THE AGE OF STAGNATION, POLITICS (1580-1789)
We have now reached a period of comparative stability in which dukes,
viceroys, oligarchs, and Popes sit settled in their respective dominions
with a security that appears a little tame after the whir and uproar of
Barbarian invasion. To be sure, the wars between Spain, France, and
Austria, waged first to abate the over-greatness of the House of
Hapsburg and afterwards that of the House of Bourbon, were often fought
out in the north of Italy; nevertheless, the period of confusion has
passed, and each principality has a consecutive political history, which
runs along for two hundred years. Our best course will be to glance at
the careers of the several states, one by one, until they reach the
tumultuous influences of the French Revolution. Venice, the noblest as
well as the most powerful, deserves to come first.
_Venice_
Venice still ranked as one of the great powers of Europe; she was sought
as an ally, she took part in European counsels, and bore herself with
resolute dignity and pride. The change that was going on went on so
slowly, and her statesmen were so well trained and so far-sighted, that
her reputation remained intact after the power which had created it had
shrunk and dwindled. In spite of the battle of Lepanto she lost the
island of Cyprus to the Turks, but secured a peace which lasted for two
generations, a surprisingly long time, considering that the two states
were destined to fight each other till both were exhausted. She was less
successful in keeping at peace with her Christian neighbours, and became
embroiled in a celebrated quarrel with the Holy See.
There was an irritating papal bull which was issued and reissued under
the stimulus of the reinvigorating Counter-Reformation, entitled _In
Coena Domini_ (for the Lord's Supper), usually read on Maundy Thursday.
It was probably the very bull that Montaigne heard read from the balcony
of St. Peter's. This bull asserted papal claims of extreme character,
not unworthy of Boniface VIII, and, in fact, revealed complete
consciousness of renewed youth and vitality. Other states in Italy bowed
and accepted, or pretended to accept, this declaration of papal
authority; but Venice refused to publish the bull. In fact, though
Venice had always professed great respect for the Holy See, she had been
consistently self-willed and opposed to papal pretensions, and likewise
somewhat free-thinking. Moreover, there had been festering disagreements
concerning territory and politics. Venice insisted upon the right to tax
Church property within the state, and to try priests charged with crime
before her lay tribunals. Acting upon the latter right she arrested and
tried two priests guilty of crime. This action traversed the doctrine
laid down in the papal bull. The Pope put Venice under an interdict
(1606). In retaliation the Signory issued a decree of banishment against
all priests and monks who should obey the interdict. Various Orders
quitted the city. The Pope stood firm in his position that "there could
be no true piety without entire submission to the spiritual power." All
Europe looked on, the Protestants backing Venice, the Catholics
supporting the Pope. War was in the air; but the danger of a European
_melee_ was too great. The French King, Henry IV, enacted the
peacemaker; and the forces in favour of compromise succeeded in
reestablishing peace.
Out of the quarrel one man issued with a noble historic reputation. Fra
Paolo Sarpi (1552-1623) was the last of the great Venetians. In boyhood
he was so precocious a scholar that at eighteen he was made professor of
Positive Theology, and, a little later, of Philosophy and of
Mathematics. Grown up, he became a man of science, the foremost of his
time excepting Francis Bacon. He discovered the valves of the veins, and
also, independently of Harvey, the circulation of the blood. He made
discoveries in optics. He studied heat, light, sound, colour,
pneumatics, the magnetic needle. In astronomy Galileo called him, "_il
mio padre e maestro_--my father and my master." Sir Henry Wotton, the
English ambassador to Venice, said, Fra Paolo is "as expert in the
history of plants as if he had never perused any book but Nature." In
addition to these achievements, he wrote a very celebrated history of
the Council of Trent. At the time of the breach with the Papacy, this
brilliant savant was appointed Theological Counsellor to the Republic,
and was abruptly flung into the confusion and passion of violent
political strife. Deeply patriotic,--his last thought was for Venice,
"_Esto perpetua_, may she live forever,"--he held a brief, as it were,
for his country, and as her advocate argued her cause before all Europe
with brilliant success.
