of the Habsburg fortunes; for

Rudolf by the confiscation of the Austrian provinces of Carinthia,

Styria, and Carniola, that had belonged to his rival, established

his family as one of the great territorial powers of the Empire.

Unfortunately his character seemed to deteriorate with success, and his

greed for lands and power to increase with acquisition.

Instead of finding Rudolf the protector of their liberties, his sturdy

Swiss vassals now had to defend themselves against his encroachments;

and in the year 1291 some of them in self-defence formed what they

called a ‘Perpetual League’, whose covenant, drawn up a few years later

in a simplified form, is just as sacred a charter of liberty to the

Swiss as Magna Charta to the English.

‘Know, all men,’ it began, ‘that we, the people of the Valley of

Uri, the Community of the Valley of Schwyz, and the mountaineers

of the Lower Valley, seeing the malice of the times, have solemnly

agreed and bound ourselves by oath to aid and defend each other

with all our might and main, with our lives and property, both

within and without our boundaries, each at his own expense, against

every enemy whatever who shall attempt to molest us, whether singly

or collectively.’

This was the first ‘Confederation of the Swiss’, the union of the three

provinces of Uri, Schwyz, and the ‘Lower Valley’, or ‘Unterwalden’;

but Rudolf died in the same year 1291, so that the Swiss struggle for

liberty really began against his son, Albert of Austria.

Rudolf, in spite of the Concordat he had made with the Pope renouncing

his claims over papal territory, had never been to Italy to be crowned

Emperor, so that he died merely ‘King of the Romans’; and the Electors

of Germany made this one of their excuses for not immediately choosing

his son to succeed him.

Like Ottocar, Albert was overbearing and ambitious; and had at once on

his father’s death obtained possession of the entire family estates,

without allowing any of them to pass to Count John of Habsburg, a son

of his elder brother who had died some years before. Albert was a

persistent man when he wished for anything very ardently, and, having

failed to be elected Emperor a first time, he set himself to win

friends and allies amongst the powerful families all over Germany. So

successful was he that when a fresh imperial vacancy occurred in 1298

the choice of the Electors fell on him.

This realization of his ambitions spurred Albert’s energies to

fresh efforts. He was now overlord of the Empire, but on his own

estates amongst the Swiss mountains his will was often disputed by

citizens and peasants, who claimed to have imperial permission for

their independence. As Emperor, Rudolf could withdraw privileges

light-heartedly granted by predecessors who were not Habsburgs; and

with this in view he sent bailiffs and stewards to govern in his name,

with orders to enforce complete submission to his demands.

Concerning the events that followed, fiction has built round fact a

wonderful tale, that, whether true or false in its main incidents, is

characteristic of mediaeval Swiss daring, and a fit introduction to a

great national struggle for liberty.

Gessler, legend tells us, was the most hated of all Albert’s Austrian

governors. So narrow-minded was he that he hated to see the peasants

building themselves stone houses instead of living in mud hovels, and

would take every opportunity of humbling and oppressing them.

[Sidenote: Story of William Tell]

Once he set up a hat on a pole in the market-place of one of the

principal towns, and ordered every one who passed to salute it. A

certain William Tell, either through obstinacy or carelessness, failed

to do so, on which Gessler, who had found out that he was an archer,

ordered him as a punishment to shoot at long range an apple placed

on his son’s head. In vain the father begged for any other sentence:

Gessler only laughed. Seeing that entreaty was useless, Tell took two

shafts, and with one he pierced straight through the apple. Gessler was

annoyed at his success and, looking at him suspiciously, asked, ‘What,

then, is the meaning of thy second arrow?’ The archer hesitated; and

not until he had been promised his life if he would answer the truth

would he speak. Then he said bluntly, ‘Had I injured my child my second

shaft should not have missed thy heart.’ There was a murmur of applause

from the townsmen, but the governor was enraged at such a bold answer.

‘Truly,’ he shouted, ‘I have promised thee life; but I will throw thee

into a dungeon, where never more shall sun nor moon let fall their rays

on thee.’ The legend goes on to relate how, though bound and closely

guarded, the gallant archer made his escape, and hiding in the bushes

not far from the road where Gessler must pass to his castle, he shot

him and fled. ‘It is Tell’s shaft,’ said the dying man, as he fell

from his horse. By his daring struggle against the tyrant William Tell

became one of Switzerland’s national heroes.

Fortunately for the Swiss, Albert was so busy as ruler of all Germany

that he could not give the full attention to subduing his rebellious

vassals that he would have liked; and when at last he found time to

visit his own estates, just as he was almost within sight of the family

castle of the Habsburgs, he was murdered, not by a peasant, but by his

nephew Count John, who considered that he had been unjustly robbed of

his inheritance.

The task of attempting to reduce the Swiss to submission fell on a

younger son of King Albert, Duke Leopold, a youth who despised the

peasants of his native valleys quite as heartily as the French their

‘Jacques Bonhomme’. His army, as it wandered carelessly up the Swiss

mountains, without order or pickets, resembled a hunting-party seeking

a day’s amusement; and on their saddles his horsemen carried bundles of

rope to hang the rebels and bind together the cattle they expected to

capture as spoils.

Meeting with no opposition, Duke Leopold began to ascend the frozen

side of the Morgarten; and here, as he advanced between high ridges,

discovered himself in a death-trap. From the heights above, the Swiss

of the Forest Cantons rained a deadly fire of stones and missiles that

threw the horses below into confusion, slipping and falling on the

smooth surface of the track. Then there descended from all sides small

bodies of peasants armed with halberds, so sure-footed amid the snow

and ice that they cut down the greater part of the Duke’s forces before

they could extricate themselves and find safe ground.

Leopold escaped, but he rode from the carnage, according to his

chronicler, ‘distracted and with a face like death’. Swiss independence

had been vindicated by his defeat; and round the nucleus of the forest

republics there soon gathered others, bound together in a federal

union that, while securing the safety of all, guaranteed to each their

liberties.

[Sidenote: Charles ‘the Bold’]

Other campaigns still remained to be fought on behalf of complete Swiss

independence; and one of the most important of these occurred towards

the end of the fifteenth century, and was waged against a military

leader of Europe, Charles, Duke of Burgundy, son and successor of that

Philip ‘the Good’ who had played so great a part in the latter half of

the Hundred Years’ War.[39]

This Charles ‘the Bold’, sometimes called also ‘the Rash’ or ‘the

Terrible’, was in many ways a typical mediaeval soldier. From his

boyhood he had loved jousting--not the magnificent tourneys, in which

as heir to the dukedom he could count on making a safe as well as a

spectacular display of knightly courage, but real contests in which,

disguised in plain armour, his strength and skill could alone win him

laurels and avoid death. Strong and healthy, brave and impetuous, he

loved the atmosphere of war with all its hazards and hardships. ‘I

never heard him complain of weariness,’ wrote Philip de Commines, a

French historian who was at one time in his service, ‘and I never saw

in him a sign of fear.’

To qualities like courage and endurance Charles added failings that

were often his undoing--a hot temper, impatience, and a tendency to

under-estimate the wits of his opponents. His clever, ambitious brain

was always weaving plans, but he did not realize that he had neither

the skill nor the political vision to keep many irons in the fire

without letting one get too hot or another over-cold.

Like all mediaeval rulers of Burgundy, he was faced by the problem of

his middle kingdom, with its large commercial population, whose trade

interests must be considered alongside his own territorial ambitions.

To the rulers of both France and the Empire he was tenant-in-chief for

different provinces, and either of these potentates could cause him

discomfort by stirring up trouble amongst his subjects, or else unite

with him to his great advantage in order to defy the authority of the

other.

At first Charles tried to increase his territory in the west at the

expense of Louis XI of France, and even gained some showy triumphs, but

gradually he found that he was no match in diplomacy for that astute

king, ‘the universal spider’, as a contemporary christened him; and so

he turned his attention to his eastern border.

Here he discovered that a Habsburg, Sigismund of the Tyrol, had become

involved in a quarrel with the Swiss Cantons, and had been forced to

promise them a large sum of money that he was quite unable to pay.

When Charles offered to lend him the sum required if he would hand

over as security his provinces of Alsace and Breisgau, Sigismund,

seeing no other alternative, reluctantly agreed. So remote was the

prospect of repayment that the Duke of Burgundy at once began to rule

the territories that he held in pawn as though they were his own, and

might indeed have absorbed them quietly amongst his possessions had not

the French ‘Spider’ chosen to take a hand in the game. Louis XI had

never forgiven Charles for his clumsy attempts to rob him of French

territory, and now, weaving a web that was to entangle the Burgundian

to his ultimate ruin, he secretly pointed out to the Swiss how much

more dangerous a neighbour was Charles ‘the Bold’ than Sigismund ‘the

Penniless’. Let Sigismund, he suggested, agree to withdraw all Habsburg

claims to towns and lands belonging to the Cantons, and let the

Cantons in return pledge themselves to pay for the restoration of the

lost provinces.

This compromise was finally arranged, and the exasperated Charles

called upon to hand back the lands he already considered his own.

Instead of complying he made overtures to both Louis and the Emperor,

with such success that when the Swiss troops invaded Alsace in order to

gain possession of that province for Sigismund, they found themselves

without the powerful allies on whose support they had counted.

[Sidenote: Battles of Granson and Morat]

Charles, ever too prone to over-estimate his importance, now believed

that he was in a position to crush these presumptuous burghers once

and for all. With a splendidly equipped army of some fifty thousand

men, and some of the new heavy artillery that had already begun to

turn battle-fields into an inferno, he crossed the Jura mountains and

marched towards the town of Granson, that had been occupied by the

Swiss. This he speedily reduced, hanging the entire garrison on the

trees without the gates as an indication of how he intended to deal

with rebels, and then continued on his way, since he heard that the

army of the Cantons, some eighteen thousand men in all, had gathered in

the neighbourhood.

On the slopes of a vineyard he could soon see their vanguard, kneeling

with arms outstretched. ‘These cowards are ours,’ he exclaimed

contemptuously, and at once ordered his artillery to fire; for he

thought that the peasants begged for mercy, whereas, believing God was

on their side, they really knelt in prayer. Mown down in scores, the

Swiss maintained their ground; and Charles, to tempt them from their

strong position, ordered a part of his army to fall back as if in rout.

This ruse his own Burgundians misunderstood, the more that at the

moment they received the command they could see the main Swiss forces

advancing rapidly across the opposite heights and blowing their famous

war-horns. Confusion ensued, and soon, in the words of an old Swiss

chronicler, ‘the Burgundians took to their heels and disappeared from

sight as though a whirlwind had swept them from the earth.’

Such was the unexpected victory of Granson, that delivered into

Swiss hands the silken tents and baggage-wagons of the richest and

most luxurious ruler in Europe. Carpets and Flemish lace, fine linen

and jewellery, embroidered banners, beautifully chased and engraved

weapons: these were some of the treasures, of which specimens are still

to be found in the museums of the Cantons.

