A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW (1350-1450)
The return of the Papacy to Rome was an event of importance both for
Italy and the Catholic Church. Had it remained in France, it must have
dwindled and shrunk, like Antaeus, kept away from its source of strength.
Nevertheless, the Papacy was no longer what it once had been; it cannot
serve us now as a central channel for the course of Italian history, and
will rank no higher than the first of half-a-dozen little channels,
which we must pursue separately.
The returning Pope found his territory in greater obedience than he
deserved; for a brilliant Spanish cardinal, Albornoz who had been sent
some time before had reduced almost all the cities to subjection
(1353-67); even Bologna, successfully disputed with the Visconti,
acknowledged papal dominion. But there was neither peace nor
tranquillity. Everywhere turbulence and murmurous threatenings rumbled;
and worse was to come. The very year after the return from the
Babylonish Captivity the _Great Schism_ rent the Church asunder for
forty years. There were two parties in the College of Cardinals, the
French and the Italian, with little love lost between them. The Italians
were in control and elected Urban VI (1378-89), a domineering, cruel,
most unpastoral person, who insulted the foreign cardinals, and so
angered them that they left Rome, declared his election illegal, and
elected one of themselves as Pope in his stead. This anti-pope, attended
by his troop of cardinals, returned to Avignon. Christian Europe divided
in two: some countries recognized Urban, others recognized the
anti-pope. Thus the schism began, and prepared the way for the next
great split of Christian Europe into Catholics and Protestants. There
were now two sources of apostolic succession, two supreme rulers, and
two systems of taxation. Misbehaviour and confusion at the top lowered
the moral tone of the whole Church. The Curia in Rome was scandalously
venal. Indulgences were sold; offices were bestowed for money. Nobody in
Rome respected the Pope, hardly anybody respected the clergy.
All Christendom felt that reformation was necessary, and that, first of
all, the schism must be closed. Thereupon some outward deference was
paid to public opinion; the Roman Pope went so far as to make ostensible
overtures to his rival at Avignon, and he of Avignon bowed and smiled
most politely in return. Friendly greetings went to and fro, and a
meeting was talked of. It became obvious, however, after a time, that
neither Pope had the slightest intention of abdicating in the other's
favour. Christendom remained insistent, and the two batches of cardinals
took the matter into their own hands. They held a Council at Pisa, which
deposed both Popes, and elected a third (1409), but, as the other two
Popes refused to acknowledge their deposition, matters were worse than
before. The situation recalled the old days when a German Emperor had
come down to Rome and had deposed three rival Popes together. The need
seemed to revive the past. The Emperor Sigismund (1410-37) assumed to
speak as the head of Christendom. He summoned an Ecumenical Council to
meet at the city of Constance, on the Lake of Constance, to judge the
schismatic quarrel and to consider the general state of the Church.
Other troubles besides schism had begun to appear. The failure of Rome
to satisfy the conscience of Europe had borne fruit. Heresy had
appeared. In England, Wyclif (1327-84) had denounced the higher clergy
for greed and arrogance; he had disavowed allegiance to the divided
Papacy, and had opposed the doctrine of transubstantiation. In Bohemia,
Jerome of Prague rejected the temporal jurisdiction of priests, and John
Huss asserted that Constantine had done great wrong when he endowed Pope
Silvester with lands and temporal power.
Christendom responded to the Emperor's call. Prelates and scholars of
the highest character and standing assembled at Constance (1414). It was
a great occasion, and belongs to the history of Europe. This Council,
the seventeenth Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church (1414-18),
deposed all three Popes, and elected a Roman, of the House of Colonna,
Martin V (1417-31), and so closed the schism and restored unity to the
Church. The more difficult matter of crushing heresy was not so readily
dealt with. The two reformers, Jerome of Prague and John Huss, refused
to recant or modify their views. They were condemned and handed over to
the secular arm for punishment; and the Emperor, heedless of the
safe-conduct he had given, burnt them at the stake (1415-16).