At this period the Venetian Signory belonged, in spirit at least, to an
international political party which was opposed to Spain and to the
Papacy, and for that reason was favoured by the French, especially when
Henry of Navarre was on the throne. In fact, this quarrel between Venice
and the Papacy may be considered an episode in the great struggle
between the party of European freedom and the tyrannical House of
Hapsburg, seated on the thrones of Spain and Austria, and supported by
the Papacy.
But Venice was not able to concentrate her attention upon European
affairs. Later in the century war with the Turks was renewed; she was
too weak to resist them single-handed, and, after a struggle which
lasted for twenty-five years, she lost Crete (1669). Not many years
later, having obtained allies, she renewed the war, fought with great
gallantry, and actually conquered the Morea, which, on the conclusion of
hostilities, was ceded to her (1699). This conquest, now best remembered
from the fact that in the attack on Athens a Venetian bomb blew up the
Parthenon, was the last great military exploit of the Venetians, and
within twenty years the Morea was lost again.
Martial vigour ebbed slowly but surely. During the war of the Spanish
Succession, when, the course of fortune having shifted, Europe combined
to resist the overbearing power of Louis XIV and the House of Bourbon,
Venice remained neutral. Like an old dog which has fought many good
fights in its youth and prime, and now, lame and scarred, maintains a
dignified abstention from canine frays, Venice lay back. In 1718, after
the war with Turkey in which she lost the Morea, she took part in the
treaty between Austria and Turkey. This was her last active diplomatic
intervention in the affairs of Europe. She had lost Cyprus, Crete, the
Morea; and now her province in Italy, bits of Illyria, and some of the
Ionian Islands, alone remained from her old empire. She shut her eyes to
the past, and concentrated her attention on making her beautiful city
"the revel of the earth, the masque of Italy." On the eve of the mighty
upheaval of the French Revolution, her old sea glory flashed up under
her last great admiral, Angelo Emo (1731-92), who cleared the seas of
the Algerine pirates; but it was too late, Venice had run her course,
and the end was at hand.
_Spanish Provinces_
West of Venetian territory, the unfortunate duchy of Milan fulfilled its
melancholy lot of being the prize possessed by Spain, yet coveted and
fought for by France. Its history takes no special hold upon the memory.
Against a constant background of French ambition (Richelieu, Mazarin,
Louis XIV), the Spanish governors step forward upon the Milanese stage,
levy taxes, scheme how to circumvent the French, and how to extend
Spanish dominion, and then go home, a little richer but without leaving
any definite impression on the page of history except as they have
served to create the scenes depicted in the romantic novel "I Promessi
Sposi." One has a vague idea of ceremony, bows, obeisances, ignorance,
rapacity, and cruelty, but the idea is nebulous, and we need not stop.
Leaving local affairs aside, we will proceed at once to see how the
titles to Milan and other Spanish provinces in Italy passed from Spain
into other hands. History here acts as an attorney and coldly records
the transfer from one monarch to another. Like lots of land the
provinces of Italy were bartered and granted in consideration of war,
dynastic love, and affection, or for the sake of the political
equilibrium of Europe. The great Powers fell to blows over the
succession to the crown of Spain (1700-14), to the crown of Poland
(1733-35), and other matters in which Italy had no voluntary concern;
and, after years of war, made treaties to reestablish European
equilibrium by an elaborate system of weights and counterweights. Where
the balances hung unevenly, a province of Italy was thrown in to restore
them to a level. In this way Milan, Parma, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia
were disposed of. All we need do is to remember that in place of
conveyances there were treaties, and in place of offer, counter-offer,
haggling, and bargaining, there were battles, sieges, devastation, and
pillage.