Charles was defeated, ‘overcome by rustics whom there would have

been no honour in conquering,’ as the King of Hungary expressed

the situation in the knightly language of the day. Such a disgrace

intensified Burgundian determination to continue the war; while the

Swiss on their part found their resolution hardened by the sight of the

garrison of Granson hanging from the trees.

‘There are three times as many of the foe as at Granson, but let no one

be dismayed. With God’s help we will kill them all.’ Thus spoke a Swiss

leader on the eve of the battle of Morat, where savage hand-to-hand

fighting reduced the Burgundian infantry to a fragment and drove the

Duke with a few horsemen in headlong flight from the field.

Twice defeated, a wise prince might have done well to consider terms

of peace with those who, though rustics, had proved more than his

equals; but Charles, a brave soldier, would not recognize that his own

bad generalship had largely contributed to his disasters. He chose

to believe instead in that convenient but somewhat thin excuse for

failure, ‘bad luck’, and prophesied that his fortune would turn if he

persevered.

More dubious of their ruler’s ability than his fortune, the Flemings,

as they grudgingly voted money for a fresh campaign, besought their

Duke to make peace. His former allies, once dazzled by his name and

riches, were planning to desert him: but Charles was deaf alike to

hints of prudence or tales of treachery.

Near the town of Nanci he met the Swiss for a third time, and once

more the famous horns, ‘the bull’ of Uri and ‘the cow’ of Unterwalden,

bellowed forth their calls to victory, and the Burgundians, inspired

by treachery or forebodings of defeat, turned and fled. None knew what

had happened to the Duke, until a captured page reported that he had

seen him cut down as he fought stubbornly against great numbers. Later

his body was discovered, stripped for the sake of its rich armour, and

half-embedded in a frozen lake.

Thus fittingly died Charles ‘the Rash’, leaving the reputation as a

warrior that he would gladly have earned to his enemies the Swiss, now

regarded as amongst the invincible veterans of Europe.

* * * * *

The voice of freedom had spoken so loudly through the Forest Cantons

that mediaeval Europe had been forced to acknowledge her claim,

and elsewhere also democratic forces were openly at work. We have

spoken in previous chapters of the ‘Communes’ of northern France and

Italy, precocious in their civilization, modern in their demands for

self-government. In Italy, at least, they had been strong enough

to form Leagues and defeat Emperors; but commercial jealousy and

class feuds had always prevented these Unions from developing into a

federation.

This is true also of southern Germany, where towns like Augsburg and

Nuremburg become, as the central mart for trade between Eastern and

Western Europe and also between Venice, Genoa, and the lands north of

the Alps, rivals in wealth and luxury of Mediterranean ports. During

periods like the ‘Great Interregnum’, when German kingship was of no

avail to preserve peace or order, it was associations of these towns

that sent out young burghers to fight the robber knights that were the

pest of the countryside, and to protect the merchandise on which their

joint fortunes depended.

Union for obvious purposes of defence was thus a political weapon

forged early in town annals; but, on the other hand, it was only slowly

that burghers and citizens came to realize the advantages of permanent

combination for other ends, such as commercial expansion, or in order

to secure stable government.

This limited outlook arose partly from the very different stages of

development at which mediaeval towns were to be found at the same

moment. Some would be just struggling out of dependence on a local

bishop or count by the payment of huge tolls, at the same time that

others, though enjoying a good deal of commercial freedom, were

still forced to accept magistrates appointed by their neighbouring

overlord. Yet again, a privileged few would be ‘free’ towns, entirely

self-governed, and owning allegiance only to the Emperor. Perhaps a

master mind could have dovetailed all these conflicting systems of

government into a federation that would have helped and safeguarded

the interests of all, but unfortunately the mediaeval mind was a slave

to the fallacy that commercial gain can only be made at the expense of

some one else.

The men of one town hated and feared the prosperity of another and

were convinced that the utmost limit of duty to a neighbour was their

own city walls. Nothing, for instance, is more opposed to modern codes

of brotherhood than the early mediaeval opinion on the subjects of

wrecks. Men and women of those days saw no incongruity in piously

petitioning God in public prayer for a good wreckage, or in regarding

the shipwrecked sailor or merchant cast on their rocks as prey to be

knocked on the head and plucked.

The towns of North Germany shared to the full this primitive savagery,

but they learned the secret of co-operation that their wealthy southern

neighbours utterly missed, and in so doing became for a time a

political force of world-wide fame.

[Sidenote: The ‘Hansa’]

Such was the commercial league of ‘the Hansa’, formed first of all by a

few principal ports, Lübeck, Danzig, Bremen, and Hamburg, lying on the

Baltic or North Sea, but afterwards increased to a union of eighty or

more towns as the value of mutual support and obligations was realized.

Law in the Middle Ages was personal rather than territorial--that is to

say, a man when he travelled abroad would not be judged or protected by

the law of the country to which he went, but would carry his own law

with him. If this law was practically non-existent, as for a German

during years of anarchy when the Holy Roman Empire was thoroughly

discredited in the eyes of Europe, the merchant stood a small chance of

safeguarding himself and his wares.

It was here, when emperors and kings of the Romans failed, that the

Hanseatic League stepped in, maintaining centres in foreign towns where

the merchants of those cities included in the League could lodge and

store their goods, and where permanent representatives of the League

could make suit to the government of the country on behalf of fellow

merchants who had suffered from robbery or violence.

As early as the tenth century German traders had won privileges in

English markets, for we find in the code of Ethelred ‘the Rede-less’

the following statement: ‘The people of the Emperor have been judged

worthy of good laws like ourselves.’

Later, ‘steelyards,’ or depots somewhat similar to the Flemish

‘staple-towns’, were established for the convenience of imperial

merchants; and owing to the energy of the Hanseatic League these

became thriving centres of commerce, respected by kings of England if

jealously disliked by their subjects.

Protection of the merchants belonging to ‘the Hansa’ while in foreign

countries soon represented, however, but a small part of the League’s

duty towards those who claimed her privileges. The merchant must travel

safely to his market by land and sea; but in North Germany he had not

merely to fear robber knights but national foes: the hostile Slav

tribes that attacked him as he rode eastwards to the famous Russian

market of Nijni-Novgorod to negotiate for furs, tallow, and fats: or

even more dangerous Scandinavian pirates who sought to sink his vessel

as he crossed the Baltic or threaded the Danish isles.

One of the chief sources of Hanse riches was the fishing industry,

since the law that every Christian must abstain from meat during

the forty days of Lent, and on the weekly Friday fast, made fish a

necessity of life even more in the Middle Ages than in modern times.

Now the cheapest of all fish for anxious housekeepers was the salted

herring, and as the herring migrated from one ocean-field to another it

made and unmade the fortune of cities. From the middle of the twelfth

to the middle of the fifteenth century it chose the Baltic as a home of

refuge from the North Sea whales, and in doing so built the prosperity

of Lübeck, just as it broke that prosperity when it swam away to the

coasts of Holland.

For two months every year the North German fishermen cast nets for

their prey as it swept in millions through the narrow straits past the

coast of Skaania; but here lay trouble for ‘the Hansa’, since Skaania,

one of the southernmost districts of modern Sweden, was then a Danish

province, and the Danes, who were warriors rather than traders, hated

the Germans heartily.

[Illustration: N.E. EUROPE

in the MIDDLE AGES]

In early mediaeval times we have noticed Scandinavia as the home

of Norse pirates; as the mother of a race of world-conquerors, the

Normans; under Cnut, who reigned in England, Norway, and Denmark, as an

empire-builder. The last ideal was never quite forgotten, for as late

as the Hundred Years’ War King Valdemar III of Denmark planned to aid

his French ally by invading England; but the necessary money was not

forthcoming, and other and more pressing political problems intervened

and stopped him.

Valdemar inherited from his Norse ancestors a taste for piracy that he

pursued with a restless, unscrupulous energy very tiring to his people.

Sometimes it brought him victory, but more often disaster, at least to

his land. ‘In the whole kingdom’, says a discontented Dane, ‘no time

remained to eat, to repose, to sleep--no time in which people were not

driven to work by the bailiffs and servants of the King at the risk of

losing his royal favour, their lives, and their goods.’ Because of his

persistence Valdemar was nicknamed ‘Atterdag’, or ‘There is another

day’: his boast being that there was always time to return to any task

on completing which he had set his heart.

Valdemar’s chief ambition was to make Denmark the supreme power in

northern Europe, and in endeavouring to achieve this object he was

always forming alliances with Norway and Sweden that broke down and

plunged him into wars instead. The Hanse towns he hated and despised,

and in 1361, moved by this enmity, he promised his army that ‘he

would lead them whither there was gold and silver enough, and where

pigs ate out of silver troughs’. His allusion was to Wisby, the

capital of Gothland, that under the fostering care and control of

North German merchants had become the prosperous centre of the Baltic

herring-fishery. Under Valdemar’s unexpected onslaught the city, with

its forty-eight towers rising from the sea, was set on fire and sacked.

Since Gothland was a Swedish island, vengeance for this insult did not

legally rest with the Hansa, but, recognizing that the blow had been

aimed primarily at her trade, she sent a fleet northwards to co-operate

with the Swedes and Norwegians. This led to one of the greatest

disasters that ever befell the Hanseatic League, for her allies did not

appear, and her fleet, being outnumbered, was beaten and destroyed.

Valdemar, delighted with his success, determined to reduce the North

Germans to ruin, and continued his policy of aggression with added

zest; but in this he made a political mistake. Many of the towns,

especially those not on the Baltic, were apathetic when the struggle

with the Danish king began: they did not wish to pay taxes even for a

victory, and angrily repudiated financial responsibility for defeat.

It was only as they became aware, through constant Danish attacks,

that the very existence of the League was at stake, that a new public

opinion was born, and that it was decided at Cologne in 1367 to reopen

a campaign against King Valdemar, towards which every town must

contribute its due.

‘If any city refuse to help’, ran the announcement of the meeting’s

decisions, ‘its burghers and merchants shall have no intercourse

with the towns of the German “Hansa”, no goods shall be bought from

them or sold to them, they shall have no right of entry or exit, of

lading or unlading, in any harbour.’

The result of the League’s vigorous policy was entirely successful, and

compelled the unscrupulous Valdemar, who found himself shortly in an

awkward corner, to collect all the money that he could and depart on a

round of visits to the various courts of Europe. He left his people to

the fate he had prepared for them, and during his absence Copenhagen

was sacked, and the Danes driven to conclude the Treaty of Stralsund

that placed the League in control of all the fortresses along the coast

of Skaania for fifteen years.

The Hansa had now acquired the supremacy of the Baltic, and because

the duty of garrisoning fortresses and patrolling the seas required

a standing army and navy, the League of northern towns did not,

like those in South Germany, Italy, or France, melt away as soon as

temporary safety was achieved. Each city continued to manage its own

affairs, but federal assemblies were held, where questions of common

taxation and foreign policy were discussed, and where those towns that

refused to abide by decisions previously arrived at were ‘unhansed’,

that is, deprived of their privileges.

