The scene of the first act of Niccolini's tragedy is near the
Capitoline Hill, in Rome, where two rival leaders, Frangipani and
Giordano Pierleone, are disputing in the midst of their adherents.
The former is a supporter of the papal usurpations; the latter is a
republican chief, who has been excommunicated for his politics, and is
also under sentence of banishment; but who, like Arnaldo, remains
in Rome in spite of Church and State. Giordano withdraws to the
Campidôglio with his adherents, and there Arnaldo suddenly appears
among them. When the people ask what cure there is for their troubles,
Arnaldo answers, in denunciation of the papacy:
Liberty and God.
A voice from the orient,
A voice from the Occident,
A voice from thy deserts,
A voice of echoes from the open graves,
Accuses thee, thou shameless harlot! Drunk
Art thou with blood of saints, and thou hast lain
With all the kings of earth. Ah, you behold her!
She is clothed on with purple; gold and pearls
And gems are heaped upon her; and her vestments
Once white, the pleasure of her former spouse,
That now's in heaven, she has dragged in dust.
Lo, is she full of names and blasphemies,
And on her brow is written _Mystery!_
Ah, nevermore you hear her voice console
The afflicted; all she threatens, and creates
With her perennial curse in trembling souls
Ineffable pangs; the unhappy--as we here
Are all of us--fly in their common sorrows
To embrace each other; she, the cruel one,
Sunders them in the name of Jesus; fathers
She kindles against sons, and wives she parts
From husbands, and she makes a war between
Harmonious brothers; of the Evangel she
Is cruel interpreter, and teaches hate
Out of the book of love. The years are come
Whereof the rapt Evangelist of Patmos
Did prophesy; and, to deceive the people,
Satan has broken the chains he bore of old;
And she, the cruel, on the infinite waters
Of tears that are poured out for her, sits throned.
The enemy of man two goblets places
Unto her shameless lips; and one is blood,
And gold is in the other; greedy and fierce
She drinks so from them both, the world knows not
If she of blood or gold have greater thirst....
Lord, those that fled before thy scourge of old
No longer stand to barter offerings
About thy temple's borders, but within
Man's self is sold, and thine own blood is trafficked,
Thou son of God!
The people ask Arnaldo what he counsels them to do, and he advises
them to restore the senate and the tribunes, appealing to the glorious
memories of the place where they stand, the Capitoline Hill:
Where the earth calls at every step, “Oh, pause,
Thou treadest on a hero!”
They desire to make him a tribune, but he refuses, promising, however,
that he will not withhold his counsel. Whilst he speaks, some
cardinals, with nobles of the papal party, appear, and announce the
election of the new Pope, Adrian. “What is his name?” the people
demand; and a cardinal answers, “Breakspear, a Briton.” Giordano
exclaims:
Impious race! you've chosen Rome for shepherd
A cruel barbarian, and even his name
Tortures our ears.
_Arnaldo._ I never care to ask
Where popes are born; and from long suffering,
You, Romans, before heaven, should have learnt
That priests can have no country....
I know this man; his father was a thrall,
And he is fit to be a slave. He made
Friends with the Norman that enslaves his country;
A wandering beggar to Avignon's cloisters
He came in boyhood and was known to do
All abject services; there those false monks
He with astute humility cajoled;
He learned their arts, and 'mid intrigues and hates
He rose at last out of his native filth
A tyrant of the vile.
The cardinals, confounded by Arnaldo's presence and invectives,
withdraw, but leave one of their party to work on the fears of the
Romans, and make them return to their allegiance by pictures of the
desolating war which Barbarossa, now approaching Rome to support
Adrian, has waged upon the rebellious Lombards at Rosate and
elsewhere. Arnaldo replies:--
Romans,
I will tell all the things that he has hid;
I know not how to cheat you. Yes, Rosate
A ruin is, from which the smoke ascends.
The bishop, lord of Monferrato, guided
The German arms against Chieri and Asti,
Now turned to dust; that shepherd pitiless
Did thus avenge his own offenses on
His flying flocks; himself with torches armed
The German hand; houses and churches saw
Destroyed, and gave his blessing on the flames.
This is the pardon that you may expect
From mitered tyrants. A heap of ashes now
Crowneth the hill where once Tortona stood;
And drunken with her wine and with her blood,
Fallen there amidst their spoil upon the dead,
Slept the wild beasts of Germany: like ghosts
Dim wandering through the darkness of the night,
Those that were left by famine and the sword,
Hidden within the heart of thy dim caverns,
Desolate city! rose and turned their steps
Noiselessly toward compassionate Milan.
There they have borne their swords and hopes: I see
A thousand heroes born from the example
Tortona gave. O city, if I could,
O sacred city! upon the ruins fall
Reverently, and take them in my loving arms,
The relics of thy brave I'd gather up
In precious urns, and from the altars here
In days of battle offer to be kissed!
