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were broken with axes; and as the Turks encountered no

resistance, their bloodless hands were employed in selecting and

securing the multitude of their prisoners. Youth, beauty, and the

appearance of wealth, attracted their choice; and the right of

property was decided among themselves by a prior seizure, by

personal strength, and by the authority of command. In the space

of an hour, the male captives were bound with cords, the females

with their veils and girdles. The senators were linked with their

slaves; the prelates, with the porters of the church; and young

men of the plebeian class, with noble maids, whose faces had been

invisible to the sun and their nearest kindred. In this common

captivity, the ranks of society were confounded; the ties of

nature were cut asunder; and the inexorable soldier was careless

of the father’s groans, the tears of the mother, and the

lamentations of the children. The loudest in their wailings were

the nuns, who were torn from the altar with naked bosoms,

outstretched hands, and dishevelled hair; and we should piously

believe that few could be tempted to prefer the vigils of the

harem to those of the monastery. Of these unfortunate Greeks, of

these domestic animals, whole strings were rudely driven through

the streets; and as the conquerors were eager to return for more

prey, their trembling pace was quickened with menaces and blows.

At the same hour, a similar rapine was exercised in all the

churches and monasteries, in all the palaces and habitations, of

the capital; nor could any place, however sacred or sequestered,

protect the persons or the property of the Greeks. Above sixty

thousand of this devoted people were transported from the city to

the camp and fleet; exchanged or sold according to the caprice or

interest of their masters, and dispersed in remote servitude

through the provinces of the Ottoman empire. Among these we may

notice some remarkable characters. The historian Phranza, first

chamberlain and principal secretary, was involved with his family

in the common lot. After suffering four months the hardships of

slavery, he recovered his freedom: in the ensuing winter he

ventured to Adrianople, and ransomed his wife from the _mir

bashi_, or master of the horse; but his two children, in the

flower of youth and beauty, had been seized for the use of

Mahomet himself. The daughter of Phranza died in the seraglio,

perhaps a virgin: his son, in the fifteenth year of his age,

preferred death to infamy, and was stabbed by the hand of the

royal lover. 66 A deed thus inhuman cannot surely be expiated by

the taste and liberality with which he released a Grecian matron

and her two daughters, on receiving a Latin doe From ode from

Philelphus, who had chosen a wife in that noble family. 67 The

pride or cruelty of Mahomet would have been most sensibly

gratified by the capture of a Roman legate; but the dexterity of

Cardinal Isidore eluded the search, and he escaped from Galata in

a plebeian habit. 68 The chain and entrance of the outward harbor

was still occupied by the Italian ships of merchandise and war.

They had signalized their valor in the siege: they embraced the

moment of retreat, while the Turkish mariners were dissipated in

the pillage of the city. When they hoisted sail, the beach was

covered with a suppliant and lamentable crowd; but the means of

transportation were scanty: the Venetians and Genoese selected

their countrymen; and, notwithstanding the fairest promises of

the sultan, the inhabitants of Galata evacuated their houses, and

embarked with their most precious effects.

66 (return) [ See Phranza, l. iii. c. 20, 21. His expressions are

positive: Ameras suâ manû jugulavit.... volebat enim eo turpiter

et nefarie abuti. Me miserum et infelicem! Yet he could only

learn from report the bloody or impure scenes that were acted in

the dark recesses of the seraglio.]

67 (return) [ See Tiraboschi (tom. vi. P. i. p. 290) and

Lancelot, (Mém. de l’Académie des Inscriptions, tom. x. p. 718.)

I should be curious to learn how he could praise the public

enemy, whom he so often reviles as the most corrupt and inhuman

of tyrants.]

68 (return) [ The commentaries of Pius II. suppose that he

craftily placed his cardinal’s hat on the head of a corpse which

was cut off and exposed in triumph, while the legate himself was

bought and delivered as a captive of no value. The great Belgic

Chronicle adorns his escape with new adventures, which he

suppressed (says Spondanus, A.D. 1453, No. 15) in his own

letters, lest he should lose the merit and reward of suffering

for Christ. * Note: He was sold as a slave in Galata, according

to Von Hammer, p. 175. See the somewhat vague and declamatory

letter of Cardinal Isidore, in the appendix to Clarke’s Travels,

vol. ii. p. 653.—M.]

In the fall and the sack of great cities, an historian is

condemned to repeat the tale of uniform calamity: the same

effects must be produced by the same passions; and when those

passions may be indulged without control, small, alas! is the

difference between civilized and savage man. Amidst the vague

exclamations of bigotry and hatred, the Turks are not accused of

a wanton or immoderate effusion of Christian blood: but according

to their maxims, (the maxims of antiquity,) the lives of the

vanquished were forfeited; and the legitimate reward of the

conqueror was derived from the service, the sale, or the ransom,

of his captives of both sexes. 69 The wealth of Constantinople

had been granted by the sultan to his victorious troops; and the

rapine of an hour is more productive than the industry of years.