Even Emperors, who condemned leagues on principle from old Hohenstaufen

experience, respected if they disliked ‘the Hansa’ that carried through

national police-work in the north of which they themselves were quite

incapable.

The Emperor Charles IV, when he visited Lübeck, addressed the principal

civic officials as ‘My lords!’ and when, suspicious of this flattery,

they demurred, he replied, ‘You are lords indeed, for the oldest

imperial registers know that Lübeck is one of the five towns that have

accorded to them ducal rank in the imperial council.’ The chronicler

adds proudly that thus Lübeck was acknowledged the equal of Rome,

Venice, Florence, and Pisa.

In the latter half of the fourteenth century the Hanseatic League stood

at the height of its power; for though the political genius of Queen

Margaret, daughter of Valdemar III, succeeded in uniting Denmark,

Norway, and Sweden by the agreement called ‘the Union of Kalmar’, and

also forced the Hansa to surrender the fortresses on the Skaania coast;

yet even the foundation of this vast Scandinavian Empire could not

shake German supremacy over the Baltic. Under Margaret’s successors the

Union of Kalmar degenerated into a Danish tyranny; and because it was

the result of a dynastic settlement and not of any national movement it

soon came to shipwreck amid general discontent and civil wars.

The Hanseatic League itself, though it lingered on as a political force

through the fifteenth century, gradually declined and lost touch with

the commercial outlook of the age. The decline may be traced partly to

the fact that there was no vigorous national life in Germany to feed

the League’s vitality, but also to a steady tendency for towns to drift

apart and become absorbed in the local interests of their provinces.

The real blow to the prestige of the League was, however, the departure

of the herring-shoals from the Baltic to the coasts of Amsterdam. ‘The

Hansa’ had concentrated its commercial interests in the Baltic, and

when the Baltic failed her she found herself unable to compete with the

Dutch and English traders, who were already masters of the North Sea.

Other and more adventurous rivals were opening up trade routes along

the African coast and across the Atlantic; but the Hanseatic League,

with her rigid and limited conception of commercial interests, was like

a nurse still holding by the hand children that should have been able

to fend for themselves. Once the protection of her merchants, she had

degenerated into a check on individual enterprise, and so, belonging to

the spirit of the Middle Ages, with the Middle Ages passed away.

[Sidenote: The Teutonic Knights]

Another mediaeval institution, destined also to decline and finally

vanish, was a close ally of the Hanseatic League, namely, the Order

of Teutonic Knights. Transferred, as we have noticed,[40] on the fall

of the Latin Empire in Asia Minor to the shores of the Baltic, the

Order had there justified its existence by carrying on a perpetual war

against the heathen Lithuanians and Prussians, building fortresses and

planting colonies of German settlers, as Charlemagne and his Franks had

set the example.

While there still remained heathen to conquer the Knights were warmly

encouraged by the Pope, and their battle-fields were a popular resort

for the chivalry of nearly every country in Europe, competing in their

claim with the camps of Valencia, Murcia, and Granada.

Nearer home the Order found less favour. In Poland, for instance,

that had at first welcomed the Knights as a bulwark against northern

barbarism, the unpleasant knowledge gradually dawned that the

crusaders, by securing the territory of Livonia, Curland, and Prussia,

had cut her off from a lucrative sea-trade.

Poland was the most easterly of those states that in mediaeval times

owned a nominal allegiance to Holy Roman Emperors. She had received her

Christianity from Rome, and was thus drawn into the network of western

life--unlike Russia, or the kingdom of Rus as it was called, that was

converted by missionaries from Constantinople, and whose princes and

dukes were subject to Mongol overlords in Siberia from the middle of

the thirteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century.

The Poles were brave, intensely devoted to their race, persistent in

their enmities, and in none more than in their dislike of the German

Knights, whose military genius and discipline had so often thwarted

their ambitions. Quarrels and wars were continuous, but the most mortal

wound dealt by the Poles was the result not of a victory but of a

marriage alliance.

In 1387, soon after the death of Louis ‘the Great’, who had been King

of both Hungary and Poland, the Poles offered their crown to Duke

Jagello of Lithuania; on the condition that he would marry one of

Louis’s daughters and become a Christian. The temptation of a kingdom

soon overcame Jagello’s religious scruples, so that he cast away his

old gods and was baptized as Ladislas V, becoming the founder of the

Jagellan dynasty, that continued on the thrones of Poland and Lithuania

right through the Middle Ages.

The conversion of the Lithuanians, who, whatever their beliefs, were

driven at the spear-point to accept Jagello’s new faith, completely

undermined the position of the Teutonic Order that, surrounded by

Christian neighbours, had no longer a crusade to justify its claims.

Popes ceased to send their blessing to the Grand Master, and talked

instead of the possibilities of suppression; while tales of immorality

and avarice such as had pursued the Templars were everywhere whispered

into willing ears.

Within their own territory also the influence of the Knights was

waning; for the very nature of their vows made their rule merely a

military domination; and, once the fear of heathen invasion had been

removed, German colonists began to resent this. Condemned to celibacy,

the Knights could train up no hereditary successors in sympathy from

childhood with the needs of the Baltic province; but, as they grew

old and died, they must yield place instead to recruits from distant

parts of Germany, who could only learn anew by their own experience the

manners and traditions of those whom they governed.

In the stress of these new conditions the good work that the Teutonic

Order had done in saving North Germany from barbarism was forgotten.

Weakened by disaffection within her own state, she fell an inevitable

victim to Polish enmity, and at the battle of Tannenberg her Grand

Master and many of her leading Knights were slain. The daring and

determination of those who remained prevented the full fruits of this

victory from being reaped until 1466, when, by the Treaty of Thorn,

Poland received the whole of western Prussia, including the important

town of Danzig, that gave her the long-coveted control of the Vistula

and a Baltic seaport, beside hemming her enemies into the narrow strip

of eastern Prussia.

[Sidenote: Louis ‘the Great’]

Poland’s southern neighbour was the kingdom of Hungary, with which

she had been for a short time united under Louis ‘the Great’, ‘the

Banner-bearer of the Church’ as he was styled by a grateful Pope for

his victories over the Mahometans. Besides fighting against the Turks,

Louis had other military irons in the fire. One of his ambitions was

to dominate Eastern Europe, and with this object he was continually

attacking and weakening the Serbian Empire, that appeared likely to

be his chief rival. He also fought with the Venetians for the mastery

of the Dalmatian coast, while we shall see in a later chapter that he

aimed at becoming King of Naples on the murder of his brother Prince

Andrew, husband of Joanna I.

So successful was Louis in his war against the Venetians that he was

able to take from them Dalmatia and exact the promise of a large yearly

tribute. This in itself was achievement enough to win him a reputation

in Europe, for the ‘Queen of the Adriatic’ was a difficult foe to

humble; but Louis also gained public admiration by his enlightened

rule. Recognizing how deeply his land was scarred by racial feuds, such

as those of the Czechs and Magyars, that have carried their bitterness

far into modern times, he set himself to think out equitable laws,

which he endeavoured to administer with impartial justice, instead of

favouring one race at the expense of another. He also made his court a

centre of culture and learning, where his nobles might develop their

wits and manners as well as their sword-arms.

One of the chief supporters of Louis in this work of civilization was

the Emperor Charles IV, whom we have noticed paying compliments to the

citizens of Lübeck. The friendship lasted for several years, until some

of the princes of the Empire, weary of Charles’s rule, began to compare

the two monarchs, one so sluggish, the other a military hero, and to

suggest that the overlord should be deposed in favour of the famous

King of Hungary. Louis indignantly repudiated this plot; but Charles,

who would hardly have done the same in a like case, could not bring

himself to believe him, and in his anger began petulantly to abuse the

Queen Mother of Hungary, to whom he knew her son was devoted. This

led to recriminations, and finally to a war, in which Charles was so

thoroughly beaten that he sued for peace; and outward friendship was

restored by the marriage of the Emperor’s son, Sigismund of Luxemburg,

with Louis’s daughter Mary.

When Louis died, Poland, that had never wholeheartedly submitted to

his rule, gave itself, as we have seen, to King Jagello of Lithuania;

while the Hungarians, after some years of anarchy, chose Sigismund of

Luxemburg as their king.

* * * * *

The House of Luxemburg was in the later Middle Ages the chief rival

of the Habsburgs, and provided the Empire with some of her most

interesting rulers. One of these, the Emperor Henry VII, belongs to an

earlier date than that with which we have just been dealing, for he was

grandfather of Charles IV. He was a gallant and chivalrous knight, who,

but for his unfortunate foreign policy, might have proved himself a

good and wise king.

Dante, the greatest of Italian poets, who lived in the days of Henry

VII, made him his hero, and hoped that he would save the world by

establishing a Ghibelline supremacy that would reform both Church and

State. It was Henry VII’s undoing that he believed with Dante that he

had been called to this impossible mission; and so he crossed the Alps

to try his hand at settling Italian feuds. Germany saw him no more; for

soon after his coronation at Rome he fell ill and died, poisoned, it is

said, in the cup of wine given him by a priest at Mass.

Discord now broke out in Germany, and it was not till 1348 that another

of the House of Luxemburg was chosen King of the Romans. This was

Charles IV, a man of a very different type of mind to his grandfather.

For Charles Italy had no lure: he only crossed the Alps because he

realized that it increased the prestige of the ruler of Germany to be

crowned as Emperor by the Pope, and he did not mind at all that he was

received without any pomp or respect, only with suspicion and begging

demands. As soon as the ceremony was over he hastened back to his own

kingdom, turning a deaf ear to all Italian complaints and suggestions.

This hurried journey was certainly undignified for a world-Emperor;

but Charles, who had run away in his youth from the battle-field of

Creci, was never a heroic figure. Neither the thought of glory nor of

duty could stir his sluggish blood; but as far as obvious things were

concerned he had a good deal of common sense. At any rate, in sharing

Rudolf I’s conviction that Germany should come first in his thoughts he

was wiser than his heroic grandfather.

[Sidenote: The Golden Bull]

To the reign of Charles IV belongs the ‘Golden Bull’, a document so

called from its _bulla_ or seal. The ‘Golden Bull’ set forth clearly

the exact method of holding an imperial election. Hitherto much of the

trouble in disputed elections had arisen because no one had been sure

of the correct procedure, and so disappointed candidates, by arguing

that something illegal had occurred, were able to refuse allegiance to

the successful nominee. Now it was decided that there should be seven

Electors--three archbishops and four laymen--and that the ceremony

should always take place at Frankfort, the minority agreeing to be

bound by the will of the majority.

Besides these main clauses the ‘Golden Bull’ secured to the seven

Electors enormous privileges and rights of jurisdiction, thus raising

them to a much higher social and political level than the other

princes of Germany, who were merely represented in the Imperial Diet

or Parliament. The Electors became, in fact, more influential than the

Emperor himself, and Charles has often been blamed for handing over

Germany to a feudal oligarchy.