Oh, praise be to the Lord! Men die no more
For chains and errors; martyrs now at last
Hast thou, O holy Freedom; and fain were I
Ashes for thee!--But I see you grow pale,
Ye Romans! Down, go down; this holy height
Is not for cowards. In the valley there
Your tyrant waits you; go and fall before him
And cover his haughty foot with tears and kisses.
He'll tread you in the dust, and then absolve you.
_The People._ The arms we have are strange and few,
Our walls Are fallen and ruinous.
_Arnaldo._ Their hearts are walls
Unto the brave....
And they shall rise again,
The walls that blood of freemen has baptized,
But among slaves their ruins are eternal.
_People._ You outrage us, sir!
_Arnaldo._ Wherefore do ye tremble
Before the trumpet sounds? O thou that wast
Once the world's lord and first in Italy,
Wilt thou be now the last?
_People._ No more! Cease, or thou diest!
Arnaldo, having roused the pride of the Romans, now tells them that
two thousand Swiss have followed him from his exile; and the act
closes with some lyrical passages leading to the fraternization of the
people with these.
The second act of this curious tragedy, where there may be said to
be scarcely any personal interest, but where we are aware of such an
impassioned treatment of public interests as perhaps never was before,
opens with a scene between the Pope Adrian and the Cardinal Guido. The
character of both is finely studied by the poet; and Guido, the type
of ecclesiastical submission, has not more faith in the sacredness
and righteousness of Adrian, than Adrian, the type of ecclesiastical
ambition, has in himself. The Pope tells Guido that he stands doubting
between the cities of Lombardy leagued against Frederick, and
Frederick, who is coming to Rome, not so much to befriend the papacy
as to place himself in a better attitude to crush the Lombards. The
German dreams of the restoration of Charlemagne's empire; he believes
the Church corrupt; and he and Arnaldo would be friends, if it were
not for Arnaldo's vain hope of reëstablishing the republican liberties
of Rome. The Pope utters his ardent desire to bring Arnaldo back to
his allegiance; and when Guido reminds him that Arnaldo has been
condemned by a council of the Church, and that it is scarcely in his
power to restore him, Adrian turns upon him:
What sayest thou?
I can do all. Dare the audacious members
Rebel against the head? Within these hands
Lie not the keys that once were given to Peter?
The heavens repeat as 't were the word of God,
My word that here has power to loose and bind.
Arnaldo did not dare so much. The kingdom
Of earth alone he did deny me. Thou
Art more outside the Church than he.
_Guido_ (_kneeling at Adrian's feet_). O God,
I erred; forgive! I rise not from thy feet
Till thou absolve me. My zeal blinded me.
I'm clay before thee; shape me as thou wilt,
A vessel apt to glory or to shame.
Guido then withdraws at the Pope's bidding, in order to send a
messenger to Arnaldo, and Adrian utters this fine soliloquy:
At every step by which I've hither climbed
I've found a sorrow; but upon the summit
All sorrows are; and thorns more thickly spring
Around my chair than ever round a throne.
What weary toil to keep up from the dust
This mantle that's weighed down the strongest limbs!
These splendid gems that blaze in my tiara,
They are a fire that burns the aching brow,
I lift with many tears, O Lord, to thee!
Yet I must fear not; He that did know how
To bear the cross, so heavy with the sins
Of all the world, will succor the weak servant
That represents his power here on earth.
Of mine own isle that make the light o' the sun
Obscure as one day was my lot, amidst
The furious tumults of this guilty Rome,
Here, under the superb effulgency
Of burning skies, I think of you and weep!
The Pope's messenger finds Arnaldo in the castle of Giordano, where
these two are talking of the present fortunes and future chances of
Rome. The patrician forebodes evil from the approach of the emperor,
but Arnaldo encourages him, and, when the Pope's messenger appears, he
is eager to go to Adrian, believing that good to their cause will
come of it. Giordano in vain warns him against treachery, bidding him
remember that Adrian will hold any falsehood sacred that is used
with a heretic. It is observable throughout that Niccolini is always
careful to make his rebellious priest a good Catholic; and now Arnaldo
rebukes Giordano for some doubts of the spiritual authority of the
Pope. When Giordano says:
These modern pharisees, upon the cross,
Where Christ hung dying once, have nailed mankind,
Arnaldo answers:
He will know how to save that rose and conquered;
And Giordano replies:
Yes, Christ arose; but Freedom cannot break
The stone that shuts her ancient sepulcher,
For on it stands the altar.
Adrian, when Arnaldo appears before him, bids him fall down and kiss
his feet, and speak to him as to God; he will hear Arnaldo only as a
penitent. Arnaldo answers:
The feet
Of his disciples did that meek One kiss
Whom here thou representest. But I hear
Now from thy lips the voice of fiercest pride.