To follow the proceedings of this interesting Council more fully would
take us too far into papal affairs. It must suffice to say that the
Reformation can be sniffed in the air. Rome had not done its elementary
duties as head of Christendom, and Christendom insisted on a change and
on reform; but Rome was powerful and would not submit. Two parties
appear, the reformers and the papists. The former wished to purify the
Roman Curia and the whole Church, and to give the Papacy a republican
character,--to make the Pope a president, as it were, and the College of
Cardinals a senate. The latter liked the old easy ways and wished the
Pope to be absolute monarch. The papal party by dexterous politics
foiled the plans of the reformers and prevented change of any kind,
although no doubt it acted less from desire to obstruct reform than to
prevent the anti-monarchical party from getting control of the Church
and using the prestige of reform to attack the papal autocracy. From
this time on the papal party consistently pursued this course, and
therefore reformation came not from Rome, but from Germany, and instead
of being a reform from within, came practically as an attack from
without, and caused the permanent schism of the Reformation. We must now
leave the Papacy, which follows its wilful course--via Babylonish
Absenteeism, Schism, and refusal to reform--and steers directly towards
the rocks of the Reformation, and betake ourselves to the other parts of
Italy.
The Kingdom of Naples would have been badly off at best under its
light-mannered queen, Joan I (1343-81), but it became involved in the
papal schism, and got into a wretched plight. The queen rashly took
sides with the Avignon Pope, and the irascible Roman Pope vowed
vengeance. He set her cousin, Charles, who belonged to the Durazzo
branch of the House of Anjou, on the throne in her stead. The story is a
miserable mixture of treasons, battles, and vulgar crimes. Charles got
possession of the unfortunate queen and strangled her, and he and his
heirs fought her adopted heirs for years. Each side hired mercenaries.
John Hawkwood was there, and other notable leaders. Poor Naples, taxed,
robbed, and ravaged by rival kings, their favourites, and mistresses,
rolled rapidly from bad to worse. Exception must be made in favour of
Charles's son Ladislaus (1390-1414), a bold, enterprising soldier, who
played a part in the affairs of Italy like that of his ancestor, Charles
of Anjou. But he failed in not leaving a son to inherit the crown, and
was succeeded by his sister, another Queen Joan (1414-35), likewise
light-mannered. There is nothing memorable to grace her career, except
the presence of a soldier of fortune, once a Romagnol peasant, Muzio
Attendolo, better known as Attendolo Sforza (strength). His son was
Francesco Sforza, destined to a brilliant career in Milan. The queen did
one thing, however, for which we, who clutch at any unification of
Italian history, must thank her. She adopted, not wholly of her free
will, Alfonso of Aragon, King of Sicily, and so brought about, though
for a few years only, the reunion of the Two Sicilies.
With regard to Sicily we need say nothing except that the royal House,
which still had a strain of Hohenstaufen-Norman blood, died out, and
that Sicily passed as a marriage portion to the crown of Aragon, and
became a mere appanage of that kingdom (1409). Finally, as I have said,
King Alfonso was adopted as heir to the second Queen Joan, and took part
in the civil wars that devastated Naples. Then began the long struggle
of Spaniard against Frenchman (the Neapolitan House of Anjou was still
French), which was destined to be so disastrous to Italy. Alfonso
conquered and was acknowledged King of the Two Sicilies by his suzerain
the Pope (1443). Thus for a time the Southern Kingdom was united and at
peace. It is a happy moment to leave it and go northward, in the hope of
finding greater moral and intellectual activity, if not greater
tranquillity and order.
To the northeast, Venice had been growing in power; but with the growth
of her power the number of her enemies and their bitterness towards her
had grown. Her possessions on the mainland, wrested from Verona, brought
her into hostility with Padua; her Adriatic possessions, Istria and
Dalmatia, made her an enemy of Hungary; her coastwise empire and trade
in the Levant made Genoa her deadly rival; and her imperial expansion
entangled her in war after war. Both the war with Padua and that with
Hungary told upon her, but the struggle with Genoa was far worse. During
the last grapple, known as the war of Chioggia (1378-81), Venice was
reduced to narrow straits, and but for her great admirals, Vettor Pisani
and Carlo Zeno, would have been defeated. Genoa never recovered from the
losses she sustained; but Venice regained her strength, and renewed her
conquests on the mainland. She conquered Padua (1404) and strangled the
last heirs of the House of Carrara, though they were prisoners of war;
she seized Verona, and set a price on the heads of the last of the
Scaligers, though they had been her allies. Her chief expansion on the
mainland of Italy was under the Doge Francesco Foscari (1423-57), when
she annexed Bergamo and Brescia, and carried her western boundary to the
river Adda. For the sake of convenience we may divide the life of Venice
into four stages: first, her lusty youth, which closed with the
profligate capture of Constantinople and the piratical dismemberment of
the Byzantine Empire (1204); second, her vigorous prime, which lasted
till she annexed Italian territory, threw in her lot with Italy, and
from being almost an Oriental outsider became an Italian state (1338);
third, her glorious maturity, which continued till the League of
Cambrai, when almost all Europe united to destroy her (1508); and
fourth, her long period of ebbing fortune, during which she slipped
slowly into decrepitude. In the present chapter we deal with the earlier
part of her maturity, when Venice was contesting with Milan for primacy
in power and importance.