It is possible that he did not foresee the full results or permanence

of the ‘Golden Bull’, but was determined only to construct for the time

being a workable scheme that would prevent anarchy. There is also the

supposition that he was more interested in the position of the kingdom

of Bohemia, his own hereditary possession, which he raised to the first

place among the electing territories, than in the rôle of Emperor to

which he had been chosen. Whatever Charles’s real motive, it is at any

rate clear that he had the sense to see that the Empire as it stood

was an outworn institution, and thus to try and mould it into a less

fantastic form of government. Like Edward I of England and Philip IV

of France, though without the genius of the one or the opportunities

of the other, he stands for posterity as one of those rulers of Europe

during whose reign their country was enabled to shake off some of its

mediaeval characteristics. Charles wore the imperial crown longer

than any of his predecessors without arousing serious opposition--a

sign that, if not an original politician, he yet moved with his times

towards a more Modern Age.

_Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73._

The Perpetual League 1291

Charles ‘the Bold’ 1433-77

Valdemar III 1340-75

Ladislas V of Poland 1386-1433

Treaty of Thorn 1466

Emperor Henry VII 1308-13

XXI

ITALY IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES

When the ‘Company of Death’ repulsed the German army of Frederick

Barbarossa on the field of Legnano[41] it raised aloft before the eyes

of Europe not only the banner of democracy but also of nationality.

Others, as we have seen, followed these banners once displayed: the

Swiss Cantons shook off the Habsburg yoke: the Flemish towns defied

their counts and French overlords: the Hanse cities formed political as

well as commercial leagues against Scandinavia: France, England, and

Spain emerged, through war and anarchy, modern states conscious of a

national destiny.

This slow evolution of nations and classes is the history of the later

Middle Ages; but in Italy there is no steady progress to record;

rather, a retrogression that proves her early efforts to secure freedom

were little understood even by those who made them.

Frederick II had ruled Lombardy in the thirteenth century through

tyrants; but, long after the Hohenstaufen had disappeared, and the

quarrels of Welfs and Waiblingen had dwindled into a memory in Germany,

the feuds of Guelfs and Ghibellines were still a monstrous reality in

towns south of the Alps, where petty despots enslaved the Communes and

reduced the country to perpetual warfare.

At length from this welter of lost hopes and evil deeds there emerged,

not Italy a nation, but five Italian states of pre-eminence in the

peninsula, namely, Milan, Venice, Florence, Naples, and Rome. Each

was more jealous of the other than of foreign intervention, so that

on the slightest pretext one would appeal to France to support her

ambitions, another to Spain or the Empire, and yet a third to Hungary

or the Greeks. If Italy, as a result, became at a later date ‘the

cockpit of Europe’, where strangers fought their battles and settled

their fortunes, it was largely her lack of any national foresight in

mediaeval times that brought on her this misery.

[Illustration: ITALY

in the LATER MIDDLE AGES]

The history of Milan, first as a Commune fighting for her own liberty

and destroying her neighbour’s, then as the battle-ground of a struggle

between two of her chief families, and finally as the slave of the

victor, is the tale of many a north Italian town, only that position

and wealth gave to the fate of this famous city a more than local

interest.

[Sidenote: The Visconti]

The lords of Milan in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries were

the Visconti, typical tyrants of the Italy of their day, quick with

their swords, but still more ready with poison or a dagger, profligate

and luxurious, patrons of literature and art, bad enemies and still

worse friends, false and cruel, subtle as the serpent they so fittingly

bore as an emblem. No bond but fear compelled their subject’s loyalty,

and deliberate cruelty to inspire fear they had made a part of their

system.

Bernabò Visconti permitted no one but himself to enjoy the pleasures

of the chase; but for this purpose he kept some five thousand savage

hounds fed on flesh, and into their kennels his soldiers cast such

hapless peasants as had accidentally killed their lord’s game or dared

to poach on his preserves.

No sense of the sanctity of an envoy’s person disturbed this grim

Visconti’s sense of humour, when he demanded of messengers sent by the

Pope with unpleasant tidings whether they would rather drink or eat. As

he put the question he pointed towards the river, rushing in a torrent

beneath the bridge on which he stood, and the envoys, casting horrified

eyes in that direction, replied, ‘Sir, we will eat.’ ‘Eat this, then,’

said Bernabò sternly, handing them the papal letter with its leaden

seals and thick parchment, and before they left his presence the whole

had been consumed.

Galeazzo Visconti, an elder brother of Bernabò, bore an even worse

reputation for cruelty. Those he condemned to death had their suffering

prolonged on a deliberate programme during forty-one days, losing

now an eye, and now a foot or a hand, were beaten, forced to swallow

nauseous drinks, and then, when the agony could be prolonged no

further, broken on the wheel. The scene of this torture was a scaffold

set in the public gaze that Milan might read what was the anger of the

Visconti and tremble.

The most famous of this infamous family was Gian Galeazzo, son of

Galeazzo, a youth so timid by nature that he would shake and turn white

at the sudden closing of a door, or at a noise in the street below.

His uncle, Bernabò, believed him half-witted, and foolishly accepted

an invitation to visit him after his father’s death, intending to

manage the young man’s affairs for him and to keep him in terrified

submission. The wily old man was to find himself outmatched, however,

for Gian Galeazzo came to their meeting-place with an armed guard,

arrested his uncle, and imprisoned him in a castle, where he died by

slow poison.

After this Gian Galeazzo reigned alone in Milan, with no law save his

ruthless ambition; and by this and his skill in creating political

opportunities, and making use of them at his neighbour’s expense, he

succeeded in stretching his tyranny over the plains of Lombardy and

southwards amongst the hill cities of Tuscany. Near at home he beat

down resistance by force of arms, while farther away he secured by

bribery or fraud the allegiance of cities too weak to stand alone, yet

less afraid of distant Milan than of Venice or Florence that lay nearer

to their walls.

It was Gian Galeazzo’s aim to found a kingdom in North Italy, and he

went far towards realizing his project, stretching his dominion at

one time to Verona and Vicenza at the very gates of Venice, while

in the south he absorbed as subject-towns Pisa and Siena, the two

arch-enemies of Florence. This territory, acquired by war, bribery,

murder, and fraud, he persuaded the Emperor to recognize as a duchy

hereditary in his family, and at once proceeded to form alliances with

the royal houses of Europe. The marriage of his daughter Valentina

with the young and weak-minded Duke of Orleans, brother of the French

king, though hardly an attractive union for the bride, proved fraught

with importance for the whole of Italy, since at the very end of the

fifteenth century, Louis, Duke of Orleans, a grandson of Valentina

Visconti, succeeded to the French crown as Louis XII, and also laid

claim to the duchy of Milan, as a descendant of the Visconti.[42]

At first sight it seems strange that any race so cruel and unprincipled

as the Visconti should continue to maintain their tyranny over men

and women naturally independent like the inhabitants of North Italy.

Certainly, if their rulers had been forced to rely on municipal

levies they would not have kept their power even for a generation;

but unfortunately the old plan of expecting every citizen of military

age to appear at the sound of a bell in order to defend his town had

practically disappeared. Instead the professional soldier had taken the

citizen’s place--the type of man who, as long as he received high wages

and frequent booty, did not care who was his master, nor to what ugly

job of carnage or intimidation he was bidden to bring his sword.

This system of hiring soldiers, _condottieri_, as they were called in

Italy, had arisen partly from the laziness of the townsmen themselves,

who did not wish to leave their business in order to drill and fight,

and were therefore quite willing to pay volunteers to serve instead of

them. Partly it was due to the reluctance of tyrants to arm and employ

as soldiers the people over whom they ruled. From the point of view of

the Visconti, for instance, it was much safer to enrol strangers who

would not have any patriotic scruples in carrying out a massacre, or

any other orders equally harsh.

For such ruffians Italy herself supplied a wide recruiting-ground,

namely, the numberless small towns, once independent but now swallowed

up by bigger states, who treated the conquered as perpetual enemies to

be bullied and suppressed; allowing them no share in the government

nor voice in their future destiny. Wide experience has taught the

world that such tyranny breeds merely hatred and disloyalty, and the

continual local warfare from which mediaeval Italy suffered could be

largely traced to the failure to recognize this political truth. With

no legitimate outlet for their energies, the young men of the conquered

towns found in the formation of a company of adventurers, or in the

service of some prince, the only path to renown, possibly a way of

revenge.

[Sidenote: The ‘Condottieri’ System]

To Italian _condottieri_ were added German soldiers whom Emperors

visiting Italy had brought in their train, and who afterwards remained

behind, looking on the cities of Italy as a happy hunting-ground for

loot and adventure. Yet a third source of supply were freebooters from

France, released by one of the truces of the Hundred Years’ War, and

hastily sent by those who had employed them to seek their fortunes

elsewhere.

Amongst those who came to Italy in the fourteenth century, and built

for himself a name of terror and renown, was an English captain, Sir

John Hawkwood, the son of an Essex tailor, knighted by Edward III for

his prowess on the battle-fields of France. Here is what a Florentine

chronicler says of him:

‘He endured under arms longer than any one, for he endured sixty

years: and he well knew how to manage that there should be little

peace in Italy in his time.... For men and Communes and all cities

live by peace, but these men live and increase by war, which is the

undoing of cities, for they fight and become of naught. In such men

there is neither love nor faith.’

One tale of the day records how some Franciscans, meeting Sir John

Hawkwood, exclaimed as was their custom, ‘Peace be with you.’ To their

astonishment he answered, ‘God take away your alms.’ When they asked

him the reason for wishing them so ill, he replied, ‘You also wished

that God might make me die of hunger. Know you not that I live on war,

and that peace would ruin me? I therefore returned your greeting in

like sort.’

Sir John Hawkwood spent most of his time in the service of Florence;

and, whatever his cruelty and greed, he does not seem to have been

as false as other captains of his time. Indeed, when he died, the

Florentines buried him in their cathedral, and raised an effigy in

grateful memory of his deeds on behalf of the city.

Returning to the history of Milan and her _condottieri_, Gian Galeazzo,

though timid and unwarlike himself, was a shrewd judge of character,

and his captains, while they struck terror into his enemies, remained

faithful to himself. When he died in 1402, however, many of them tried

to establish independent states; and it was some years before his son,

Filippo Maria, could master them and regain control over the greater

part of the Duchy.

Even more cowardly than his father, Filippo Maria lived, like Louis XI

of France, shut off from the sight of men. Sismondi, the historian,

describes him as ‘a strange, dingy, creature, with protruding eyeballs

and furtive glance.’ He hated to hear the word ‘death’ mentioned, and

for fear of assassination would change his bedroom every night. When

news was brought him of defeat he would tremble in the expectation that

his _condottieri_ might desert him: when messengers arrived flushed

with victory he was scarcely less aghast, believing that the successful

general might become his rival.