Repent, O Peter, that deniest him,
And near the temple art, but far from God!
* * * * *
The name of the king
Is never heard in Rome. And if thou are
The vicar of Christ on earth, well should'st thou know
That of thorns only was the crown he wore.
_Adrian._ He gave to me the empire of the earth
When this great mantly I put on, and took
The Church's high seat I was chosen to;
The word of God did erst create the world,
And now mine guides it. Would'st thou that the soul
Should serve the body? Thou dost dream of freedom,
And makest war on him who sole on earth
Can shield man from his tyrants. O Arnaldo,
Be Wise; believe me, all thy words are vain,
Vain sound that perish or disperse themselves
Amidst the wilderness of Rome. I only
Can speak the words that the whole world repeats.
_Arnaldo_. Thy words were never Freedom's; placed between
The people and their tyrants, still the Church
With the weak cruel, with the mighty vile,
Has been, and crushed in pitiless embraces
That emperors and pontiffs have exchanged.
Man has been ever.
* * * * *
Why seek'st thou empire here, and great on earth
Art mean in heaven? Ah! vainly in thy prayer
Thou criest, “Let the heart be lifted up!”
'T is ever bowed to earth.
* * * * *
Now, then, if thou wilt,
Put forth the power that thou dost vaunt; repress
The crimes of bishops, make the Church ashamed
To be a step-mother to the poor and lowly.
In all the Lombard cities every priest
Has grown a despot, in shrewd perfidy
Now siding with the Church, now with the Empire.
They have dainty food, magnificent apparel,
Lascivious joys, and on their altars cold
Gathers the dust, where lies the miter dropt,
Forgotten, from the haughty brow that wears
The helmet, and no longer bows itself
Before God's face in th' empty sanctuaries;
But upon the fields of slaughter, smoking still,
Bends o'er the fallen foe, and aims the blows
O' th' sacrilegious sword, with cruel triumph
Insulting o'er the prayers of dying men.
There the priest rides o'er breasts of fallen foes,
And stains with blood his courser's iron heel.
When comes a brief, false peace, and wearily
Amidst the havoc doth the priest sit down,
His pleasures are a crime, and after rapine
Luxury follows. Like a thief he climbs
Into the fold, and that desired by day
He dares amid the dark, and violence
Is the priest's marriage. Vainly did Rome hope
That they had thrown aside the burden vile
Of the desires that weigh down other men.
Theirs is the ungrateful lust of the wild beast,
That doth forget the mother nor knows the child.
... On the altar of Christ,
Who is the prince of pardon and of peace,
Vows of revenge are registered, and torches
That are thrown into hearts of leaguered cities
Are lit from tapers burning before God.
Become thou king of sacrifice; ascend
The holy hill of God; on these perverse
Launch thou thy thunderbolts; and feared again
And great thou wilt be. Tell me, Adrian,
Must thou not bear a burden that were heavy
Even for angels? Wherefore wilt thou join
Death unto life, and make the word of God,
That says, “My kingdom is not of this world,”
A lie? Oh, follow Christ's example here
In Rome; it pleased both God and her
To abase the proud and to uplift the weak.
I'll kiss the foot that treads on kings!
_Adrian._ Arnaldo,
I parley not, I rule; and I, become
On earth as God in heaven, am judge of all,
And none of me; I watch, and I dispense
Terrors and hopes, rewards and punishments,
To peoples and to kings; fountain and source
Of life am I, who make the Church of God
One and all-powerful. Many thrones and peoples
She has seen tost upon the madding waves
Of time, and broken on the immovable rock
Whereon she sits; and since one errless spirit
Rules in her evermore, she doth not rave
For changeful doctrine, but she keeps eternal
The grandeur of her will and purposes.
... Arnaldo,
Thou movest me to pity. In vain thou seek'st
To warm thy heart over these ruins, groping
Among the sepulchers of Rome. Thou'lt find
No bones to which thou canst say, “Rise!” Ah, here
Remaineth not one hero's dust. Thou thinkest
That with old names old virtues shall return?
And thou desirest tribunes, senators,
Equestrian orders, Rome! A greater glory
Thy sovereign pontiff is who doth not guard
The rights uncertain of a crazy rabble;
But tribune of the world he sits in Rome,
And “I forbid,” to kings and peoples cries.
I tell thee a greater than the impious power
That thou in vain endeavorest to renew
Here built the dying fisherman of Judea.
Out of his blood he made a fatherland
For all the nations, and this place, that once
A city was, became a world; the borders
That did divide the nations, by Christ's law
Are ta'en away, and this the kingdom is
For which he asked his Father in his prayer.