During all this period the oligarchy had been tightening its hold on the
government, and was now absolute and secure. One last attempt had been
made to overthrow it, but had easily been put down. No one knows exactly
what led to the conspiracy, or what was the exact purpose of the
conspirators. The ringleader was the Doge himself, Marino Faliero, one
of the old nobility. The story is that he wished to revenge himself for
a gross insult from a young nobleman, and it seems likely that a
personal quarrel had some connection with a general plot which aimed to
overthrow the oligarchy, and substitute a government of the old nobility
supported by the people. The plot was betrayed. Nine of the conspirators
were hanged from the windows of the Ducal Palace. Faliero's head was cut
off, his portrait in the hall of the Ducal Palace was painted out, and
in the blank space was written: "This is the place of Marino Faliero,
beheaded for his crimes."
The oligarchy did not fail in its duty to itself, but neither did it
fail in its duty to the state. Commerce was the life of Venice; and the
oligarchy tended it with the utmost care. The famous Venetian arsenal
was the foster-mother of that commerce. There the money-getting ships
were built and equipped: caracks with three decks and great depth of
hold, galleasses with high forecastle and poop, galleys with long rows
of oars and lateen sails, all of different builds to suit the rough
Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, or the safer Adriatic.
Riches, a firm rule, and the security of an island home, showed visibly
in Venice. Instead of fortresses with massive walls and solid towers,
light, elegant palaces, decked with gay balconies and incrusting
marbles, lined the canals. All revealed tranquillity and prosperity; and
the adoption of Gothic architecture in place of Byzantine, and in
especial the long Gothic arcades of the Ducal Palace (1300-40),
testified how Venice had turned her face from the East to the West. In
contrast with Sicily and Naples, rolling down hill separately or
together, and with the troubled Papal States, Venice appears altogether
happy and successful as she passes from the fourteenth into the
fifteenth century.
Milan we have brought to the dignity of a dukedom, for which Gian
Galeazzo Visconti (1378-1402), the amiable nephew of the too-confiding
Bernabo, paid the price of 100,000 sequins to the fount of honour, the
ultramontane Emperor. This nephew, despite a moral inadequacy in his
family relations, was in many respects an excellent ruler. He reduced
the more burdensome taxes (in one city, it is said, he cut them down
from 12,000 florins to 400), and abolished others altogether. He
corrected abuses, reorganized the administration of justice, and enacted
wise laws. He understood the pride of the Milanese in their city, and
laid the foundations of the great Gothic cathedral on a scale to gratify
that pride; he began the beautiful church of the Cistercian monks, the
_Certosa_, at Pavia; he completed the palace at Pavia, whither he
transported his famous collection of books and an equally famous
collection of holy bones. He had the family ambition, and annexed
Vicenza, Verona, Padua, Siena, Assisi, Perugia, Pisa, and Bologna.
Rumour said that he aspired to a kingdom of Lombardy, and even of all
Italy. But Venice and Florence were too powerful for the success of his
plans. Venice, perhaps, might have regarded herself as still too much
detached from Italy to care to oppose him single-handed; but the doughty
burghers of Florence were zealously democratic and would not endure any
suggestion of foreign dominion. They had fought the Pope, when they
suspected him of designs on their city, and now they organized a league
against Gian Galeazzo. Perhaps it would have been a most fortunate thing
for Italy if the Duke of Milan had been able to consolidate all Italy,
or even all the North, in one kingdom. Centuries of suffering, of
ignominy, of foreign domination might have been avoided; but then,
perhaps, the great intellectual harvest, that gave Italy for the third
time primacy over Europe, would not have attained its full growth. These
are idle speculations, for Gian Galeazzo died in his prime (1402), and
the universal dominion of Milan became an academic question.