Such was the penalty paid by despots, save by those of iron nerve, in

return for their luxury and power: the dread that the most servile of

_condottieri_ might be bribed into a relentless enemy, poison lurk in

the seasoned dish or wine-cup, a dagger pierce the strongest mesh of a

steel tunic. So night and day was the great Visconti haunted by fear,

while his hired armies forced Genoa to acknowledge his suzerainty, and

plunged his Duchy into rivalry with Venice along the line of the River

Adige.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Venice]

The history of Venice differs in many ways from that of other Italian

states. Built on a network of islands that destined her geographically

for a great sea-power, she had looked from earliest times not to

territorial aggrandisement, but to commercial expansion for the

satisfaction of her ambitions. In this way she had avoided the strife

of feudal landowners, and even the Guelf and Ghibelline factions that

had reduced her neighbours to slavery.

Elsewhere in Italy the names of cities and states are bound up with

the histories of mediaeval families; Naples with the quarrels of

Hohenstaufen, Angevins, and Aragonese: Rome with the Barons of the

Campagna, the Orsini and Colonna: Milan with the Visconti, and later

with the Sforza: Florence with the Medici: but in Venice the state

was everything, demanding of her sons and daughters not the startling

qualities and vices of the successful soldier of fortune, but

obedience, self-effacement, and hard work.

The Doge, or Duke, the chief magistrate of Venice, has been compared

to a king; but he was in reality merely a president elected for life,

and that by a system rendered as complicated as possible in order to

prevent wire-pulling. Once chosen and presented to the people with the

old formula, ‘This is your Doge an’ it please you!’ the new ruler of

the city found himself hedged about by a hundred constitutional checks,

that compelled him to act only on the well-considered advice of his six

Ducal Councillors, forbade him to raise any of his family to a public

office or to divest himself of a rank that he might with years find

more burdensome than pleasant. He was also made aware that the respect

with which his commands were received was paid not to himself but to

his office, and through his office to Venice, a royal mistress before

whom even a haughty aristocracy willingly bent the knee.

In early days all important matters in Venice were decided by a General

Assembly of the people; but as the population grew, this unwieldy body

was replaced by a ‘Grand Council’ of leading citizens. In the early

fourteenth century another and still more important change was made,

for the ranks of the Grand Council were closed, and only members of

those families who had been in the habit of attending its meetings

were allowed to do so in future. Thus a privileged aristocracy was

created, and the majority of Venetians excluded from any share in their

government; but because this government aimed not at the advantage

of any particular family but of the whole state, people forgave its

despotic character. Even the famous Council of Ten that, like the

Court of Star Chamber under the Tudors, had power to seize and examine

citizens secretly, in the interests of the state, was admired by the

Venetians over whom it exerted its sway, because of its reputation

for even-handed justice, that drew no distinctions between the son

of a Doge, a merchant, or a beggar. ‘The Venetian Republic’, says a

modern writer on mediaeval times, ‘was the one stable element in all

North Italy,’ and this condition of political calm was the wonder and

admiration of contemporaries.

Sometimes to-day it seems difficult to admire mediaeval Venice because

of her selfishness and frank commercialism. She had no sense of

patriotism either towards Italy or Christendom; witness the Fourth

Crusade,[43] where nothing but her insistent desire to protect her

trading position in the East had influenced her diplomacy.

This accusation of selfishness is true; but we must remember that the

word ‘patriotism’ has a much wider scope in modern times than was

possible to the limited outlook of the Middle Ages. Venice might be

unmoved by the words ‘Italy’ or ‘Christendom’, but the whole of her

life and ideals was centred in the word ‘Venice’. Her sailors and

merchants, who laid the foundations of her greatness, were no hired

mercenaries, but citizens willing to lay down their lives for the

Republic who was their mother and their queen. Thus narrowing the

term ‘patriotism’, we see that of all the Italian Powers Venice alone

understood what the word meant, in that her sons and daughters were

willing to sacrifice as a matter of course not merely life but family

ambitions, class, and even individuality to the interests of their

state.

The ambitions of Venice were bound up with the shipping and commerce

that had gained for her the carrying-trade of the world. To take, for

example, the wool manufacture, of such vital interest to English and

Flemings, we find that at one time this depended largely on Venetian

merchants, who would carry sugar and spices to England from the East,

replace their cargo with wool, unload this in its turn in the harbours

of Flanders, and then laden with bales of manufactured cloth return to

dispose of them in Italian markets.

Besides the carrying-trade, which depended on her neighbour’s industry,

Venice had her own manufactures such as silk and glass; but in either

case both her sailors and workmen found one thing absolutely vital

to their interests, namely, the command of the Adriatic. Like the

British Isles to-day, Venice could not feed her thriving population

from home-produce, and yet, with enemies or pirates hiding along the

Dalmatian coast, safety for her richly-laden vessels passing to and

fro could not be guaranteed. These are some of the reasons why from

earliest times the Republic had embarked on an aggressive maritime

policy that brought her into clash with other Mediterranean ports, and

especially with Genoa, her rival in Eastern waters.

When, at the end of the Fourth Crusade, Venice forced Constantinople

to accept a Latin dynasty, she secured for herself for the time being

especial privileges in that world-market; Genoa, who adopted the cause

of the exiled Greeks, achieved a signal triumph in her turn when in

1261 with her assistance Michael Paleologus, a Greek general, restored

the Byzantine Empire amid public rejoicings.

Open warfare was now almost continuous between the republics; there

was street-fighting in Constantinople and in the ports of Palestine,

sea-battles off the Italian and Greek coasts, encounters in which

varying fortunes gave at first the mastery of the Mediterranean to

neither Venice nor Genoa, but which disastrously weakened the whole

resistance of Christendom to the Mahometans.

At length in 1380 a decisive battle was fought off Chioggia, one of the

cities of the Venetian Lagoons, whither the Genoese fleet, triumphant

on the open seas, had taken up its quarters determined to blockade the

enemy into surrender. ‘Let us man every vessel in Venice and go and

fight the foe’, was the general cry; and a popular leader, Pisani,

imprisoned on account of his share in a recent naval disaster, was

released on the public demand and made captain of the enterprise. ‘Long

live Pisani!’ the citizens shouted in their joy, but their hero, true

to the spirit of Venice, answered them, ‘Venetians cry only, “Long live

St. Mark!”’

With the few ships and men at his disposal, Pisani recognized that

it was out of the question to lead a successful attack; but he knew

that if he could defer the issue there was a Venetian fleet in the

eastern Mediterranean which, learning his straits, would return with

all possible speed to his aid. He therefore determined to force the

enemy to remain where they were without offering open battle, and this

manœuvre he carried out with great boldness and skill, sinking heavy

vessels loaded with stones in the channels that led to Chioggia, while

placing his own fleet across the main entrance to prevent Genoese

reinforcements. The blockaders were now blockaded; and through long

winter days and nights the rivals, worn out by their bitter vigil,

starving and short of ammunition, watched one another and searched

the horizon anxiously. At length a shout arose, for distant sails had

been sighted; then as the Venetian flag floated proudly into view the

shout of Pisani and his men became a song of triumph: the Republic

was saved. Venice was not only saved from ruin, her future as Queen

of the Adriatic was assured, for the Genoese admiral was compelled to

surrender, and his Republic to acknowledge her rival’s supremacy of the

seas.

The sea-policy of Venice was the inevitable result of her geographical

position; but as the centuries passed she developed a much more

debatable land-policy. Many mediaeval Venetians declared that since

land was the source of all political trouble, therefore Venice should

only maintain enough command over the immediate mainland to secure

the city from a surprise attack. Others replied that such an argument

was dictated by narrow-minded prejudice, a point of view suitable to

the days when Lombardy had been divided amongst a number of weak city

states, but impracticable with powerful tyrants, such as the Visconti,

masters of North Italy. Unless Venice could secure the territories

lying at the foot of the Alps, and also a wide stretch of eastern

Lombardy, she would find that she had no command over the passes in the

mountains by means of which she carried on her commerce with Germany

and Austria.

The advocates of a land-empire policy received confirmation of their

warnings when in the early part of the fourteenth century Mastino della

Scala, lord of Vicenza, Padua, and Treviso, attempted to levy taxes on

Venetian goods passing through his territories. The Republic, roused

by what she considered an insult to her commercial supremacy, promptly

formed a league with Milan and Florence against Mastino, and obtained

Treviso and other towns as the result of a victorious war.

This campaign might, of course, be called merely a part of Venice’s

commercial policy, defence not aggression; but later, in 1423, the

Florentines persuaded the Republic to join with them in a war against

the Visconti, declaring that they were weary of struggling alone

against such tyrants, and that if Venice did not help them they would

be compelled to make Filippo Maria ‘King of North Italy.’ The result

of the war that followed was a treaty securing Venice a temporary

increase of power on the mainland, and may be taken as the first

decisive step in her deliberate scheme of building up a land-empire in

Italy.

Machiavelli, a student of politics in the sixteenth century, who wrote

a handbook of advice for rulers called _The Prince_, as well as the

history of Florence, his native city, declares that the decline of the

Venetians ‘dated from the time when they became ambitious of conquests

by land and of adopting the manners and customs of the other states of

Italy’. This may be true; but it is doubtful whether the great Republic

could have remained in glorious isolation with the Visconti knocking at

her gates.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Florence]

From Venice we must turn to Florence, which, by the fifteenth century,

emerged from petty rivalries as the first city in Tuscany. Like

Milan, Florence fell a prey to Guelfs and Ghibellines; but these

feuds, instead of becoming a family rivalry between would-be despots,

developed into a bitter class-war.

On the fall of Frederick II the Guelfs, who in Florence at this date

may be taken as representing the _populo grasso_, or rich merchants, as

opposed to the _grandi_, or nobles, succeeded in driving the majority

of their enemies out of the city. They then remodelled the constitution

in their own favour.

The chief power in the city was now the ‘Signory’, composed of the

‘Gonfalonier of Justice’ and a number of ‘Priors’, representatives of

the _arti_, or guilds of lawyers, physicians, clothiers, &c.: to name

but a few. No aristocrat might stand for any public office unless he

became a member of one of the guilds, and in order to ensure that he

did not merely write down his name on their registers it was later

enacted that every candidate for office must show proof that he really

worked at the trade of the guild to which he claimed to belong.

Other and sterner measures of proscription followed with successive

generations. The noble who injured a citizen of lesser rank, whether

on purpose or by accident, was liable to have his house levelled

with the dust: the towers, from which in old days his ancestors had

poured boiling oil or stones upon their rivals, were reduced by law

to a height that could be easily scaled; in the case of a riot no

aristocrat, however innocent his intentions, might have access to the

streets. The _grande_ was, in fact, both in regard to politics and

justice, placed at such an obvious disadvantage that to ennoble an

ambitious enemy was a favourite Florentine method of rendering him

harmless.