The Church has sons in every race; I rule,
An unseen king, and Rome is everywhere!
_Arnaldo_. Thou errest, Adrian. Rome's thunderbolts
Wake little terror now, and reason shakes
The bonds that thou fain would'st were everlasting.
... Christ calls to her
As of old to the sick man, “Rise and walk.”
She 'll tread on you if you go not before.
The world has other truth besides the altar's.
It will not have a temple that hides heaven.
Thou wast a shepherd: be a father. The race
Of man is weary of being called a flock.
Adrian's final reply is, that if Arnaldo will renounce his false
doctrine and leave Rome, the Pope will, through him, give the Lombard
cities a liberty that shall not offend the Church. Arnaldo refuses,
and quits Adrian's presence. It is quite needless to note the bold
character of the thought here, or the nobility of the poetry, which
Niccolini puts as well into the mouth of the Pope whom he hates as the
monk whom he loves.
Following this scene is one of greater dramatic force, in which the
Cardinal Guido, sent to the Campidoglio by the Pope to disperse the
popular assembly, is stoned by the people and killed. He dies full of
faith in the Church and the righteousness of his cause, and his
body, taken up by the priests, is carried into the square before St.
Peter's. A throng, including many women, has followed; and now
Niccolini introduces a phase of the great Italian struggle which was
perhaps the most perplexing of all. The subjection of the women to
the priests is what has always greatly contributed to defeat Italian
efforts for reform; it now helps to unnerve the Roman multitude; and
the poet finally makes it the weakness through which Arnaldo is dealt
his death. With a few strokes in the scene that follows the death of
Guido, he indicates the remorse and dismay of the people when the Pope
repels them from the church door and proclaims the interdict; and then
follow some splendid lyrical passages, in which the Pope commands the
pictures and images to be veiled and the relics to be concealed, and
curses the enemies of the Church. I shall but poorly render this curse
by a rhymeless translation, and yet I am tempted to give it:
_The Pope._ To-day let the perfidious
Learn at thy name to tremble,
Nor triumph o'er the ruinous
Place of thy vanished altars.
Oh, brief be their days and uncertain;
In the desert their wandering footsteps,
Every tremulous leaflet affright them!
_The Cardinals._ Anathema, anathema, anathema!
_Pope._ May their widows sit down 'mid the ashes
On the hearths of their desolate houses,
With their little ones wailing around them.
_Cardinals._ Anathema, anathema, anathema!
_Pope._ May he who was born to the fury
Of heaven, afar from his country
Be lost in his ultimate anguish.
_Cardinals._ Anathema, anathema, anathema!
_Pope._ May he fly to the house of the alien oppressor
That is filled with the spoil of his brothers, with women
Destroyed by the pitiless hands that defiled them;
There in accents unknown and derided, abase him
At portals ne'er opened in mercy, imploring
A morsel of bread.
_Cardinals._ Be that morsel denied him!
_Pope._ I hear the wicked cry: I from the Lord
Will fly away with swift and tireless feet;
His anger follows me upon the sea;
I'll seek the desert; who will give me wings?
In cloudy horror, who shall lead my steps?
The eye of God maketh the night as day.
O brothers, fulfill then
The terrible duty;
Throw down from the altars
The dim-burning tapers;
And be all joy, and be the love of God
In thankless hearts that know not Peter, quenched,
As is the little flame that falls and dies,
Here in these tapers trampled under foot.
In the first scene of the third act, which is a desolate place in the
Campagna, near the sea, Arnaldo appears. He has been expelled from
Rome by the people, eager for the opening of their churches, and he
soliloquizes upon his fate in language that subtly hints all his
passing moods, and paints the struggle of his soul. It appears to me
that it is a wise thing to make him almost regret the cloister in
the midst of his hatred of it, and then shrink from that regret with
horror; and there is also a fine sense of night and loneliness in the
scene:
Like this sand
Is life itself, and evermore each path
Is traced in suffering, and one footprint still
Obliterates another; and we are all
Vain shadows here that seem a little while,
And suffer, and pass. Let me not fight in vain,
O Son of God, with thine immortal word,
Yon tyrant of eternity and time,
Who doth usurp thy place on earth, whose feet
Are in the depths, whose head is in the clouds,
Who thunders all abroad, _The world is mine!_
Laws, virtues, liberty I have attempted
To give thee, Rome. Ah! only where death is
Abides thy glory. Here the laurel only
Flourishes on the ruins and the tombs.
I will repose upon this fallen column
My weary limbs. Ah, lower than this ye lie,
You Latin souls, and to your ancient height
Who shall uplift you? I am all weighed down
By the great trouble of the lofty hopes
Of Italy still deluded, and I find
Within my soul a drearer desert far
Than this, where the air already darkens round,
And the soft notes of distant convent bells
Announce the coming night.... I cannot hear them
Without a trembling wish that in my heart
Wakens a memory that becomes remorse....