The records of conveyances in the office of history read as follows:--
LOT GRANTOR GRANTEE DATE
Milan Spain Austria 1713
Naples Spain Austria 1713
" Austria Spanish Bourbons 1738
Sicily Spain Savoy 1713
" Savoy Austria 1720
" Austria Spanish Bourbons 1738
Parma Spanish Bourbons Austria 1738
" Austria Spanish Bourbons 1748
Sardinia Spain Austria 1713
" Austria Savoy 1720
Milan was subject to only one transfer, from Spain to Austria, by the
treaties of Utrecht and Rastadt (1713-14), which closed the war of the
Spanish Succession. Those same treaties took Naples and the island of
Sardinia from Spain and gave them to Austria, and also took Sicily from
Spain and gave it to Savoy. Spain, however, was dissatisfied, and
attempted to recover what she had lost; but a new European coalition
forced her to renounce her claim. In the general pacification after the
war, for the purpose of making a more satisfactory arrangement, Sardinia
was exchanged for Sicily, giving Sardinia to Savoy and Sicily to Austria
(1720). Finally, after the war of the Polish Succession by the Peace of
Vienna (1738), Austria ceded Naples and Sicily to younger sons of the
royal family of Spain, the Spanish Bourbons, on condition that those
provinces should never be united with the crown of Spain, and received
in exchange the little duchy of Parma, which had fallen to a Spanish
Bourbon on the extinction of the Farnesi. But ten years later, at the
close of the war of the Austrian Succession, Austria ceded Parma back
again to other members of the Spanish Bourbon family.
_Tuscany_
Another paragraph is necessary to complete the Austrification and the
Spanification of Italy. The Medici of Tuscany died out. After the first
Grand Duke, Cosimo, six successors had followed, dwindling away in
incapacity, luxury, and bigotry. The last died in 1737. Then, by virtue
of that general reapportionment after the war of the Polish Succession,
the Grand Duchy was handed over to the Duke of Lorraine, husband of
Maria Theresa, of the House of Hapsburg, Empress of Austria, and became
an appanage of the Austrian Empire, under the rule of the younger sons
of the Imperial house. It is a relief to turn from these Austrian and
Spanish provinces to the two living powers, Savoy and the Papacy.
_Savoy_
It would be impossible to chronicle here the history of the Savoyard
dukes, who were advanced to the title of Kings of Sardinia after the
acquisition of that island. Savoy lay in the way of the three fighting
nations, France, Spain, and Austria. The plain of Piedmont was an
admirable fighting-ground, and the combatants chose it on all possible
occasions, but it would not be fair to charge the whole blame upon those
three nations. The Dukes of Savoy were ambitious men, full of all sorts
of schemes for increasing their dominions and their personal glory.
Whenever any one of them thought he perceived an opportunity to seize
some neighbouring territory, he caught at it, reckless of collision with
his powerful neighbours. The general upshot was that Savoy lost its old
Swiss provinces and its old French provinces, and that Piedmont became
the head and front of the new Kingdom of Sardinia. Equally important to
Italy was the fact that, while the people of the other Italian provinces
became more and more incapable of bearing arms or of making any real
martial effort, the people of Piedmont gradually became a nation of
soldiers. In devastation, war, and apparent ruin, Piedmontese valour and
Piedmontese character were trained and developed, and Piedmont little by
little came to feel, and likewise to impress upon the other Italian
States, that she, and she alone, was the refuge and hope of whatever
Italian patriotism might still exist.
_The Papacy_
The Papacy we left at the end of the sixteenth century in the full flood
of revival. The Popes were swept on by the tide. The bold and successful
front opposed to the enemy was supplemented by discipline within. Heresy
was traced and tracked. Inquisitors roamed about, spying what they
might; they frightened the learned from publishing, printers from
printing, and almost all from freedom of talk and thought. Thus traitors
were rooted out. And at the same time faithful soldiers of the Church
were trained and educated. Seminaries for priests of divers nations were
founded in Rome; Jesuit schools were helped everywhere. Sixtus V (Felice
Peretti), 1585-90, was a Pope worthy of the great period. He entertained
a plan to reconquer Egypt, and make the Mediterranean and Red Seas a
high-road for armies and navies that should break up the Ottoman power.
He attacked the banditti of the Papal State, as his predecessors had
attacked the barons, and, for a time at least, suppressed them. He was a
great builder; he completed the dome of St. Peter's, set up the Egyptian
obelisk in the _piazza_ before the cathedral, substituted statues of St.