But as no regular division was attempted of the spoil, the

respective shares were not determined by merit; and the rewards

of valor were stolen away by the followers of the camp, who had

declined the toil and danger of the battle. The narrative of

their depredations could not afford either amusement or

instruction: the total amount, in the last poverty of the empire,

has been valued at four millions of ducats; 70 and of this sum a

small part was the property of the Venetians, the Genoese, the

Florentines, and the merchants of Ancona. Of these foreigners,

the stock was improved in quick and perpetual circulation: but

the riches of the Greeks were displayed in the idle ostentation

of palaces and wardrobes, or deeply buried in treasures of ingots

and old coin, lest it should be demanded at their hands for the

defence of their country. The profanation and plunder of the

monasteries and churches excited the most tragic complaints. The

dome of St. Sophia itself, the earthly heaven, the second

firmament, the vehicle of the cherubim, the throne of the glory

of God, 71 was despoiled of the oblation of ages; and the gold

and silver, the pearls and jewels, the vases and sacerdotal

ornaments, were most wickedly converted to the service of

mankind. After the divine images had been stripped of all that

could be valuable to a profane eye, the canvas, or the wood, was

torn, or broken, or burnt, or trod under foot, or applied, in the

stables or the kitchen, to the vilest uses. The example of

sacrilege was imitated, however, from the Latin conquerors of

Constantinople; and the treatment which Christ, the Virgin, and

the saints, had sustained from the guilty Catholic, might be

inflicted by the zealous Mussulman on the monuments of idolatry.

Perhaps, instead of joining the public clamor, a philosopher will

observe, that in the decline of the arts the workmanship could

not be more valuable than the work, and that a fresh supply of

visions and miracles would speedily be renewed by the craft of

the priests and the credulity of the people. He will more

seriously deplore the loss of the Byzantine libraries, which were

destroyed or scattered in the general confusion: one hundred and

twenty thousand manuscripts are said to have disappeared; 72 ten

volumes might be purchased for a single ducat; and the same

ignominious price, too high perhaps for a shelf of theology,

included the whole works of Aristotle and Homer, the noblest

productions of the science and literature of ancient Greece. We

may reflect with pleasure that an inestimable portion of our

classic treasures was safely deposited in Italy; and that the

mechanics of a German town had invented an art which derides the

havoc of time and barbarism.

69 (return) [ Busbequius expatiates with pleasure and applause on

the rights of war, and the use of slavery, among the ancients and

the Turks, (de Legat. Turcicâ, epist. iii. p. 161.)]

70 (return) [ This sum is specified in a marginal note of

Leunclavius, (Chalcondyles, l. viii. p. 211,) but in the

distribution to Venice, Genoa, Florence, and Ancona, of 50, 20,

and 15,000 ducats, I suspect that a figure has been dropped. Even

with the restitution, the foreign property would scarcely exceed

one fourth.]

71 (return) [ See the enthusiastic praises and lamentations of

Phranza, (l. iii. c. 17.)]

72 (return) [ See Ducas, (c. 43,) and an epistle, July 15th,

1453, from Laurus Quirinus to Pope Nicholas V., (Hody de Græcis,

p. 192, from a MS. in the Cotton library.)]

From the first hour 73 of the memorable twenty-ninth of May,

disorder and rapine prevailed in Constantinople, till the eighth

hour of the same day; when the sultan himself passed in triumph

through the gate of St. Romanus. He was attended by his viziers,

bashaws, and guards, each of whom (says a Byzantine historian)

was robust as Hercules, dexterous as Apollo, and equal in battle

to any ten of the race of ordinary mortals. The conqueror 74

gazed with satisfaction and wonder on the strange, though

splendid, appearance of the domes and palaces, so dissimilar from

the style of Oriental architecture. In the hippodrome, or

_atmeidan_, his eye was attracted by the twisted column of the

three serpents; and, as a trial of his strength, he shattered

with his iron mace or battle-axe the under jaw of one of these

monsters, 75 which in the eyes of the Turks were the idols or

talismans of the city. 751 At the principal door of St. Sophia,

he alighted from his horse, and entered the dome; and such was

his jealous regard for that monument of his glory, that on

observing a zealous Mussulman in the act of breaking the marble

pavement, he admonished him with his cimeter, that, if the spoil

and captives were granted to the soldiers, the public and private

buildings had been reserved for the prince. By his command the

metropolis of the Eastern church was transformed into a mosque:

the rich and portable instruments of superstition had been

removed; the crosses were thrown down; and the walls, which were

covered with images and mosaics, were washed and purified, and

restored to a state of naked simplicity. On the same day, or on

the ensuing Friday, the _muezin_, or crier, ascended the most

lofty turret, and proclaimed the _ezan_, or public invitation in

the name of God and his prophet; the imam preached; and Mahomet

and Second performed the _namaz_ of prayer and thanksgiving on

the great altar, where the Christian mysteries had so lately been

celebrated before the last of the Cæsars. 76 From St. Sophia he

proceeded to the august, but desolate mansion of a hundred

successors of the great Constantine, but which in a few hours had

been stripped of the pomp of royalty. A melancholy reflection on

the vicissitudes of human greatness forced itself on his mind;

and he repeated an elegant distich of Persian poetry: “The spider

has wove his web in the Imperial palace; and the owl hath sung

her watch-song on the towers of Afrasiab.” 77

73 (return) [ The Julian Calendar, which reckons the days and

hours from midnight, was used at Constantinople. But Ducas seems

to understand the natural hours from sunrise.]