Ah, Reason, soon thou languishest in us,
Accustomed to such outrage all our lives.
Thou know'st the cloister; thou a youth didst enter
That sepulcher of the living where is war,--
Remember it and shudder! The damp wind
Stirs this gray hair. I'm near the sea.
Thy silence is no more; sweet on the ear
Cometh the far-off murmur of the floods
In the vast desert; now no more the darkness
Imprisons wholly; now less gloomily
Lowers the sky that lately threatened storm.
Less thick the air is, and the trembling light
O' the stars among the breaking clouds appears.
Praise to the Lord! The eternal harmony
Of all his work I feel. Though these vague beams
Reveal to me here only fens and tombs,
My soul is not so heavily weighed down
By burdens that oppressed it....
I rise to grander purposes: man's tents
Are here below, his city is in heaven.
I doubt no more; the terror of the cloister
No longer assails me.
Presently Giordano comes to join Arnaldo in this desolate place, and,
in the sad colloquy which follows, tells him of the events of Rome,
and the hopelessness of their cause, unless they have the aid and
countenance of the Emperor. He implores Arnaldo to accompany the
embassy which he is about to send to Frederick; but Arnaldo, with
a melancholy disdain, refuses. He asks where are the Swiss who
accompanied him to Rome, and he is answered by one of the Swiss
captains, who at that moment appears. The Emperor has ordered them to
return home, under penalty of the ban of the empire. He begs Arnaldo
to return with them, but Arnaldo will not; and Giordano sends him
under a strong escort to the castle of Ostasio. Arnaldo departs with
much misgiving, for the wife of Ostasio is Adelasia, a bigoted papist,
who has hitherto resisted the teaching to which her husband has been
converted.
As the escort departs, the returning Swiss are seen. One of their
leaders expresses the fear that moves them, when he says that the
Germans will desolate their homes if they do not return to them.
Moreover, the Italian sun, which destroys even those born under it,
drains their life, and man and nature are leagued against them there.
“What have you known here!” he asks, and his soldiers reply in chorus:
The pride of old names, the caprices of fate,
In vast desert spaces the silence of death,
Or in mist-hidden lowlands, his wandering fires;
No sweet song of birds, no heart-cheering sound,
But eternal memorials of ancient despair,
And ruins and tombs that waken dismay
At the moan of the pines that are stirred by the wind.
Full of dark and mysterious peril the woods;
No life-giving fountains, but only bare sands,
Or some deep-bedded river that silently moves,
With a wave that is livid and stagnant, between
Its margins ungladdened by grass or by flowers,
And in sterile sands vanishes wholly away.
Out of huts that by turns have been shambles and tombs,
All pallid and naked, and burned by their fevers,
The peasant folk suddenly stare as you pass,
With visages ghastly, and eyes full of hate,
Aroused by the accent that's strange to their ears.
Oh, heavily hang the clouds here on the head!
Wan and sick is the earth, and the sun is a tyrant.
Then one of the Swiss soldiers speaks alone:
The unconquerable love of our own land
Draws us away till we behold again
The eternal walls the Almighty builded there.
Upon the arid ways of faithless lands
I am tormented by a tender dream
Of that sweet rill which runs before my cot.
Oh, let me rest beside the smiling lake,
And hear the music of familiar words,
And on its lonely margin, wild and fair,
Lie down and think of my beloved ones.
There is no page of this tragedy which does not present some terrible
or touching picture, which is not full of brave and robust thought,
which has not also great dramatic power. But I am obliged to curtail
the proof of this, and I feel that, after all, I shall not give a
complete idea of the tragedy's grandeur, its subtlety, its vast scope
and meaning.
There is a striking dialogue between a Roman partisan of Arnaldo, who,
with his fancy oppressed by the heresy of his cause, is wavering in
his allegiance, and a Brescian, whom the outrages of the priests have
forever emancipated from faith in their power to bless or ban in the
world to come. Then ensues a vivid scene, in which a fanatical and
insolent monk of Arnaldo's order, leading a number of soldiers,
arrests him by command of Adrian. Ostasio's soldiers approaching to
rescue him, the monk orders him to be slain, but he is saved, and the
act closes with the triumphal chorus of his friends. Here is fine
occasion for the play of different passions, and the occasion is not
lost.
