in Rome were assembled round him. A message was sent to the bannerets of
Rome, announcing his election. The six cardinals in St. Angelo were
summoned; they were hardly persuaded to leave their place of security;
but without their presence the Archbishop would not declare his assent
to his elevation. The Cardinal of Florence, as dean, presented the
Pope-elect to the sacred college, and discoursed on the text, "Such
ought he to be, an undefiled high-priest." The Archbishop began a long
harangue, "Fear and trembling have come upon me, the horror of great
darkness." The Cardinal of Florence cut short the ill-timed sermon,
demanding whether he accepted the pontificate. The Archbishop gave his
assent; he took the name of Urban VI. _Te Deum_ was intoned; he was
lifted to the throne. The fugitives returned to Rome. Urban VI was
crowned on Easter Day, in the Church of St. John Lateran. All the
cardinals were present at the august ceremony. They announced the
election of Urban VI to their brethren who had remained in Avignon.
Urban himself addressed the usual encyclic letters, proclaiming his
elevation, to all the prelates in Christendom.
None could determine how far the nomination of the Archbishop of Bari
was free and uncontrolled by the terrors of the raging populace; but the
acknowledgment of Urban VI by all the cardinals, at his inauguration in
the holy office--their assistance at his coronation without protest,
when some at least might have been safe beyond the walls of Rome--their
acceptance of honors, as by the cardinals of Limoges, Poitou, and
Aigrefeuille--the homage of all--might seem to annul all possible
irregularity in the election, to confirm irrefragably the legitimacy of
his title.
Not many days had passed, when the cardinals began to look with dismay
and bitter repentance on their own work. "In Urban VI," said a writer of
these times (on the side of Urban as rightful pontiff), "was verified
the proverb--None is so insolent as a low man suddenly raised to power."
The high-born, haughty, luxurious prelates, both French and Italian,
found that they had set over themselves a master resolved not only to
redress the flagrant and inveterate abuses of the college and of the
hierarchy, but also to force on his reforms in the most hasty and
insulting way. He did the harshest things in the harshest manner.
The Archbishop of Bari, of mean birth, had risen by the virtues of a
monk. He was studious, austere, humble, a diligent reader of the Bible,
master of the canon law, rigid in his fasts; he wore haircloth next his
skin. His time was divided between study, prayer, and business, for
which he had great aptitude. From the poor bishopric of Acherontia he
had been promoted to the archbishopric of Bari, and had presided over
the papal chancery in Avignon. The monk broke out at once on his
elevation in the utmost rudeness and rigor, but the humility changed to
the most offensive haughtiness. Almost his first act was a public rebuke
in his chapel to all the bishops present for their desertion of their
dioceses. He called them perjured traitors. The Bishop of Pampeluna
boldly repelled the charge; he was at Rome, he said, on the affairs of
his see. In the full consistory Urban preached on the text, "I am the
Good Shepherd," and inveighed in a manner not to be mistaken against the
wealth and luxury of the cardinals. Their voluptuous banquets were
notorious--Petrarch had declaimed against them. The Pope threatened a
sumptuary law that they should have but one dish at their table: it was
the rule of his own order. He was determined to extirpate simony. A
cardinal who should receive presents he menaced with excommunication.
He affected to despise wealth. "Thy money perish with thee!" he said to
a collector of the papal revenue. He disdained to conceal the most
unpopular schemes; he declared his intention not to leave Rome. To the
petition of the bannerets of Rome for a promotion of cardinals, he
openly avowed his design to make so large a nomination that the Italians
should resume their ascendency over the Ultramontanes. The Cardinal of
Geneva turned pale and left the consistory. Urban declared himself
determined to do equal justice between man and man, between the kings of
France and England. The French cardinals, and those in the pay of
France, heard this with great indignation.
The manners of Urban were even more offensive than his acts. "Hold your
tongue!" "You have talked long enough!" were his common phrases to his
mitred counsellors. He called the Cardinal Orsini a fool. He charged the
Cardinal of St. Marcellus of Amiens, on his return from his legation in
Tuscany, with having robbed the treasures of the Church. The charge was
not less insulting for its justice. The Cardinal of Amiens, instead of
allaying the feuds of France and England, which it was his holy mission
to allay, had inflamed them in order to glut his own insatiable avarice
by draining the wealth of both countries in the Pope's name. "As
Archbishop of Bari, you lie," was the reply of the high-born Frenchman.