74 (return) [ See the Turkish Annals, p. 329, and the Pandects of

Leunclavius, p. 448.]

75 (return) [ I have had occasion (vol. ii. p. 100) to mention

this curious relic of Grecian antiquity.]

751 (return) [ Von Hammer passes over this circumstance, which is

treated by Dr. Clarke (Travels, vol. ii. p. 58, 4to. edit,) as a

fiction of Thevenot. Chishull states that the monument was broken

by some attendants of the Polish ambassador.—M.]

76 (return) [ We are obliged to Cantemir (p. 102) for the Turkish

account of the conversion of St. Sophia, so bitterly deplored by

Phranza and Ducas. It is amusing enough to observe, in what

opposite lights the same object appears to a Mussulman and a

Christian eye.]

77 (return) [ This distich, which Cantemir gives in the original,

derives new beauties from the application. It was thus that

Scipio repeated, in the sack of Carthage, the famous prophecy of

Homer. The same generous feeling carried the mind of the

conqueror to the past or the future.]

Yet his mind was not satisfied, nor did the victory seem

complete, till he was informed of the fate of Constantine;

whether he had escaped, or been made prisoner, or had fallen in

the battle. Two Janizaries claimed the honor and reward of his

death: the body, under a heap of slain, was discovered by the

golden eagles embroidered on his shoes; the Greeks acknowledged,

with tears, the head of their late emperor; and, after exposing

the bloody trophy, 78 Mahomet bestowed on his rival the honors of

a decent funeral. After his decease, Lucas Notaras, great duke,

79 and first minister of the empire, was the most important

prisoner. When he offered his person and his treasures at the

foot of the throne, “And why,” said the indignant sultan, “did

you not employ these treasures in the defence of your prince and

country?”—“They were yours,” answered the slave; “God had

reserved them for your hands.”—“If he reserved them for me,”

replied the despot, “how have you presumed to withhold them so

long by a fruitless and fatal resistance?” The great duke alleged

the obstinacy of the strangers, and some secret encouragement

from the Turkish vizier; and from this perilous interview he was

at length dismissed with the assurance of pardon and protection.

Mahomet condescended to visit his wife, a venerable princess

oppressed with sickness and grief; and his consolation for her

misfortunes was in the most tender strain of humanity and filial

reverence. A similar clemency was extended to the principal

officers of state, of whom several were ransomed at his expense;

and during some days he declared himself the friend and father of

the vanquished people. But the scene was soon changed; and before

his departure, the hippodrome streamed with the blood of his

noblest captives. His perfidious cruelty is execrated by the

Christians: they adorn with the colors of heroic martyrdom the

execution of the great duke and his two sons; and his death is

ascribed to the generous refusal of delivering his children to

the tyrant’s lust. 791 Yet a Byzantine historian has dropped an

unguarded word of conspiracy, deliverance, and Italian succor:

such treason may be glorious; but the rebel who bravely ventures,

has justly forfeited his life; nor should we blame a conqueror

for destroying the enemies whom he can no longer trust. On the

eighteenth of June the victorious sultan returned to Adrianople;

and smiled at the base and hollow embassies of the Christian

princes, who viewed their approaching ruin in the fall of the

Eastern empire.

78 (return) [ I cannot believe with Ducas (see Spondanus, A.D.

1453, No. 13) that Mahomet sent round Persia, Arabia, &c., the

head of the Greek emperor: he would surely content himself with a

trophy less inhuman.]

79 (return) [ Phranza was the personal enemy of the great duke;

nor could time, or death, or his own retreat to a monastery,

extort a feeling of sympathy or forgiveness. Ducas is inclined to

praise and pity the martyr; Chalcondyles is neuter, but we are

indebted to him for the hint of the Greek conspiracy.]

791 (return) [ Von Hammer relates this undoubtingly, apparently

on good authority, p. 559.—M.]