With the fourth act is introduced the new interest of the German
oppression; and as we have had hitherto almost wholly a study of the
effect of the papal tyranny upon Italy, we are now confronted with
the shame and woe which the empire has wrought her. Exiles from the
different Lombard cities destroyed by Barbarossa meet on their way
to seek redress from the Pope, and they pour out their sorrows in
pathetic and passionate lyrics. To read these passages gives one a
favorable notion of the liberality or the stupidity of the government
which permitted the publication of the tragedy. The events alluded to
were many centuries past, the empire had long ceased to be; but the
Italian hatred of the Germans was one and indivisible for every moment
of all times, and we may be sure that to each of Niccolini's readers
these mediaeval horrors were but masks for cruelties exercised by the
Austrians in his own day, and that in those lyrical bursts of rage
and grief there was full utterance for his smothered sense of present
wrong. There is a great charm in these strophes; they add unspeakable
pathos to a drama which is so largely concerned with political
interests; and they make us feel that it is a beautiful and noble work
of art, as well as grand appeal to the patriotism of the Italians and
the justice of mankind.
When we are brought into the presence of Barbarossa, we find him
awaiting the arrival of Adrian, who is to accompany him to Rome and
crown him emperor, in return for the aid that Barbarossa shall give in
reducing the rebellious citizens and delivering Arnaldo into the power
of the papacy. Heralds come to announce Adrian's approach, and riding
forth a little way, Frederick dismounts in order to go forward on foot
and meet the Pope, who advances, preceded by his clergy, and attended
by a multitude of his partisans. As Frederick perceives the Pope and
quits his horse, he muses:
I leave thee,
O faithful comrade mine in many perils,
Thou generous steed! and now, upon the ground
That should have thundered under thine advance,
With humble foot I silent steps must trace.
But what do I behold? Toward us comes,
With tranquil pride, the servant of the lowly,
Upon a white horse docile to the rein
As he would kings were; all about the path
That Adrian moves on, warriors and people
Of either sex, all ages, in blind homage,
Mingle, press near and fall upon the ground,
Or one upon another; and man, whom God
Made to look up to heaven, becomes as dust
Under the feet of pride; and they believe
The gates of Paradise would be set wide
To any one whom his steed crushed to death.
With me thou never hast thine empire shared;
Thou alone hold'st the world! He will not turn
On me in sign of greeting that proud head,
Encircled by the tiara; and he sees,
Like God, all under him in murmured prayer
Or silence, blesses them, and passes on.
What wonder if he will not deign to touch
The earth I tread on with his haughty foot!
He gives it to be kissed of kings; I too
Must stoop to the vile act.
Since the time of Henry II. it had been the custom of the emperors to
lead the Pope's horse by the bridle, and to hold his stirrup while he
descended. Adrian waits in vain for this homage from Frederick, and
then alights with the help of his ministers, and seats himself in his
episcopal chair, while Frederick draws near, saying aside:
I read there in his face his insolent pride
Veiled by humility.
He bows before Adrian and kisses his foot, and then offers him the
kiss of peace, which Adrian refuses, and haughtily reminds him of the
fate of Henry. Frederick answers furiously that the thought of this
fate has always filled him with hatred of the papacy; and Adrian,
perceiving that he has pressed too far in this direction, turns and
soothes the Emperor:
I am truth,
And thou art force, and if thou part'st from me,
Blind thou becomest, helpless I remain.
We are but one at last....
Caesar and Peter,
They are the heights of God; man from the earth
Contemplates them with awe, and never questions
Which thrusts its peak the higher into heaven.
Therefore be wise, and learn from the example
Of impious Arnaldo. He's the foe
Of thrones who wars upon the altar.
But he strives in vain to persuade Frederick to the despised act of
homage, and it is only at the intercession of the Emperor's kinsmen
and the German princes that he consents to it. When it is done in the
presence of all the army and the clerical retinue, Adrian mounts, and
says to Frederick, with scarcely hidden irony:
In truth thou art
An apt and ready squire, and thou hast held
My stirrup firmly. Take, then, O my son,
The kiss of peace, for thou hast well fulfilled
All of thy duties.
But Frederick, crying aloud, and fixing the sense of the multitude
upon him, answers:
Nay, not all, O Father!--
Princes and soldiers, hear! I have done homage
To Peter, not to him.
The Church and the Empire being now reconciled, Frederick receives the
ambassadors of the Roman republic with scorn; he outrages all their
pretensions to restore Rome to her old freedom and renown; insults
their prayer that he will make her his capital, and heaps contempt
upon the weakness and vileness of the people they represent. Giordano
replies for them:
When will you dream,
You Germans, in your thousand stolid dreams,--
The fume of drunkenness,--a future greater
Than our Rome's memories? Never be her banner
Usurped by you! In prison and in darkness
Was born your eagle, that did but descend
Upon the helpless prey of Roman dead,
But never dared to try the ways of heaven,
With its weak vision wounded by the sun.
Ye prate of Germany. The whole world conspired,
And even more in vain, to work us harm,
Before that day when, the world being conquered,
Rome slew herself.
... Of man's great brotherhood
Unworthy still, ye change not with the skies.