On one occasion such high words passed with the Cardinal of Limoges that
but for the interposition of another cardinal the Pope would have rushed
on him, and there had been a personal conflict.
Such were among the stories of the time. Friends and foes agree in
attributing the schism, at least the immediate schism, to the imprudent
zeal, the imperiousness, the ungovernable temper of Pope Urban. The
cardinals among themselves talked of him as mad; they began to murmur
that it was a compulsory, therefore invalid, election.
The French cardinals were now at Anagni: they were joined by the
Cardinal of Amiens, who had taken no part in the election, but who was
burning under the insulting words of the Pope, perhaps not too eager to
render an account of his legation. The Pope retired to Tivoli; he
summoned the cardinals to that city. They answered that they had gone
to large expenses in laying in provisions and making preparations for
their residence in Anagni; they had no means to supply a second sojourn
in Tivoli. The Pope, with his four Italian cardinals, passed two
important acts as sovereign pontiff. He confirmed the election of
Wenceslaus, son of Charles IV, to the empire; he completed the treaty
with Florence by which the republic paid a large sum to the see of Rome.
The amount was seventy thousand florins in the course of the year, one
hundred and eighty thousand in four years, for the expenses of the war.
They were relieved from ecclesiastical censures, under which this
enlightened republic, though Italian, trembled, even from a pope of
doubtful title. Their awe showed perhaps the weakness and dissensions in
Florence rather than the papal power.
The cardinals at Anagni sent a summons to their brethren inviting them
to share in their counsels concerning the compulsory election of the
successor to Gregory XI. Already the opinions of great legists had been
taken; some of them, that of the famous Baldus, may still be read. He
was in favor of the validity of the election.
But grave legal arguments and ecclesiastical logic were not to decide a
contest which had stirred so deeply the passions and interests of two
great factions. France and Italy were at strife for the popedom. The
Ultramontane cardinals would not tamely abandon a power which had given
them rank, wealth, luxury, virtually the spiritual supremacy of the
world, for seventy years. Italy, Rome, would not forego the golden
opportunity of resuming the long-lost authority. On the 9th of August
the cardinals at Anagni publicly declared, they announced in encyclic
letters addressed to the faithful in all Christendom, that the election
of Urban VI was carried by force and the fear of death; that through the
same force and fear he had been inaugurated, enthroned, and crowned;
that he was an apostate, an accursed antichrist. They pronounced him a
tyrannical usurper of the popedom, a wolf that had stolen into the fold.
They called upon him to descend at once from the throne which he
occupied without canonical title; if repentant, he might find mercy; if
he persisted he would provoke the indignation of God, of the apostles
St. Peter and St. Paul, and all of the saints, for his violation of the
Spouse of Christ, the common Mother of the Faithful. It was signed by
thirteen cardinals. The more pious and devout were shocked at this
avowal of cowardice; cardinals who would not be martyrs in the cause of
truth and of spiritual freedom condemned themselves.
But letters and appeals to the judgment of the world, and awful
maledictions, were not their only resources. The fierce Breton bands
were used to march and to be indulged in their worst excesses under the
banner of the Cardinal of Geneva. As Ultramontanists it was their
interest, their inclination, to espouse the Ultramontane cause. They
arrayed themselves to advance and join the cardinals at Anagni. The
Romans rose to oppose them; a fight took place near the Ponte Salario,
three hundred Romans lay dead on the field.
Urban VI was as blind to cautious temporal as to cautious ecclesiastical
policy. Every act of the Pope raised him up new enemies. Joanna, Queen
of Naples, had hailed the elevation of her subject the Archbishop of
Bari. Naples had been brilliantly illuminated. Shiploads of fruit and
wines, and the more solid gift of twenty thousand florins, had been her
oblations to the Pope. Her husband, Otho of Brunswick, had gone to Rome
to pay his personal homage. His object was to determine in his own favor
the succession to the realm. The reception of Otho was cold and
repulsive; he returned in disgust. The Queen eagerly listened to
suspicions, skilfully awakened, that Urban meditated the resumption of
the fief of Naples, and its grant to the rival house of Hungary. She
became the sworn ally of the cardinals at Anagni. Honorato Gaetani,
Count of Fondi, one of the most turbulent barons of the land, demanded
of the Pontiff twenty thousand florins advanced on loan to Gregory XI.