The Guelf triumph of the thirteenth century did not, in spite of its

completeness, bring peace to Florence. New parties sprang up; and the

government in its efforts to keep clear of class or family influence

introduced so many complicated checks that great injury was done to

individual action, and all hope of a steady policy removed. Members of

the ‘Signory’, for instance, served only for two months at a time: the

twelve ‘Buonomini’, or ‘Good men’, elected to give them advice only

for six. What was most in contrast to the ideal of ‘the right man for

the right job’ was the practice of first making a list of all citizens

considered suitable to hold office, then putting the names in a bag,

and afterwards picking them out haphazard as vacancies occurred. Even

this precaution against favouritism--and, one is inclined to add, also

against efficiency--was checked by another law, the summoning of a

_parlamento_ in cases of emergency. This _parlamento_ was an informal

gathering of the people collected by the ringing of a bell in the big

square, where it was then asked to decide whether a special committee

should be appointed with free power to alter the existing constitution.

Politicians argued that here in the last resort was a direct appeal to

the people, but in reality by placing armed men at the entrances to the

square a docile crowd could be manœuvred at the mercy of any mob-orator

set up by those behind the scenes.

Power remained in Florence in the hands of the prosperous burghers and

merchants, and these in time developed their own feuds under the names

of ‘Whites’ and ‘Blacks’, adopted by the partisans in a family quarrel.

[Sidenote: Dante Alighieri]

The greatest of Italian poets, Dante Alighieri, was a ‘White’, and was

exiled from his city in 1302 owing to the triumph of his rivals. When

pardon was suggested on the payment of a large sum of money, Dante,

who had tried to serve his city faithfully, refused to comply, feeling

that this would be an open acknowledgement of his guilt. ‘If another

way can be found ... which shall not taint Dante’s fame and honour’, he

wrote proudly, ‘that way I will accept and with no reluctant steps ...

but if Florence is not to be entered by any such way never will I enter

Florence.’

Dante’s mental outlook was typical of mediaeval times in its stern

prejudices and hatreds, but it was also clearer and nobler in its

scope. An enthusiastic Ghibelline in politics, he believed that it

was the first duty of Holy Roman Emperors to exert their authority

over Italy, but this vision was not narrowed, as with many Italians,

into the mere hope of restoration to home and power, with a sequel of

revenge on private enemies. Dearer to Dante than any personal ambitions

was the desire for the salvation of both Church and state from tyranny

and corruption; and this he believed could only be achieved by

bestowing supreme power on a world-emperor.

One attempt at reform had been made in 1294, when the conclave of

Cardinals, suddenly stung with the contrast between the character

of the Catholic Church and its professions, chose as their Vicar a

hermit noted for his privations and holy life. Celestine V, as he was

afterwards called, was a small man, pale and feeble, with tousled hair

and garments of sackcloth. When a deputation of splendidly dressed

cardinals came to find him, he fled in terror, and it was almost by

force that he was at last persuaded to go with them and put on the

pontifical robes. The men and women who longed for reform now waited

eagerly for this new Pope’s mandates; but their expectations were

doomed to failure. Celestine V had neither the originality nor the

strength of will to withstand his change of fortunes. Terrified by his

surroundings, he became an easy prey to those who were unscrupulous and

ambitious, giving away benefices sometimes twice over because he dared

not refuse them to importunate courtiers, and creating new cardinals

almost as fast as he was asked to do so. At last he was allowed to

abdicate, and hurried back to his cell, but only to be seized by his

successor, the fierce Boniface VIII,[44] and shut up in a castle, where

he died.

Dante hated Boniface as a ruler who debased his spiritual opportunities

in order to obtain material rewards, but he had hardly less scorn for

Celestine V, who was given power to reform the Church of Christ and

‘made the great refusal’. Reform, in the Florentine’s eyes, could

not be looked for from Rome, but, when the Emperor Henry VII crossed

the Alps,[45] his hopes rose high that here at last was the saviour

of Italy, and it is probable that at this time the poet wrote his

political treatise called the _De Monarchia_, embodying his views. He

himself went out to meet his champion, but Henry was not destined to

be a second Charlemagne or Otto the Great, and his death closed all

expectations built on his chivalrous character and ideals.

Dante’s greatest work is his long poem the _Divina Commedia_, divided

into three parts, the _Inferno_, the _Purgatorio_, and the _Paradiso_.

It tells how on Good Friday of the year of Jubilee 1300 the Florentine,

meeting with the spirit of Virgil whom he had chosen as his master, was

led by him through the realms of everlasting punishment and of penance,

and from there was borne by another guide, Beatrice, the idealized

vision of a woman he had loved on earth, up through the ‘Nine Heavens’

to the very throne of God. As a summary of mediaeval theories as to the

life eternal, and also as the reflection of a fourteenth-century mind

on politics of the day, the _Divine Comedy_ is indeed an historical

treasury as well as a masterpiece of Italian literature. It is,

however, a great deal more--the revelation of the development of a

human soul. Dante’s journey is told with a mastery of atmosphere and

detail that holds our imaginations to-day with the sense of reality.

It was obviously still more real to himself and expresses the agonized

endeavour of a soul, alive to the corruption and nerve-weariness of the

world around him, to find the way of salvation, a pilgrimage crowned at

last by the realization of a _Civitas Dei_ so supreme in its beauty and

peace as to surpass the prophecies of St. Augustine.

Now ‘Glory to the Father, to the Son,

And to the Holy Spirit’ rang aloud

Throughout all Paradise; that with the song

My spirit reel’d, so passing sweet the strain.

And what I saw was equal ecstasy:

One universal smile it seemed of all things;

Joy past compare; gladness unutterable;

Imperishable life of peace and love;

Exhaustless riches and unmeasured bliss.

Dante himself did not live to fulfil his earthly dream of returning to

Florence, but died at Ravenna in 1321. On his tomb is an inscription in

Latin containing the words, ‘Whom Florence bore, the mother that did

little love him’; while his portrait has the proud motto so typical

of his whole life, ‘I yield not to misfortune’. In later centuries

Florence recalled with shame her repudiation of this the greatest of

her sons; but while he lived, and for some years after his death,

political prejudices blinded her eyes. In the Emperor Henry VII, to

whom Dante referred as ‘King of the earth and servant of God’, Florence

saw an enemy so hateful that she was willing to forgo her boasted

democracy, and to accept as master any prince powerful enough to oppose

him. Thus she granted the _Signoria_, or ‘overlordship’ of the city,

for five years to King Robert of Naples, the head of the Guelf party in

Italy during the early years of the fourteenth century.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Naples]

King Robert of Naples was a grandson of Charles, Count of Anjou,

brother of St. Louis, and, true to the tradition of his house, stood

as the champion of the Popes against imperial claims over Italy.

Outwardly he was by far the most powerful of the Italian princes of

his day; but in reality he sat uneasily on his throne. The Neapolitans

had not learned with time to love their Angevin rulers, but even after

the death of Conradin remembered the Hohenstaufen, and envied Sicily

that dared to throw off the French yoke and give herself to a Spanish

dynasty.

It is difficult to provide a short and at the same time connected

account of the history of Naples from the death of King Robert in 1343

until 1435, when it was conquered by the House of Aragon. For nearly a

century there is a dismal record of murders and plots, with scarcely an

illuminating glimpse of patriotism or of any heroic figure. It is like

a ‘dance of death’, with ever-changing partners, and nothing achieved

save crimes and revolutions.

King Robert’s successor was a granddaughter, Joanna I, a political

personage from her cradle, and married at the age of five to a boy

cousin two years her senior, Andrew of Hungary, brother of Louis the

Great. We cannot tell if, left to themselves, this young couple, each

partner so passionate and self-willed, could have learned to work

together in double harness. What is certain is that no one in that

corrupt court gave them the chance, one party of intriguers continually

whispering in Joanna’s ear that as queen it was beneath her dignity to

accept any interference from her husband, while their rivals reminded

the young Prince Andrew that he was descended from King Robert’s

elder brother, and therefore had as great a right to the throne as

his wife. Frequent quarrels as to whose will should prevail shook the

council-chamber, and then at last came tragedy.

In 1345 Joanna and Andrew, then respectively eighteen and twenty,

set out together into the country on an apparently amicable

hunting-expedition. As they slept one night in the guest-room of a

convent the Prince heard himself called by voices in the next room.

Suspecting no harm he rose and went to see which of his friends had

summoned him, only to find himself attacked by a group of armed men.

He turned to re-enter the bedroom, but the door was locked behind him.

With the odds now wholly against him, Andrew fought bravely for his

life, but at length two of his assassins succeeded in throwing a rope

round his neck, and with this they strangled him and hung his body from

the balcony outside.

Attendants came at last, and, forcing the door, told Joanna of the

murder; on which she declared that she had been so soundly asleep

that she had heard nothing, though she was never able to explain

satisfactorily how in that case the door of her bedroom had become

locked behind the young king. Naturally the greater part of Europe

believed that she was guilty of connivance in the crime, and King Louis

of Hungary brought an army to Italy to avenge his brother’s death.

He succeeded in driving Joanna from Naples, which he claimed as his

rightful inheritance, but he was not sufficiently supported to make

a permanent conquest, and in the end he was forced to hurry away to

Hungary, where his throne was threatened, leaving the question of his

sister-in-law’s guilt to be decided by the Pope.

The Pope at this time looked to the Angevin rulers of Naples as his

chief supporters, and at once proclaimed Joanna innocent. It is worthy

of note that three princes were found brave enough to become her

husband in turn; but, though four times married, Joanna had but one

son, who died as a boy.

At first she was quite willing to accept as her heir a cousin, Charles

of Durazzo, who was married to her niece, but soon she had quarrelled

violently with him and offered the throne instead to a member of the

French royal house, Louis, Duke of Anjou. This is a very bewildering

moment for students of history, because it introduces into Italian

politics a second Angevin dynasty only distantly connected with the

first, yet both laying claim to Naples and waging war against one

another as if each belonged to a different race.

Joanna in the end was punished for her capriciousness, for in the

course of the civil wars she had introduced she fell into the hands of

Charles of Durazzo, who, indignant at his repudiation, shut her up in a

castle, where she died. One report says that she was smothered with a

feather-bed; another that she was strangled with a silken cord--perhaps

in memory of Prince Andrew’s murder.

After this act of retribution, Charles of Durazzo maintained his power

in Naples for four years, though he was forced to surrender the County

of Provence to his Angevin rival. Not content with his Italian kingdom,

he set off with an army to Hungary as soon as he heard of the death

of Louis the Great, hoping to enforce his claims on that warrior’s

lands. Instead he was assassinated, and succeeded in Naples by his son

Ladislas, a youth of fifteen.

Ladislas proved a born soldier of unflagging energy and purpose, so

that he not only conquered his unruly baronage but made himself master

of southern Italy, including Rome, from which with unusual Angevin

hostility he drove the Pope. Here was a chance for bringing about the

union of Italy under one ruler, and Ladislas certainly aimed at such

an achievement, but apart from his military genius he was a typical

despot of his day--cruel, unscrupulous, and pleasure-seeking as the

Visconti--and when he died, still a young man, in 1414 few mourned his

passing.