In Italy the German's fate was ever
To grow luxurious and continue cruel.
The soldiers of Barbarossa press upon Giordano to kill him, and
Frederick saves the ambassadors with difficulty, and hurries them
away.
In the first part of the fifth act, Niccolini deals again with the
_rôle_ which woman has played in the tragedy of Italian history, the
hopes she has defeated, and the plans she has marred through those
religious instincts which should have blest her country, but which
through their perversion by priestcraft have been one of its greatest
curses. Adrian is in the Vatican, after his triumphant return to Rome,
when Adelasia, the wife of that Ostasio, Count of the Campagna, in
whose castle Arnaldo is concealed, and who shares his excommunication,
is ushered into the Pope's presence. She is half mad with terror at
the penalties under which her husband has fallen, in days when the
excommunicated were shunned like lepers, and to shelter them, or to
eat and drink with them, even to salute them, was to incur privation
of the sacraments; when a bier was placed at their door, and their
houses were stoned; when King Robert of France, who fell under the
anathema, was abandoned by all his courtiers and servants, and the
beggars refused the meat that was left from his table--and she comes
into Adrian's presence accusing herself as the greatest of sinners.
The Pope asks:
Hast thou betrayed
Thy husband, or from some yet greater crime
Cometh the terror that oppresses thee?
Hast slain him?
_Adelasia._ Haply I ought to slay him.
_Adrian._ What?
_Adelasia._ I fain would hate him and I cannot.
_Adrian._ What
Hath his fault been?
_Ad._ Oh, the most horrible
Of all.
_Adr._ And yet is he dear unto thee?
_Ad._ I love him, yes, I love him, though he's changed
From that he was. Some gloomy cloud involves
That face one day so fair, and 'neath the feet,
Now grown deformed, the flowers wither away.
I know not if I sleep or if I wake,
If what I see be a vision or a dream.
But all is dreadful, and I cannot tell
The falsehood from the truth; for if I reason,
I fear to sin. I fly the happy bed
Where I became a mother, but return
In midnight's horror, where my husband lies
Wrapt in a sleep so deep it frightens me,
And question with my trembling hand his heart,
The fountain of his life, if it still beat.
Then a cold kiss I give him, then embrace him
With shuddering joy, and then I fly again,--
For I do fear his love,--and to the place
Where sleep my little ones I hurl myself,
And wake them with my moans, and drag them forth
Before an old miraculous shrine of her,
The Queen of Heaven, to whom I've consecrated,
With never-ceasing vigils, burning lamps.
There naked, stretched upon the hard earth, weep
My pretty babes, and each of them repeats
The name of Mary whom I call upon;
And I would swear that she looks down and weeps.
Then I cry out, “Have pity on my children!
Thou wast a mother, and the good obtain
Forgiveness for the guilty.”
Adrian has little trouble to draw from the distracted woman the fact
that her husband is a heretic--that heretic, indeed, in whose castle
Arnaldo is concealed. On his promise that he will save her husband,
she tells him the name of the castle. He summons Frederick, who
claims Ostasio as his vassal, and declares that he shall die, and his
children shall be carried to Germany. Adrian, after coldly asking the
Emperor to spare him, feigns himself helpless, and Adelasia too late
awakens to a knowledge of his perfidy. She falls at his feet:
I clasp thy knees once more, and I do hope
Thou hast not cheated me!... Ah, now I see
Thy wicked arts! Because thou knewest well
My husband was a vassal of the empire,
That pardon which it was not thine to give
Thou didst pretend to promise me. O priest,
Is this thy pity? Sorrow gives me back
My wandering reason, and I waken on
The brink of an abyss; and from this wretch
The mask that did so hide his face drops down
And shows it in its naked hideousness
Unto the light of truth.
Frederick sends his soldiers to secure Arnaldo, but as to Ostasio and
his children he relents somewhat, being touched by the anguish of
Adelasia. Adrian rebukes his weakness, saying that he learned in the
cloister to subdue these compassionate impulses. In the next scene,
which is on the Capitoline Hill, the Roman Senate resolves to defend
the city against the Germans to the last, and then we have Arnaldo a
prisoner in a cell of the Castle of St. Angelo. The Prefect of Rome
vainly entreats him to recant his heresy, and then leaves him with the
announcement that he is to die before the following day. As to the
soliloquy which follows, Niccolini says: “I have feigned in Arnaldo in
the solemn hour of death these doubts, and I believe them exceedingly
probable in a disciple of Abelard. This struggle between reason
and faith is found more or less in the intellect of every one, and
constitutes a sublime torment in the life of those who, like the
Brescian monk, have devoted themselves from an early age to the study
of philosophy and religion. None of the ideas which I attribute to
Arnaldo were unknown to him, and, according to Müller, he believed
that God was all, and that the whole creation was but one of his
thoughts. His other conceptions in regard to divinity are found in one
of his contemporaries.” The soliloquy is as follows:
Aforetime thou hast said, O King of heaven,
That in the world thou wilt not power or riches.