Urban not only rejected the claim, declaring it a personal debt of the
late Pope, not of the holy see, he also deprived Gaetani of his fief,
and granted it to his mortal enemy, the Count San Severino. Gaetani
began immediately to seize the adjacent castles in Campania, and invited
the cardinals to his stronghold at Fondi. The Archbishop of Arles,
chamberlain of the late Pope, leaving the castle of St. Angelo under the
guard of a commander who long refused all orders from Pope Urban,
brought to Anagni the jewels and ornaments of the papacy, which had been
carried for security to St. Angelo. The prefect of the city, De Vico,
Lord of Viterbo, had been won over by the Cardinal of Amiens.
The four Italian cardinals still adhered to Pope Urban. They labored
hard to mediate between the conflicting parties. Conferences were held
at Zagarolo and other places; when the French cardinals had retired to
Fondi, the Italians took up their quarters at Subiaco. The Cardinal of
St. Peter's, worn out with age and trouble, withdrew to Rome, and soon
after died. He left a testamentary document declaring the validity of
the election of Urban. The French cardinals had declared the election
void; they were debating the next step. Some suggested the appointment
of a coadjutor. They were now sure of the support of the King of France,
who would not easily surrender his influence over a pope at Avignon, and
of the Queen of Naples, estranged by the pride of Urban, and secretly
stimulated by the Cardinal Orsini, who had not forgiven his own loss of
the tiara. Yet even now they seemed to shrink from the creation of an
antipope. Urban precipitated and made inevitable this disastrous event.
He was now alone; the Cardinal of St. Peter's was dead; Florence, Milan,
and the Orsini stood aloof; they seemed only to wait to be thrown off by
Urban, to join the adverse faction. Urban at first declared his
intention to create nine cardinals; he proceeded at once, and without
warning, to create twenty-six.[65] By this step the French and Italian
cardinals together were now but an insignificant minority. They were
instantly one. All must be risked or all lost.
On September 20th, at Fondi, Robert of Geneva was elected pope in the
presence of all the cardinals (except St. Peter's) who had chosen,
inaugurated, enthroned, and for a time obeyed Urban VI. The Italians
refused to give their suffrages, but entered no protest. They retired
into their castles and remained aloof from the schism. Orsini died
before long at Tagliacozzo. The qualifications which, according to his
partial biographer, recommended the Cardinal of Geneva, were rather
those of a successor to John Hawkwood or to a duke of Milan, than of the
apostles. Extraordinary activity of body and endurance of fatigue,
courage which would hazard his life to put down the intrusive pope,
sagacity and experience in the temporal affairs of the Church; high
birth, through which he was allied with most of the royal and princely
houses of Europe; of austerity, devotion, learning, holiness, charity,
not a word. He took the name of Clement VII; the Italians bitterly
taunted the mockery of this name, assumed by the captain of the Breton
Free Companies--by the author, it was believed, of the massacre at
Cesena.
So began the schism which divided Western Christendom for thirty-eight
years. Italy, excepting the kingdom of Joanna of Naples, adhered to her
native pontiff; Germany and Bohemia to the pontiff who had recognized
King Wenceslaus as emperor; England to the pontiff hostile to
France;[66] Hungary to the pontiff who might support her pretentions to
Naples; Poland and the Northern kingdoms, with Portugal, espoused the
same cause. France at first stood almost alone in support of her
subject, of a pope at Avignon instead of at Rome. Scotland only was with
Clement, because England was with Urban. So Flanders was with Urban
because France was with Clement. The uncommon abilities of Peter di
Luna, the Spanish cardinal (afterward better known under a higher
title), detached successively the Spanish kingdoms, Castile, Aragon, and
Navarre, from allegiance to Pope Urban.