Constantinople had been left naked and desolate, without a prince

or a people. But she could not be despoiled of the incomparable

situation which marks her for the metropolis of a great empire;

and the genius of the place will ever triumph over the accidents

of time and fortune. Boursa and Adrianople, the ancient seats of

the Ottomans, sunk into provincial towns; and Mahomet the Second

established his own residence, and that of his successors, on the

same commanding spot which had been chosen by Constantine. 80 The

fortifications of Galata, which might afford a shelter to the

Latins, were prudently destroyed; but the damage of the Turkish

cannon was soon repaired; and before the month of August, great

quantities of lime had been burnt for the restoration of the

walls of the capital. As the entire property of the soil and

buildings, whether public or private, or profane or sacred, was

now transferred to the conqueror, he first separated a space of

eight furlongs from the point of the triangle for the

establishment of his seraglio or palace. It is here, in the bosom

of luxury, that the _Grand Signor_ (as he has been emphatically

named by the Italians) appears to reign over Europe and Asia; but

his person on the shores of the Bosphorus may not always be

secure from the insults of a hostile navy. In the new character

of a mosque, the cathedral of St. Sophia was endowed with an

ample revenue, crowned with lofty minarets, and surrounded with

groves and fountains, for the devotion and refreshment of the

Moslems. The same model was imitated in the _jami_, or royal

mosques; and the first of these was built, by Mahomet himself, on

the ruins of the church of the holy apostles, and the tombs of

the Greek emperors. On the third day after the conquest, the

grave of Abu Ayub, or Job, who had fallen in the first siege of

the Arabs, was revealed in a vision; and it is before the

sepulchre of the martyr that the new sultans are girded with the

sword of empire. 81 Constantinople no longer appertains to the

Roman historian; nor shall I enumerate the civil and religious

edifices that were profaned or erected by its Turkish masters:

the population was speedily renewed; and before the end of

September, five thousand families of Anatolia and Romania had

obeyed the royal mandate, which enjoined them, under pain of

death, to occupy their new habitations in the capital. The throne

of Mahomet was guarded by the numbers and fidelity of his Moslem

subjects: but his rational policy aspired to collect the remnant

of the Greeks; and they returned in crowds, as soon as they were

assured of their lives, their liberties, and the free exercise of

their religion. In the election and investiture of a patriarch,

the ceremonial of the Byzantine court was revived and imitated.

With a mixture of satisfaction and horror, they beheld the sultan

on his throne; who delivered into the hands of Gennadius the

crosier or pastoral staff, the symbol of his ecclesiastical

office; who conducted the patriarch to the gate of the seraglio,

presented him with a horse richly caparisoned, and directed the

viziers and bashaws to lead him to the palace which had been

allotted for his residence. 82 The churches of Constantinople

were shared between the two religions: their limits were marked;

and, till it was infringed by Selim, the grandson of Mahomet, the

Greeks 83 enjoyed above sixty years the benefit of this equal

partition. Encouraged by the ministers of the divan, who wished

to elude the fanaticism of the sultan, the Christian advocates

presumed to allege that this division had been an act, not of

generosity, but of justice; not a concession, but a compact; and

that if one half of the city had been taken by storm, the other

moiety had surrendered on the faith of a sacred capitulation. The

original grant had indeed been consumed by fire: but the loss was

supplied by the testimony of three aged Janizaries who remembered

the transaction; and their venal oaths are of more weight in the

opinion of Cantemir, than the positive and unanimous consent of

the history of the times. 84

80 (return) [ For the restitution of Constantinople and the

Turkish foundations, see Cantemir, (p. 102—109,) Ducas, (c. 42,)

with Thevenot, Tournefort, and the rest of our modern travellers.

From a gigantic picture of the greatness, population, &c., of

Constantinople and the Ottoman empire, (Abrégé de l’Histoire

Ottomane, tom. i. p. 16—21,) we may learn, that in the year 1586

the Moslems were less numerous in the capital than the

Christians, or even the Jews.]

81 (return) [ The _Turbé_, or sepulchral monument of Abu Ayub, is

described and engraved in the Tableau Générale de l’Empire

Ottoman, (Paris 1787, in large folio,) a work of less use,

perhaps, than magnificence, (tom. i. p. 305, 306.)]

82 (return) [ Phranza (l. iii. c. 19) relates the ceremony, which

has possibly been adorned in the Greek reports to each other, and

to the Latins. The fact is confirmed by Emanuel Malaxus, who

wrote, in vulgar Greek, the History of the Patriarchs after the

taking of Constantinople, inserted in the Turco-Græcia of

Crusius, (l. v. p. 106—184.) But the most patient reader will not

believe that Mahomet adopted the Catholic form, “Sancta Trinitas

quæ mihi donavit imperium te in patriarcham novæ Romæ deligit.”]

83 (return) [ From the Turco-Græcia of Crusius, &c. Spondanus

(A.D. 1453, No. 21, 1458, No. 16) describes the slavery and

domestic quarrels of the Greek church. The patriarch who

succeeded Gennadius threw himself in despair into a well.]

84 (return) [ Cantemir (p. 101—105) insists on the unanimous

consent of the Turkish historians, ancient as well as modern, and

argues, that they would not have violated the truth to diminish

their national glory, since it is esteemed more honorable to take

a city by force than by composition. But, 1. I doubt this

consent, since he quotes no particular historian, and the Turkish

Annals of Leunclavius affirm, without exception, that Mahomet

took Constantinople _per vim_, (p. 329.) 2 The same argument may

be turned in favor of the Greeks of the times, who would not have

forgotten this honorable and salutary treaty. Voltaire, as usual,

prefers the Turks to the Christians.]