His sister, Joanna II, who succeeded him, lacked his strength while

exhibiting many of his vices. Like Joanna I she was false and fickle;

like Joanna I she had no direct heirs, so that the original House of

Anjou in Naples came to an end when she died. Many negotiations as

to her successor took place during the latter years of her reign,

and for some time it seemed as if the old queen would be content to

accept Louis III of Anjou, at this time the representative of the

Second Angevin House, but in a moment of caprice and anger she suddenly

bestowed her favour instead on Alfonso V of Aragon and Sicily, and

adopted him as her heir. Of course, being Joanna, she again changed

her mind; but, though Alfonso pretended to accept his repudiation, the

hard-headed Spaniard was not to be turned so easily from an acquisition

that would forward Aragonese ambitions in the Mediterranean.

Directly Joanna II died, Alfonso appeared off Naples with a fleet,

and though he was taken prisoner in battle and sent as a prisoner to

Filippo Maria Visconti at Milan, he acted with such diplomacy that

he persuaded that despot, hitherto an ally of the Angevins, that it

was much safer for Milan to have a Spanish rather than a French House

reigning in Naples. This was the beginning of a firm alliance between

Milan and Naples, for Alfonso, released from his captivity, succeeded

in establishing himself in ‘the Kingdom’, where withdrawing his court

from Aragon he founded a new capital that became a centre for learned

and cultured Italians as of old in the days of Frederick II.

We have dealt now with four of the five principal Italian states during

the later Middle Ages. In Rome, to pick up the political threads,

we must go back to the effects of the removal of the papal court to

Avignon in 1308.[46]

From the point of view of the Popes themselves, many of them Frenchmen

by birth, there were considerable advantages to be gained by this

change--not only safety from the invasions of Holy Roman Emperors

aspiring to rule Italy, but also from the turbulence of Roman citizens

and barons of the Campagna.

Avignon was near enough to France to claim her king’s protection, but

far enough outside her boundaries to evade obedience to her laws. It

stood in the County of Provence, part of the French estates of the

Angevin House of Naples, but during her exile Joanna I, penniless and

in need of papal support, was induced to sell the city, and it remained

an independent possession of the Holy See until the eighteenth century.

From the immediate advantages caused by the ‘Babylonish Captivity’, as

these years of papal residence in Avignon were called, we turn to the

ultimate disadvantages, and these were serious. Inevitably there was a

lowering of papal prestige in the eyes of Europe. In Rome, that since

classic times had been the recognized capital of the Western world, the

Pope had seemed indeed a world-wide potentate, on whom the mantle both

of St. Peter and of the Caesars might well have fallen. Transferred to

a city of Provence he shrank almost to the measure of a petty sovereign.

During the Hundred Years’ War, for instance, there was widespread

grumbling in England at the obedience owed to Avignon. The Popes, ran

popular complaint, were more than half French in political outlook and

sympathy, so that an Englishman who wished for a successful decision

to his suit in a papal law-court must pay double the sums proffered by

men of any other race in order to obtain justice. What was more, he

knew that any money he sent to the papal treasury helped to provide the

sinews of war for his most hated enemies.

The Papacy had been disliked across the Channel in the days of

Innocent IV, when England was taxed to pay for wars against the

Hohenstaufen: now, more than a century later, grumbling had begun to

crystallize in the dangerous shape of a resistance not merely to papal

supremacy, but to papal doctrine on which that supremacy was based.

Thus Wycliffe, the first great English heretic, who began to proclaim

his views during the later years of Edward III’s reign, was popularly

regarded as a patriot, and his sermons denouncing Catholic doctrine

widely read and discussed.

In the thirteenth century it had been possible to suppress heresy in

Languedoc; but in the fourteenth century there were no longer Popes

like Innocent III who could persuade men to fight the battles of

Avignon, and so the practice of criticism and independent thought grew,

and by the fifteenth century many of the doctrines taught by Wycliffe

had spread across Europe and found a home in Bohemia.

[Sidenote: Rome]

With the history of Bohemian heresy we shall deal later, but, having

treated its development as partly arising from the change in papal

fortunes, we must notice the effect of the Babylonish Captivity on Rome

herself, and this, indeed, was disastrous.

‘The absence of the Pope’, says Gregorovius, a modern German

historian, ‘left the nobility more unbridled than ever; these

hereditary Houses now regarded themselves as masters of Rome left

without her master. Their mercenaries encamped on every road;

travellers and pilgrims were robbed; places of worship remained

empty. The entire circumstances of the city were reduced to a

meaner level. No prince, nobleman, or envoy of a foreign power,

any longer made his appearance.... Vicars replaced the cardinals

absent from their titular churches, while the Pope himself was

represented in the Vatican, as by a shadow, by some bishop of the

neighbourhood, Nepi, Viterbo, or Orvieto.’

The wealth and pomp that had made the papal court a source of revenue

to the Romans were transferred to Provence: the Orsini and Colonna

battled in the streets with no High Pontiff to hold them in check. Only

his agents remained, who were there mainly to collect his rents and

revenues, so that the city seemed once again threatened with political

extinction as when Constantine had removed his capital to the Bosporus.

[Sidenote: Cola di Rienzi]

One short period of glory there was in seventy years of gloom--the

realized vision of a Roman, Cola di Rienzi, a youth of the people, who,

steeped in the writings of classical times, hoped to bring back to the

city the freedom and greatness of republican days. From contemporary

accounts Rienzi had a wonderful personality, striking looks, and an

eloquence that rarely failed to move those who heard him. At Avignon,

as a Roman envoy, he gained papal consent to some measures earnestly

desired at Rome, and this success won him a large and enthusiastic

following amongst the citizens, who applauded all that he said, and

offered to uphold his ambitions with their swords.

The first step to the greatness of Rome was obviously to restore order

to her streets, and Rienzi therefore determined to overthrow the

nobles, who with their retainers were always brawling, and above all

the proud family of Colonna, one of whom without any provocation had

killed his younger brother in a fit of rage.

The revolution took place in May 1347, when, with the Papal Vicar

standing at his side, and banners representing liberty, justice, and

peace floating above his head, Rienzi proclaimed a new constitution to

the populace, and invested himself as chief magistrate with the title

of ‘Tribune, Illustrious Redeemer of the Holy Roman Republic’.

At first there was laughter amongst the Roman nobles when they heard of

this proclamation. ‘If the fool provokes me further,’ exclaimed Stephen

Colonna, the head of that powerful clan, ‘I will throw him from the

Capitol’; but his contempt was turned to dismay when he heard that a

citizen army was guarding the bridges, and confining the aristocratic

families to their houses. In the end Stephen fled to his country

estates, while the younger members of his household came to terms with

the Tribune, and swore allegiance to the new Republic.

Rienzi was now triumphant, and his letters to all the rulers of Europe

announced that Rome had found peace and law, while he exhorted the

other cities of Italy to throw off the yoke of tyrants and join a

‘national brotherhood’.

It would seem that Rienzi alone of his contemporaries saw a vision of

a united Italy; but unfortunately the common sense and balance that are

necessary to secure the practical realization of a visionary’s dreams

were lacking. The Tribune was undoubtedly great, but not great enough

to stand success. The child of peasants, he began to boast that he was

really a son of the Emperor Henry VII, and the pageantry that he had

first employed to dazzle the Romans grew more and more elaborate as he

himself became ensnared by a false sense of his own dignity. Clad in a

toga of white silk edged with a golden fringe, he would ride through

the streets on a white horse, amid a cavalcade of horsemen splendidly

equipped. In order to celebrate his accession to power he instituted

a festival, where, amid scenes of lavish pomp, he was knighted in the

Lateran with a golden girdle and spurs, after bathing in the porphyry

font in which tradition declared that Constantine had been cleansed

from leprosy.

The people, as is the way with crowds, clapped their hands and shouted

while the trumpets blew, and they scrambled for the gold Rienzi’s

servants threw broadcast; but long afterwards, when they had forgotten

the even-handed justice their Tribune had secured them, they remembered

his foolish extravagance and display, and resented the taxes that he

found it necessary to impose in order to maintain his government and

state.

The history of Rienzi’s later years is a tale of brilliant

opportunities, created in the first place by his genius, and then lost

by his timidity or lack of balance. On one occasion, when he learned

that the very nobles who had sworn on oath to uphold his constitution

were plotting its overthrow, he invited the leaders of the conspiracy

to a banquet, arrested them, and sent them under guard to prison. The

next morning the prison-bell tolled, and the nobles within were led out

apparently to the death their treachery had richly deserved. At the

last moment, however, when each had given up hope, the Tribune came

before the scaffold, and, after a sermon on the forgiveness of sins,

ordered those who were condemned to be set free.

If he had wished to win their allegiance by this act of clemency Rienzi

had ill-judged his enemies. They had disliked him before as a peasant

upstart; now they hated him far more bitterly as a man who had been

able to humble them in the public gaze, believing, whether rightly or

wrongly, that it was not forgiveness but fear of the powerful families

to which they belonged that had finally moved him to mercy. From this

moment the Orsini, the Colonna, and their friends had but one object in

life--to pull the Tribune from his throne. By bribery and the spreading

of false rumours they set themselves to undermine his influence,

telling tales everywhere of his extravagance and luxury as contrasted

with the heavy taxes, until at last in 1354 a tumult broke out in the

city, and a mob collected that stormed the palace where Rienzi lodged,

shouting ‘Death to the Traitor!’ As the Tribune attempted to escape he

was seen against the flames of his burning walls and cut down.

[Sidenote: St. Catherine of Siena]

With the fall of Rienzi died the idea of a restored and reformed Italy

through the medium of a Holy Roman Republic, just as Dante’s hope of a

new and more perfect Roman Empire had been shattered by the death of

Henry VII. Was there then no hope for Italy in mediaeval minds? The

next answer that there was hope, indeed, came from Siena, one of the

hill towns not far south of Florence, and its author was a peasant

girl, Catherine Benincasa, who, like Jeanne d’Arc, looking round upon

the misery of her country, believed that she was called by God to show

her fellow countrymen the way of salvation.

St. Catherine, for she was afterwards canonized, was one of the

twenty-five children of a Sienese dyer, who was at first very angry

that his daughter refused to marry and instead joined the Order of

Dominican Tertiaries--that is, of women who, still remaining in their

own homes, bound themselves by vows to obey a religious rule.

In time, not only the dyer but all Siena came to realize that Catherine

possessed a mind and spirit far above ordinary standards, so that,

while in her simplicity she would accept the meanest household tasks,

she had yet so great an understanding of the larger issues of life that

she could read the cause of each man or woman’s trouble who came to

her, and suggest the remedy they needed to give them fresh courage or

hope.