GENOESE SURRENDER TO VENETIANS
A.D. 1380
HENRY HALLAM
Prolonged commercial rivalry between Genoa and Venice
brought them to a state of bitter jealousy which led to
furious wars. In the second half of the twelfth century
Genoa established her power on the Black Sea, and aimed at a
commercial monopoly in that region. This aroused the
Venetians to anger and led to open hostilities. The first
war growing out of these antagonisms between the two
republics began in 1257, and throughout the rest of the
thirteenth century hostilities were almost continuous.
In 1351 the Venetians formed an alliance against Genoa with
the Greeks and Aragonese, and, in the ensuing war, the
advantage gained by Genoa was confirmed by a treaty of peace
in 1355. But this peace lasted only until 1378, when a
dispute arose between Genoa and Venice in relation to the
island of Tenedos, in the Ægean Sea, of which the Venetians
had taken possession.
The Venetians, having denounced Genoa as false to all its
oaths and obligations, formally declared war in April, after
several acts of hostility had occurred in the Levant. Of all
the wars between the rival states, this was the most
remarkable and led to the most important consequences.
Genoa did not stand alone in this war. A formidable confederacy was
raised against Venice, which had given provocation to many enemies. Of
this Francis Carrara, seignior of Padua, and the King of Hungary were
the leaders. But the principal struggle was, as usual, upon the waves.
During the winter of 1378 a Genoese fleet kept the sea, and ravaged the
shores of Dalmatia. The Venetian armament had been weakened by an
epidemic disease, and when Vittor Pisani, their admiral, gave battle to
the enemy, he was compelled to fight with a hasty conscription of
landsmen against the best sailors in the world.
Entirely defeated, and taking refuge at Venice with only seven galleys,
Pisani was cast into prison, as if his ill-fortune had been his crime.
Meanwhile the Genoese fleet, augmented by a strong reënforcement, rode
before the long natural ramparts that separate the lagunes of Venice
from the Adriatic. Six passages intersect the islands which constitute
this barrier, besides the broader outlets of Brondolo and Fossone,
through which the waters of the Brenta and the Adige are discharged. The
Lagoon itself, as is well known, consists of extremely shallow water,
unnavigable for any vessel except along the course of artificial and
intricate passages.
Notwithstanding the apparent difficulties of such an enterprise, Pietro
Doria, the Genoese admiral, determined to reduce the city. His first
successes gave him reason to hope. He forced the passage, and stormed
the little town of Chioggia, built upon the inside of the isle bearing
that name, about twenty-five miles south of Venice. Nearly four thousand
prisoners fell here into his hands--an augury, as it seemed, of a more
splendid triumph.
In the consternation this misfortune inspired at Venice, the first
impulse was to ask for peace. The ambassadors carried with them seven
Genoese prisoners, as a sort of peace-offering to the admiral, and were
empowered to make large and humiliating concessions, reserving nothing
but the liberty of Venice. Francis Carrara strongly urged his allies to
treat for peace. But the Genoese were stimulated by long hatred, and
intoxicated by this unexpected opportunity of revenge. Doria, calling
the ambassadors into council, thus addressed them: "Ye shall obtain no
peace from us, I swear to you, nor from the lord of Padua, till first we
have put a curb in the mouths of those wild horses that stand upon the
place of St. Mark. When they are bridled you shall have enough of peace.
Take back with you your Genoese captives, for I am coming within a few
days to release both them and their companions from your prisons."
When this answer was reported to the senate, they prepared to defend
themselves with the characteristic firmness of their government. Every
eye was turned toward a great man unjustly punished, their admiral,
Vittor Pisani. He was called out of prison to defend his country amid
general acclamations. Under his vigorous command the canals were
fortified or occupied by large vessels armed with artillery; thirty-four
galleys were equipped; every citizen contributed according to his power;
in the entire want of commercial resources--for Venice had not a
merchant-ship during this war--private plate was melted; and the senate
held out the promise of ennobling thirty families who should be most
forward in this strife of patriotism.