The remaining fragments of the Greek kingdom in Europe and Asia I

shall abandon to the Turkish arms; but the final extinction of

the two last dynasties 85 which have reigned in Constantinople

should terminate the decline and fall of the Roman empire in the

East. The despots of the Morea, Demetrius and Thomas, 86 the two

surviving brothers of the name of Palæologus, were astonished by

the death of the emperor Constantine, and the ruin of the

monarchy. Hopeless of defence, they prepared, with the noble

Greeks who adhered to their fortune, to seek a refuge in Italy,

beyond the reach of the Ottoman thunder. Their first

apprehensions were dispelled by the victorious sultan, who

contented himself with a tribute of twelve thousand ducats; and

while his ambition explored the continent and the islands, in

search of prey, he indulged the Morea in a respite of seven

years. But this respite was a period of grief, discord, and

misery. The _hexamilion_, the rampart of the Isthmus, so often

raised and so often subverted, could not long be defended by

three hundred Italian archers: the keys of Corinth were seized by

the Turks: they returned from their summer excursions with a

train of captives and spoil; and the complaints of the injured

Greeks were heard with indifference and disdain. The Albanians, a

vagrant tribe of shepherds and robbers, filled the peninsula with

rapine and murder: the two despots implored the dangerous and

humiliating aid of a neighboring bashaw; and when he had quelled

the revolt, his lessons inculcated the rule of their future

conduct. Neither the ties of blood, nor the oaths which they

repeatedly pledged in the communion and before the altar, nor the

stronger pressure of necessity, could reconcile or suspend their

domestic quarrels. They ravaged each other’s patrimony with fire

and sword: the alms and succors of the West were consumed in

civil hostility; and their power was only exerted in savage and

arbitrary executions. The distress and revenge of the weaker

rival invoked their supreme lord; and, in the season of maturity

and revenge, Mahomet declared himself the friend of Demetrius,

and marched into the Morea with an irresistible force. When he

had taken possession of Sparta, “You are too weak,” said the

sultan, “to control this turbulent province: I will take your

daughter to my bed; and you shall pass the remainder of your life

in security and honor.” Demetrius sighed and obeyed; surrendered

his daughter and his castles; followed to Adrianople his

sovereign and his son; and received for his own maintenance, and

that of his followers, a city in Thrace and the adjacent isles of

Imbros, Lemnos, and Samothrace. He was joined the next year by a

companion 861 of misfortune, the last of the Comnenian race, who,

after the taking of Constantinople by the Latins, had founded a

new empire on the coast of the Black Sea. 87 In the progress of

his Anatolian conquest, Mahomet invested with a fleet and army

the capital of David, who presumed to style himself emperor of

Trebizond; 88 and the negotiation was comprised in a short and

peremptory question, “Will you secure your life and treasures by

resigning your kingdom? or had you rather forfeit your kingdom,

your treasures, and your life?” The feeble Comnenus was subdued

by his own fears, 881 and the example of a Mussulman neighbor,

the prince of Sinope, 89 who, on a similar summons, had yielded a

fortified city, with four hundred cannon and ten or twelve

thousand soldiers. The capitulation of Trebizond was faithfully

performed: 891 and the emperor, with his family, was transported

to a castle in Romania; but on a slight suspicion of

corresponding with the Persian king, David, and the whole

Comnenian race, were sacrificed to the jealousy or avarice of the

conqueror. 892 Nor could the name of father long protect the

unfortunate Demetrius from exile and confiscation; his abject

submission moved the pity and contempt of the sultan; his

followers were transplanted to Constantinople; and his poverty

was alleviated by a pension of fifty thousand aspers, till a

monastic habit and a tardy death released Palæologus from an

earthly master. It is not easy to pronounce whether the servitude

of Demetrius, or the exile of his brother Thomas, 90 be the most

inglorious. On the conquest of the Morea, the despot escaped to

Corfu, and from thence to Italy, with some naked adherents: his

name, his sufferings, and the head of the apostle St. Andrew,

entitled him to the hospitality of the Vatican; and his misery

was prolonged by a pension of six thousand ducats from the pope

and cardinals. His two sons, Andrew and Manuel, were educated in

Italy; but the eldest, contemptible to his enemies and burdensome

to his friends, was degraded by the baseness of his life and

marriage. A title was his sole inheritance; and that inheritance

he successively sold to the kings of France and Arragon. 91

During his transient prosperity, Charles the Eighth was ambitious

of joining the empire of the East with the kingdom of Naples: in

a public festival, he assumed the appellation and the purple of

_Augustus_: the Greeks rejoiced and the Ottoman already trembled,

at the approach of the French chivalry. 92 Manuel Palæologus, the

second son, was tempted to revisit his native country: his return

might be grateful, and could not be dangerous, to the Porte: he

was maintained at Constantinople in safety and ease; and an

honorable train of Christians and Moslems attended him to the

grave. If there be some animals of so generous a nature that they

refuse to propagate in a domestic state, the last of the Imperial

race must be ascribed to an inferior kind: he accepted from the

sultan’s liberality two beautiful females; and his surviving son

was lost in the habit and religion of a Turkish slave.