Nevertheless, one cannot withhold a sensation of regret. There was
undoubted brilliance in Gian Galeazzo; whatever he did was done royally.
His ambitions were high, planned always on a large scale. His purchases
of the French king's daughter and of the ducal title were splendidly
prodigal. The design of the cathedral was noble and bold. It was an
endeavour to give the Gothic style an Italian character. In this it is
easy to find symbolism. The Gothic style represented the Ghibelline
cause, as well as Teutonic blood and influence, whereas the Italian
represented the Guelf cause and also Latin blood. The high-aspiring Gian
Galeazzo wished to use both Teutonic and Italian elements as the
materials for his kingdom. In view of his intellectual gifts, one
readily slurs over his moral inadequacy, if that term may be applied to
traits which would have done honour to Iago; in fact, prior to Caesar
Borgia, he was the most distinguished example of the type of
intellectual, murderous Italian, which exercised so powerful an
attraction over the wild fancy of the Elizabethan dramatists.
Gian Galeazzo's death left his dukedom in a chaotic condition. A widow,
a regent committee, and three boys were left to see the state, built up
with so much care and astuteness, fall away piecemeal into the hands of
the petty despots, who had been dispossessed during the process of
integration. Venice took Verona, Padua, and other cities near by; the
Papacy got back Bologna, Florence managed to secure Pisa. Thus the
dukedom was carved up. The eldest son died soon, leaving behind him a
memory of the pleasure he took in watching mastiffs tear his prisoners
to pieces; but the second son, Filippo Maria (1412-47), inherited his
father's craft and much of his ability. By means of two famous
_condottieri_, Carmagnola, best remembered as the victim of Venetian
anger, and Francesco Sforza, of whom we have heard in the Neapolitan
service, he gradually restored the dukedom very nearly to its boundaries
under his father. Filippo Maria was the last of his race, and we will
leave him, engaged in speculation as to the best political use of his
marriageable daughter Bianca Maria.
We must pass over the Counts of Savoy, now become dukes (1416), the
marquesses of Monferrat and Saluzzo, and the lords of other petty
territories, and turn our attention to Florence. Florence was always in
a state of struggle, always engaged in exiling, deposing, or in some way
suppressing aristocrats. Forced, in days of peril, to receive foreign
lords as military leaders, she had managed to expel the last of them,
one Walter of Brienne, a clever knave, who bore the odd title of Duke of
Athens, which he had inherited from his grandfather, one of the
gentlemen adventurers who had gone to the East. His father had been
expelled from Athens, and the son was happily driven out of Florence.
The burghers followed up their victory (1343) with new laws against the
aristocrats, and held the government for a generation. Then first
appears the name of Medici. One Salvestro dei Medici, as _Gonfaloniere_
of Justice, the supreme officer in Florence under the existing
constitution, proposed further laws in favour of the people. The lower
classes, with whetted appetites, wanted more. The mechanics and artisans
of the lower guilds, and more particularly the wool carders and combers
(the _Ciompi_) of the great wool guilds, rose in riot, overturned the
government, and put a wool-carder, Michele di Lando, at the head of the
city (1378). Florence was democratic, but not so democratic as to submit
to the rule of a wool-carder. The rich burghers would not stomach a
plebeian any more than they would a king. A reaction set in, and the
government passed into the very competent hands of an oligarchy of
distinguished citizens. This oligarchy governed well. Its leaders, Maso
degli Albizzi, and Niccolo da Uzzano, acted patriotically and wisely.
They resisted the aggressions of Milan from the north, and of Naples
(under that exceptional king Ladislaus) from the south, and made it
their policy to maintain the balance of power in Italy. Under this
oligarchy began the great development of art, known as the Renaissance,
or, to be more exact in quoting the textbooks, the First or Early
Renaissance. To that subject, which shall give us for a time at least a
centre, and save us from these puzzling political subdivisions, we
joyfully proceed; only remembering that at this period Italy has these
main political divisions,--the Kingdom of Sicily, the Kingdom of Naples
(the two temporarily reunited), the Papal States, the city of Florence,
the duchy of Milan, and the city of Venice.