Peter and St. Paul in place of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius on the tops of
the two great bronze columns that adorn the Foro Trajano and the Piazza
Colonna. He brought fresh water, named after him Acqua Felice, into the
city from over twenty miles away, and gave Rome an aspect worthy of the
capital of the Latin world. He fixed seventy for the number of
cardinals; he revised the Vulgate; and pondered many great designs, for
which, as he said, his strength would have been inadequate, even had he
lived.
But these Popes of the Revival, who carried into effect the papal
principles of the Council of Trent, vigorous, and in many respects
admirable, as they were, need not detain us, for the history of the
Papacy in this period scarcely belongs to Italy. It has a far wider
reach, and is intimately bound up with the great Catholic, one might say
the great Latin, effort to restore or extend Catholicism and Latin
supremacy throughout the world. In the British Isles, in Scandinavia, in
Poland, in Russia, in Germany, Austria, France, and Switzerland, the
Church fought with the old Roman spirit of conquest. Everywhere the
Jesuit fathers went, busy, devoted, heroic. The ardour of St. Francis
Xavier, the self-abnegation of St. Francis de Sales, the passionate
mysticism of St. Theresa, infected and controlled thousands of
disciples. Everywhere were great manifestations of activity. In South
America there were bishops and archbishops, hundreds of monasteries and
innumerable priests. In Mexico there were schools of theology. In India,
thousands and thousands of converts clustered around the city of Goa. In
China and Japan the Jesuits built churches, and converted to
Christianity disciples of Confucius and Buddha. The Church had founded
an empire on which the sun never set. But our business is not with this
great Latin conquest, this great Catholic revival. We must pass on to
the next series of Popes, less memorable for their imitation of Scipio
and Caesar, than of Lucullus and Crassus. Here we find the names of the
founders of great papal families, so familiar in Rome, not as
missionaries, teachers, or martyrs, but as owners of palaces, villas,
pictures and statues: Borghese (Paul V, 1605-21), the Pope who
quarrelled with the Venetian Republic; Ludovisi (Gregory XV, 1621-23),
in whose pontificate the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (College for
Propagating the Faith) was established; Barberini (Urban VIII, 1623-44),
whose family, famous from the squib "Quod non fecerunt Barbari fecerunt
Barberini," built its palaces out of Roman ruins. During the pontificate
of Barberini, Galileo was brought before the Holy Office, and his
opinion that the earth moved condemned as "absurd, false in philosophy,
and essentially heretical."
Under his successor Panfili (Innocent X, 1644-55), Catholic Europe
stopped fighting Protestant Europe, and the Thirty Years' War was closed
by the Peace of Westphalia (1648). The Catholic Powers gave over the
attempt to reduce the Protestant States, and acknowledged their
independence. Panfili launched his bull against the treaty, but the
weary world disregarded the old man's curses. After him came Chigi
(Alexander VII, 1655-67), Rospigliosi (Clement IX, 1667-69), Odescalchi
(Innocent XI, 1676-89), whose names mean little to us.
Long before this time the forces of revivification which had borne
onward and upward the Catholic counter-charge on the Protestant ranks,
had begun to fall away. The great Catholic monarchs of Europe turned
their minds to personal ambitions; the Popes squandered papal revenues
on their own families; the Jesuits loosened their rigid hold on their
once high principles. The period of reform had passed, and the Papacy
settled down into a policy of maintaining the ecclesiastical empire left
to it and of enjoying its little Italian monarchy. In politics it
pursued a shifting course towards Austria, Spain, and France, dictated
rather by passing fears than by wisdom or lofty ambition. At the time of
the close of the war of the Spanish Succession the Papacy was hardly
regarded as a European power. The proof of decline was most visible in
the concessions made by the Papacy to the Catholic sovereigns, by its
forced acquiescence in the repeated attacks on the Jesuits, and finally,
by its bull suppressing, or rather attempting to suppress, the Order
(1773).
Throughout the eighteenth century the papal part in European affairs was
insignificant; and in Italy the general effects of papal rule were
steadily increasing poverty, superstition, and incompetence. It is a
relief to turn away, knowing that the French Revolution is blowing its
refreshing blasts ahead of us.