85 (return) [ For the genealogy and fall of the Comneni of

Trebizond, see Ducange, (Fam. Byzant. p. 195;) for the last

Palæologi, the same accurate antiquarian, (p. 244, 247, 248.) The

Palæologi of Montferrat were not extinct till the next century;

but they had forgotten their Greek origin and kindred.]

86 (return) [ In the worthless story of the disputes and

misfortunes of the two brothers, Phranza (l. iii. c. 21—30) is

too partial on the side of Thomas Ducas (c. 44, 45) is too brief,

and Chalcondyles (l. viii. ix. x.) too diffuse and digressive.]

861 (return) [ Kalo-Johannes, the predecessor of David his

brother, the last emperor of Trebizond, had attempted to organize

a confederacy against Mahomet it comprehended Hassan Bei, sultan

of Mesopotamia, the Christian princes of Georgia and Iberia, the

emir of Sinope, and the sultan of Caramania. The negotiations

were interrupted by his sudden death, A.D. 1458. Fallmerayer, p.

257—260.—M.]

87 (return) [ See the loss or conquest of Trebizond in

Chalcondyles, (l. ix. p. 263—266,) Ducas, (c. 45,) Phranza, (l.

iii. c. 27,) and Cantemir, (p. 107.)]

88 (return) [ Though Tournefort (tom. iii. lettre xvii. p. 179)

speaks of Trebizond as mal peuplée, Peysonnel, the latest and

most accurate observer, can find 100,000 inhabitants, (Commerce

de la Mer Noire, tom. ii. p. 72, and for the province, p. 53—90.)

Its prosperity and trade are perpetually disturbed by the

factious quarrels of two _odas_ of Janizaries, in one which

30,000 Lazi are commonly enrolled, (Mémoires de Tott, tom. iii.

p. 16, 17.)]

881 (return) [ According to the Georgian account of these

transactions, (translated by M. Brosset, additions to Le Beau,

vol. xxi. p. 325,) the emperor of Trebizond humbly entreated the

sultan to have the goodness to marry one of his daughters.—M.]

89 (return) [ Ismael Beg, prince of Sinope or Sinople, was

possessed (chiefly from his copper mines) of a revenue of 200,000

ducats, (Chalcond. l. ix. p. 258, 259.) Peysonnel (Commerce de la

Mer Noire, tom. ii. p. 100) ascribes to the modern city 60,000

inhabitants. This account seems enormous; yet it is by trading

with people that we become acquainted with their wealth and

numbers.]

891 (return) [ M. Boissonade has published, in the fifth volume

of his Anecdota Græca (p. 387, 401.) a very interesting letter

from George Amiroutzes, protovestiarius of Trebizond, to

Bessarion, describing the surrender of Trebizond, and the fate of

its chief inhabitants.—M.]

892 (return) [ See in Von Hammer, vol. ii. p. 60, the striking

account of the mother, the empress Helena the Cantacuzene, who,

in defiance of the edict, like that of Creon in the Greek

tragedy, dug the grave for her murdered children with her own

hand, and sank into it herself.—M.]

90 (return) [ Spondanus (from Gobelin Comment. Pii II. l. v.)

relates the arrival and reception of the despot Thomas at Rome,.

(A.D. 1461 No. NO. 3.)]

91 (return) [ By an act dated A.D. 1494, Sept. 6, and lately

transmitted from the archives of the Capitol to the royal library

of Paris, the despot Andrew Palæologus, reserving the Morea, and

stipulating some private advantages, conveys to Charles VIII.,

king of France, the empires of Constantinople and Trebizond,

(Spondanus, A.D. 1495, No. 2.) M. D. Foncemagne (Mém. de

l’Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xvii. p. 539—578) has bestowed

a dissertation on his national title, of which he had obtained a

copy from Rome.]

92 (return) [ See Philippe de Comines, (l. vii. c. 14,) who

reckons with pleasure the number of Greeks who were prepared to

rise, 60 miles of an easy navigation, eighteen days’ journey from

Valona to Constantinople, &c. On this occasion the Turkish empire

was saved by the policy of Venice.]