And can he be divided from the Church
Who keeps his faith in thine immortal word,
The light of souls? To remain in the truth
It only needs that I confess to thee
All sins of mine. O thou eternal priest,
Thou read'st my heart, and that which I can scarce
Express thou seest. A great mystery
Is man unto himself, conscience a deep
Which only thou canst sound. What storm is there
Of guilty thoughts! Oh, pardon my rebellion!
Evil springs up within the mind of man,
As in its native soil, since that day Adam
Abused thy great gift, and created guilt.
And if each thought of ours became a deed,
Who would be innocent? I did once defend
The cause of Abelard, and at the decree
Imposing silence on him I, too, ceased.
What fault in me? Bernard in vain inspired
The potentates of Europe to defend
The sepulcher of God. Mankind, his temple,
I sought to liberate, and upon the earth
Desired the triumph of the love divine,
And life, and liberty, and progress. This,
This was my doctrine, and God only knows
How reason struggles with the faith in me
For the supremacy of my spirit. Oh,
Forgive me, Lord. These in their war are like
The rivers twain of heaven, till they return
To their eternal origin, and the truth
Is seen in thee, and God denies not God.
I ought to pray. Thinking on thee, I pray.
Yet how thy substance by three persons shared,
Each equal with the other, one remains,
I cannot comprehend, nor give in thee
Bounds to the infinite and human names.
Father of the world, that which thou here revealest
Perchance is but a thought of thine; or this
Movable veil that covers here below
All thy creation is eternal illusion
That hides God from us. Where to rest itself
The mind hath not. It palpitates uncertain
In infinite darkness, and denies more wisely
Than it affirms. O God omnipotent!
I know not what thou art, or, if I know,
How can I utter thee? The tongue has not
Words for thee, and it falters with my thought
That wrongs thee by its effort. Soon I go
Out of the last doubt unto the first truth.
What did I say? The intellect is soothed
To faith in Christ, and therein it reposes
As in the bosom of a tender mother
Her son. Arnaldo, that which thou art seeking
With sterile torment, thy great teacher sought
Long time in vain, and at the cross's foot
His weary reason cast itself at last.
Follow his great example, and with tears
Wash out thy sins.
We leave Arnaldo in his prison, and it is supposed that he is put to
death during the combat that follows between the Germans and Romans
immediately after the coronation of Frederick. As the forces stand
opposed to each other, two beautiful choruses are introduced--one
of Romans and one of Germans. And, just before the onset, Adelasia
appears and confesses that she has betrayed Arnaldo, and that he is
now in the power of the papacy. At the same time the clergy are heard
chanting Frederick's coronation hymn, and then the battle begins. The
Romans are beaten by the number and discipline of their enemies, and
their leaders are driven out. The Germans appear before Frederic and
Adrian with two hundred prisoners, and ask mercy for them. Adrian
delivers them to his prefect, and it is implied that they are put to
death. Then turning to Frederick, Adrian says:
Art thou content? for I have given to thee
More than the crown. My words have consecrated
Thy power. So let the Church and Empire be
Now at last reconciled. The mystery
That holds three persons in one substance, nor
Confounds them, may it make us here on earth
To reign forever, image of itself,
In unity which is like to that of God.
V
So ends the tragedy, and so was accomplished the union which rested so
heavily ever after upon the hearts and hopes, not only of Italians,
but of all Christian men. So was confirmed that temporal power of the
popes, whose destruction will be known in history as infinitely the
greatest event of our greatly eventful time, and will free from the
doubt and dread of many one of the most powerful agencies for good in
the world; namely, the Catholic Church.
I have tried to give an idea of the magnificence and scope of this
mighty tragedy of Niccolini's, and I do not know that I can now add
anything which will make this clearer. If we think of the grandeur of
its plan, and how it employs for its effect the evil and the perverted
good of the time in which the scene was laid, how it accords perfect
sincerity to all the great actors,--to the Pope as well as to Arnaldo,
to the Emperor as well as to the leaders of the people,--we must
perceive that its conception is that of a very great artist. It seems
to me that the execution is no less admirable. We cannot judge it by
the narrow rule which the tragedies of the stage must obey; we must
look at it with the generosity and the liberal imagination with which
we can alone enjoy a great fiction. Then the patience, the subtlety,
the strength, with which each character, individual and typical, is
evolved; the picturesqueness with which every event is presented; the
lyrical sweetness and beauty with which so many passages are enriched,
will all be apparent to us, and we shall feel the esthetic sublimity
of the work as well as its moral force and its political significance.