During an outbreak of plague in Siena it was Catherine who, undismayed

and tireless, went everywhere amongst the sick and dying, infusing

new heart into the weary doctors and energy into patients succumbing

helplessly to the disease.

When one of the wild young nobles of the town was condemned to death

according to the harsh law of the day for having dared to criticize his

government, Catherine visited him in prison. She found him raging up

and down his cell like some trapped wild animal, refusing all comfort;

but her presence and sympathy brought him so great a sense of peace and

even of thanksgiving that he went to the scaffold at last joyfully, we

are told, calling it ‘the holy place of justice’. Here, not shrinking

from the scene of death itself, Catherine awaited him, kneeling before

the block, and received his head in her lap when it was severed from

his body. ‘When he was at rest,’ she wrote afterwards, showing what the

strain had been, ‘my soul also rested in peace and quiet.’

St. Catherine was not alarmed when ambassadors from other cities, and

even messengers from the Pope at Avignon, came to ask her advice on

thorny problems. She believed that she was a messenger of God, ‘servant

and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ’, as she styled herself in

her letters, and that God intended the regeneration of Italy to be

brought about neither by Emperor, nor by a Holy Roman Republic, but

by the Pope himself. No longer must he live at Avignon, but return to

Rome, and, once established there, begin the work of reform so sorely

needed both by Church and State. Then would follow a call to the world

that, recognizing by his just and generous acts that he was indeed the

‘Father of Christendom’, would joyfully come to offer its allegiance.

This high ideal touched the hearts and imaginations of even the least

spiritual of Catherine’s contemporaries. One of her letters was

addressed to that firebrand Sir John Hawkwood, whom she besought to

turn his sword away from Italy against the Turks; and it is said that

on reading it he took an oath that if other captains would go on a

crusade he would do so also.

St. Catherine herself went to Avignon and saw Pope Gregory XI--a timid

man, who loved luxury and peace of mind, fearing greatly the turbulence

of Rome. At this time all the barons of the Campagna and most of the

cities on the papal estates were up in arms, and Gregory had been

warned that unless he went in person to pacify the combatants he was

likely to lose all his temporal possessions. Catherine, when consulted,

told him sternly that he should certainly return to Italy, but not for

this reason.

‘Open the eyes of your intelligence,’ she said, ‘and look steadily

at this matter. You will then see, Holy Father, that ... it is more

needful for you to win back souls than to reconquer your earthly

possessions.’

In January 1377 St. Catherine gained her most signal triumph, for

Gregory XI, at her persuasion, appeared in Rome and took up his

quarters there, so bringing to an end the ‘Babylonish Captivity’. Not

long afterwards he died; and the Romans who had rejoiced at his coming

were overwhelmed with fear that his successor might be a Frenchman and

return to Avignon. ‘Give us a Roman!’ they howled, surging round the

palace where the College of Cardinals, or Consistory, as it was called,

was holding the election; and the cardinals, believing that they would

be torn in pieces unless they at least chose an Italian, hastily

elected a Neapolitan, the Archbishop of Bari, who took the name of

Urban VI.

It was an unfortunate choice. Urban honestly wished to reform the

Church, but of Christian charity, without which good deeds are of no

avail, he possessed nothing. Arrogant, passionate, and fierce in his

frequent hatreds, blind to either tact or moderation, he tried to

force the cardinals by threats and insults into surrendering their

riches and pomp. ‘I tell you in truth,’ exclaimed one of them, when he

had listened to the Pope’s first fiery denunciations, ‘you have not

treated the Cardinals to-day with the respect they received from your

predecessors. If you diminish our honour we shall diminish yours.’

Rome was soon aflame with the plots of the rebellious college, whose

members finally withdrew from the city, declared that they had been

intimidated in their choice by the mob, that the election of Urban was

therefore invalid, and that they intended to appoint some one else. As

a result of this new conclave there appeared a rival Pope, Clement

VII, who after a short civil war fled from Italy and took up his

residence at Avignon.

[Sidenote: The Great Schism]

The period that followed is called the Great Schism, one of the times

of deepest humiliation into which the papal power ever descended. From

Rome and Avignon two sets of bulls, claiming divine sanction and the

necessity of human obedience, went forth to Christendom, their authors

each declaring himself the one lawful successor of St. Peter, and

Father of the Holy Catholic Church.

With Clement VII sided France, her ally Scotland, Spain, and Naples;

with Urban VI, Germany, England, and most of the northern kingdoms; and

when these Popes died the cardinals they had elected perpetuated the

schism by choosing fresh rivals to rend the unity of the Church. Thus

in the struggle for temporal supremacy reform was forgotten, and the

growing spirit of doubt and scepticism given a fair field in which to

sow her seed.

St. Catherine had realized her desire, the return of the Pope to Rome,

only, we see, to find it fail in achieving the purpose for which she

had prayed and planned. The Popes of the fourteenth century were men of

the age in which they lived, not great souls like the saint of Siena

herself, who called them to a task of which they were spiritually

incapable. With her death her ideal faded, and another gradually took

shape in the minds of men, namely, ‘an appeal from the Vicar of Christ

on earth to Christ Himself, residing in the whole body of the Church’.

Christendom remembered that in the early days of her history it had

been Councils of the Fathers, sitting at Nicea and elsewhere, that had

defined the Faith and made laws for the Catholic Church. Now it was

suggested that once more a large world-council should be called from

every Catholic nation, composed of Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, the

Heads of the Friars and of the Monastic and Military Orders, together

with Doctors of Theology and Law. This council was to be given power by

the whole of Christendom to end the schism, condemn heresy, and reform

the Church.

The person who was chiefly responsible for the summoning of this

council, that met at Constance in 1414, was Sigismund, King of the

Romans, a son of the Emperor Charles IV, and brother and heir to the

Emperor Wenzel, a drunken sot, who was also King of Bohemia, but quite

incapable of playing an intelligent part in public affairs. Sigismund

was King of Hungary by election and through his marriage with a

daughter of Louis the Great[47]; but his subjects had little respect

for his ability, and were usually in a state of chronic rebellion. In

spite of the fact that he had no money and had been decisively and

ingloriously defeated in battle by the Turks, he continued to hold

high ambitions, desiring above all things to appear as the arbiter of

European destinies who would reform both Church and State.

The Council of Constance gave him his opportunity, and certainly no

other man worked as hard to make it a success. Sometimes he presided in

person at the meetings, which dragged out their weary discussions for

about four years: at other times he would visit the courts of Europe,

trying to persuade rival Popes to resign, or, if they were obstinate,

civil sovereigns to refuse them patronage and protection. He even

tried, though in vain, to act as mediator in the Hundred Years’ War, in

order that the political quarrels of French and English might not bring

friction to the council board.

[Sidenote: John Huss]

It is unfortunate for Sigismund’s memory that his share in the Council

of Constance was marred by treachery. As heir to the throne of Bohemia

and the incapable Wenzel he was often led to interfere in the affairs

of that kingdom, and felt it his duty to take some steps with regard

to the spread of Wycliffe’s doctrines amongst his future subjects,

especially in the national University of Prague. Here heretical views

were daily expounded by a clever priest and teacher, John Huss. Now the

orthodox Catholics in the university were mainly Germans, and hated by

the ordinary Bohemians, who were Slavs, and these therefore admired and

followed Huss for national as well as from religious convictions.

Sigismund agreed with Huss in desiring a drastic reform of the

Church, suitable means for ensuring which he hoped to see devised at

Constance. At the same time he trusted that the representatives of

Christendom would come to some kind of a compromise with the Bohemian

teacher on his religious views, and persuade him by their arguments to

withdraw some of his most unorthodox opinions. With this end in view

he therefore invited Huss to appear at the Council, offering him a

safe-conduct.

Many of the Bohemians suspected treachery and shook their heads when

their national hero insisted that he was bound in honour to make

profession of his faith when summoned. ‘God be with you!’ exclaimed

one, ‘for I fear greatly that you will never return to us.’ This

prophecy was fulfilled; for Huss, when he arrived at Constance, found

that Sigismund was absent, and the attitude of the Council definitely

hostile to anything he might say. After a prolonged examination he was

called upon to recant his errors, and, refusing to yield, was condemned

to death as a heretic; Sigismund, on his return to Constance shortly

after this sentence had been passed, was persuaded that unless he

consented to withdraw his safe-conduct the whole gathering would break

up in wrath.

Herod, he was told, had made a bad oath in agreeing to fulfil the wish

of Herodias’s daughter and should have refused her demand for the head

of John the Baptist. To pledge faith to a heretic was equally wrong,

for as an example and warning to Christendom all heretics should be

burned. It was imperative therefore for the good of the Church that

such a safe-conduct should be withdrawn. Sigismund at last sullenly

yielded, conscious of the stain on his honour, yet still more fearful

lest the council he had called together with so great an effort should

melt away, its tasks unfulfilled, as his many enemies hoped.

In July 1415 Huss was burned alive, crying aloud with steadfast courage

as those about him urged him to recant, ‘Lo! I am prepared to die in

that truth of the Gospel which I taught and wrote.’ Lest he should

be revered as a martyr, the ashes of Huss were flung into the river,

his very clothes destroyed; but measures that had prevailed when an

Arnold of Brescia preached to a few, some two centuries before, were

unavailing when a John Huss died for the faith of a nation. Sigismund

kept his council together, but he paid for his broken word in the

flame of hatred that his accession in 1419 aroused in Bohemia, and

which lasted during the seventeen years of what are usually called the

Hussite Wars.

The Council of Constance had condemned heresy: it succeeded in deposing

three rival popes, and by its united choice of a new pope, Martin V, it

put an end to the long schism that had divided the Church. The question

of reform, the most vital of all the problems discussed, resulted

in such controversy that men grew weary, and it was postponed for

settlement to another council that the new pope pledged himself to call

in five years.

Such were the practical results of the first real attempt of the Church

to solve the problems of mediaeval times, not by the decision of one

man, whether pope or emperor, but by the voice of Christendom at large.

If the attempt failed the difficulties in the way were so great that

failure was inevitable.

The Conciliar Movement was modern in the sense that it was an appeal

to the judgement of the many rather than of a single autocrat; but it

proved too mediaeval in actual construction and working for the growing

spirit of nationality that brought its prejudices and misunderstandings

to the council hall. English and French, Germans and Bohemians,

Italians and men from beyond the Alps, were too mutually suspicious,

too assured of the righteousness of their own outlook, to be able to

sacrifice their individual, or still more their national, convictions

to traditional authority. The day for world-rule, as mediaeval

statesmen understood the term, had passed; and the Council of Constance

was a witness to its passing.

_Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73._

Dante Alighieri 1265-1321

King Robert of Naples 1309-43

Joanna I of Naples 1343-82

Ladislas of Naples 1386-1414

Joanna II of Naples 1414-35

St. Catherine of Siena 1347-80

Pope Gregory XI 1371-8

Pope Urban VI 1378-89

Pope Clement VII 1378-94

Pope Martin V 1417-31

XXII