The importance of Constantinople was felt and magnified in its

loss: the pontificate of Nicholas the Fifth, however peaceful and

prosperous, was dishonored by the fall of the Eastern empire; and

the grief and terror of the Latins revived, or seemed to revive,

the old enthusiasm of the crusades. In one of the most distant

countries of the West, Philip duke of Burgundy entertained, at

Lisle in Flanders, an assembly of his nobles; and the pompous

pageants of the feast were skilfully adapted to their fancy and

feelings. 93 In the midst of the banquet a gigantic Saracen

entered the hall, leading a fictitious elephant with a castle on

his back: a matron in a mourning robe, the symbol of religion,

was seen to issue from the castle: she deplored her oppression,

and accused the slowness of her champions: the principal herald

of the golden fleece advanced, bearing on his fist a live

pheasant, which, according to the rites of chivalry, he presented

to the duke. At this extraordinary summons, Philip, a wise and

aged prince, engaged his person and powers in the holy war

against the Turks: his example was imitated by the barons and

knights of the assembly: they swore to God, the Virgin, the

ladies and the _pheasant_; and their particular vows were not

less extravagant than the general sanction of their oath. But the

performance was made to depend on some future and foreign

contingency; and during twelve years, till the last hour of his

life, the duke of Burgundy might be scrupulously, and perhaps

sincerely, on the eve of his departure. Had every breast glowed

with the same ardor; had the union of the Christians corresponded

with their bravery; had every country, from Sweden 94 to Naples,

supplied a just proportion of cavalry and infantry, of men and

money, it is indeed probable that Constantinople would have been

delivered, and that the Turks might have been chased beyond the

Hellespont or the Euphrates. But the secretary of the emperor,

who composed every epistle, and attended every meeting, Æneas

Sylvius, 95 a statesman and orator, describes from his own

experience the repugnant state and spirit of Christendom. “It is

a body,” says he, “without a head; a republic without laws or

magistrates. The pope and the emperor may shine as lofty titles,

as splendid images; but _they_ are unable to command, and none

are willing to obey: every state has a separate prince, and every

prince has a separate interest. What eloquence could unite so

many discordant and hostile powers under the same standard? Could

they be assembled in arms, who would dare to assume the office of

general? What order could be maintained?—what military

discipline? Who would undertake to feed such an enormous

multitude? Who would understand their various languages, or

direct their stranger and incompatible manners? What mortal could

reconcile the Germans with the French, Genoa with Arragon, the

Germans with the natives of Hungary and Bohemia? If a small

number enlisted in the holy war, they must be overthrown by the

infidels; if many, by their own weight and confusion.” Yet the

same Æneas, when he was raised to the papal throne, under the

name of Pius the Second, devoted his life to the prosecution of

the Turkish war. In the council of Mantua he excited some sparks

of a false or feeble enthusiasm; but when the pontiff appeared at

Ancona, to embark in person with the troops, engagements vanished

in excuses; a precise day was adjourned to an indefinite term;

and his effective army consisted of some German pilgrims, whom he

was obliged to disband with indulgences and arms. Regardless of

futurity, his successors and the powers of Italy were involved in

the schemes of present and domestic ambition; and the distance or

proximity of each object determined in their eyes its apparent

magnitude. A more enlarged view of their interest would have

taught them to maintain a defensive and naval war against the

common enemy; and the support of Scanderbeg and his brave

Albanians might have prevented the subsequent invasion of the

kingdom of Naples. The siege and sack of Otranto by the Turks

diffused a general consternation; and Pope Sixtus was preparing

to fly beyond the Alps, when the storm was instantly dispelled by

the death of Mahomet the Second, in the fifty-first year of his

age. 96 His lofty genius aspired to the conquest of Italy: he was

possessed of a strong city and a capacious harbor; and the same

reign might have been decorated with the trophies of the New and

the Ancient Rome. 97

93 (return) [ See the original feast in Olivier de la Marche,

(Mémoires, P. i. c. 29, 30,) with the abstract and observations

of M. de Ste. Palaye, (Mémoires sur la Chevalerie, tom. i. P.

iii. p. 182—185.) The peacock and the pheasant were distinguished

as royal birds.]

94 (return) [ It was found by an actual enumeration, that Sweden,

Gothland, and Finland, contained 1,800,000 fighting men, and

consequently were far more populous than at present.]

95 (return) [ In the year 1454, Spondanus has given, from Æneas

Sylvius, a view of the state of Europe, enriched with his own

observations. That valuable annalist, and the Italian Muratori,

will continue the series of events from the year 1453 to 1481,

the end of Mahomet’s life, and of this chapter.]

96 (return) [ Besides the two annalists, the reader may consult

Giannone (Istoria Civile, tom. iii. p. 449—455) for the Turkish

invasion of the kingdom of Naples. For the reign and conquests of

Mahomet II., I have occasionally used the Memorie Istoriche de

Monarchi Ottomanni di Giovanni Sagredo, (Venezia, 1677, in 4to.)

In peace and war, the Turks have ever engaged the attention of

the republic of Venice. All her despatches and archives were open

to a procurator of St. Mark, and Sagredo is not contemptible

either in sense or style. Yet he too bitterly hates the infidels:

he is ignorant of their language and manners; and his narrative,

which allows only 70 pages to Mahomet II., (p. 69—140,) becomes

more copious and authentic as he approaches the years 1640 and

1644, the term of the historic labors of John Sagredo.]