The new fleet was so ill-provided with seamen that for some months the
admiral employed them only in manoeuvring along the canals. From some
unaccountable supineness, or more probably from the insuperable
difficulties of the undertaking, the Genoese made no assault upon the
city. They had, indeed, fair grounds to hope its reduction by famine or
despair. Every access to the Continent was cut off by the troops of
Padua; and the King of Hungary had mastered almost all the Venetian
towns in Istria and along the Dalmatian coast. The doge Contarini,
taking the chief command, appeared at length with his fleet near
Chioggia, before the Genoese were aware. They were still less aware of
his secret design. He pushed one of the large round vessels, then called
_cocche_, into the narrow passage of Chioggia which connects the Lagoon
with the sea, and, mooring her athwart the channel, interrupted that
communication. Attacked with fury by the enemy, this vessel went down on
the spot, and the Doge improved his advantage by sinking loads of stones
until the passage became absolutely unnavigable.
It was still possible for the Genoese fleet to follow the principal
canal of the Lagoon toward Venice and the northern passages, or to sail
out of it by the harbor of Brondolo; but, whether from confusion or from
miscalculating the dangers of their position, they suffered the
Venetians to close the canal upon them by the same means they had used
at Chioggia, and even to place their fleet in the entrance of Brondolo
so near to the Lagoon that the Genoese could not form their ships in
line of battle. The circumstances of the two combatants were thus
entirely changed. But the Genoese fleet, though besieged in Chioggia,
was impregnable, and their command of the land secured them from famine.
Venice, notwithstanding her unexpected success, was still very far from
secure; it was difficult for the Doge to keep his position through the
winter; and if the enemy could appear in open sea, the risks of combat
were extremely hazardous. It is said that the senate deliberated upon
transporting the seat of their liberty to Candia, and that the Doge had
announced his intention to raise the siege of Chioggia, if expected
succors did not arrive by January 1, 1380. On that very day Carlo Zeno,
an admiral who, ignorant of the dangers of his country, had been
supporting the honor of her flag in the Levant and on the coast of
Liguria, appeared with a reënforcement of eighteen galleys and a store
of provisions.
From that moment the confidence of Venice revived. The fleet, now
superior in strength to the enemy, began to attack them with vivacity.
After several months of obstinate resistance, the Genoese--whom their
republic had ineffectually attempted to relieve by a fresh
armament--blocked up in the town of Chioggia, and pressed by hunger,
were obliged to surrender. Nineteen galleys only, out of forty-eight,
were in good condition; and the crews were equally diminished in the ten
months of their occupation of Chioggia. The pride of Genoa was deemed to
be justly humbled; and even her own historian confesses that God would
not suffer so noble a city as Venice to become the spoil of a conqueror.
Though the capture of Chioggia did not terminate the war, both parties
were exhausted, and willing, next year, to accept the mediation of the
Duke of Savoy. By the peace of Turin, Venice surrendered most of her
territorial possessions to the King of Hungary. That Prince and Francis
Carrara were the only gainers. Genoa obtained the isle of Tenedos, one
of the original subjects of dispute--a poor indemnity for her losses.
Though, upon a hasty view, the result of this war appears more
unfavorable to Venice, yet in fact it is the epoch of the decline of
Genoa. From this time she never commanded the ocean with such navies as
before; her commerce gradually went into decay; and the fifteenth
century--the most splendid in the annals of Venice--is, till recent
times, the most ignominious in those of Genoa. But this was partly owing
to internal dissensions, by which her liberty, as well as glory, was for
a while suspended.
REBELLION OF WAT TYLER
A.D. 1381
JOHN LINGARD
Richard II, of England, at eleven years of age, succeeded to
a heritage of foreign complications and wars, which were a
legacy from the reign of his grandfather, Edward III.
At the request of the commons, the lords, in the King's
name, appointed nine persons to be a permanent council, and
it was resolved that during the King's minority the
appointment of all the chief officers of the crown should be
with the parliament. The administration was conducted in the
King's name, and the whole system was for some years kept
together by the secret authority of the King's uncles,
especially of the Duke of Lancaster, who was in reality the
regent.
France, Scotland, and Castile continued their hostilities
against England, and during the first two years of Richard's
reign the ministers had no difficulty in obtaining ample
grants of money to carry on the wars. In the third year the
expense of the campaign in Brittany compelled them to
solicit yet additional aid.