97 (return) [ As I am now taking an everlasting farewell of the

Greek empire, I shall briefly mention the great collection of

Byzantine writers whose names and testimonies have been

successively repeated in this work. The Greeks presses of Aldus

and the Italians were confined to the classics of a better age;

and the first rude editions of Procopius, Agathias, Cedrenus,

Zonaras, &c., were published by the learned diligence of the

Germans. The whole Byzantine series (xxxvi. volumes in folio) has

gradually issued (A.D. 1648, &c.) from the royal press of the

Louvre, with some collateral aid from Rome and Leipsic; but the

Venetian edition, (A.D. 1729,) though cheaper and more copious,

is not less inferior in correctness than in magnificence to that

of Paris. The merits of the French editors are various; but the

value of Anna Comnena, Cinnamus, Villehardouin, &c., is enhanced

by the historical notes of Charles de Fresne du Cange. His

supplemental works, the Greek Glossary, the Constantinopolis

Christiana, the Familiæ Byzantinæ, diffuse a steady light over

the darkness of the Lower Empire. * Note: The new edition of the

Byzantines, projected by Niebuhr, and continued under the

patronage of the Prussian government, is the most convenient in

size, and contains some authors (Leo Diaconus, Johannes Lydus,

Corippus, the new fragment of Dexippus, Eunapius, &c., discovered

by Mai) which could not be comprised in the former collections;

but the names of such editors as Bekker, the Dindorfs, &c.,

raised hopes of something more than the mere republication of the

text, and the notes of former editors. Little, I regret to say,

has been added of annotation, and in some cases, the old

incorrect versions have been retained.—M.]

Chapter LXIX: State Of Rome From The Twelfth Century.—Part I.

State Of Rome From The Twelfth Century.—Temporal Dominion Of The

Popes.—Seditions Of The City.—Political Heresy Of Arnold Of

Brescia.—Restoration Of The Republic.—The Senators.—Pride Of The

Romans.—Their Wars.—They Are Deprived Of The Election And Presence

Of The Popes, Who Retire To Avignon.—The Jubilee.—Noble Families

Of Rome.— Feud Of The Colonna And Ursini.

In the first ages of the decline and fall of the Roman empire,

our eye is invariably fixed on the royal city, which had given

laws to the fairest portion of the globe. We contemplate her

fortunes, at first with admiration, at length with pity, always

with attention, and when that attention is diverted from the

capital to the provinces, they are considered as so many branches

which have been successively severed from the Imperial trunk. The

foundation of a second Rome, on the shores of the Bosphorus, has

compelled the historian to follow the successors of Constantine;

and our curiosity has been tempted to visit the most remote

countries of Europe and Asia, to explore the causes and the

authors of the long decay of the Byzantine monarchy. By the

conquest of Justinian, we have been recalled to the banks of the

Tyber, to the deliverance of the ancient metropolis; but that

deliverance was a change, or perhaps an aggravation, of

servitude. Rome had been already stripped of her trophies, her

gods, and her Cæsars; nor was the Gothic dominion more inglorious

and oppressive than the tyranny of the Greeks. In the eighth

century of the Christian æra, a religious quarrel, the worship of

images, provoked the Romans to assert their independence: their

bishop became the temporal, as well as the spiritual, father of a

free people; and of the Western empire, which was restored by

Charlemagne, the title and image still decorate the singular

constitution of modern Germany. The name of Rome must yet command

our involuntary respect: the climate (whatsoever may be its

influence) was no longer the same: 1 the purity of blood had been

contaminated through a thousand channels; but the venerable

aspect of her ruins, and the memory of past greatness, rekindled

a spark of the national character. The darkness of the middle

ages exhibits some scenes not unworthy of our notice. Nor shall I

dismiss the present work till I have reviewed the state and

revolutions of the Roman City, which acquiesced under the

absolute dominion of the popes, about the same time that

Constantinople was enslaved by the Turkish arms.

1 (return) [ The abbé Dubos, who, with less genius than his

successor Montesquieu, has asserted and magnified the influence

of climate, objects to himself the degeneracy of the Romans and

Batavians. To the first of these examples he replies, 1. That the

change is less real than apparent, and that the modern Romans

prudently conceal in themselves the virtues of their ancestors.

2. That the air, the soil, and the climate of Rome have suffered

a great and visible alteration, (Réflexions sur la Poësie et sur

la Peinture, part ii. sect. 16.) * Note: This question is

discussed at considerable length in Dr. Arnold’s History of Rome,

ch. xxiii. See likewise Bunsen’s Dissertation on the Aria Cattiva

Roms Beschreibung, pp. 82, 108.—M.]

In the beginning of the twelfth century, 2 the æra of the first

crusade, Rome was revered by the Latins, as the metropolis of the

world, as the throne of the pope and the emperor, who, from the

eternal city, derived their title, their honors, and the right or

exercise of temporal dominion. After so long an interruption, it

may not be useless to repeat that the successors of Charlemagne

and the Othos were chosen beyond the Rhine in a national diet;

but that these princes were content with the humble names of

kings of Germany and Italy, till they had passed the Alps and the

Apennine, to seek their Imperial crown on the banks of the Tyber.

3 At some distance from the city, their approach was saluted by a

long procession of the clergy and people with palms and crosses;

and the terrific emblems of wolves and lions, of dragons and

eagles, that floated in the military banners, represented the

departed legions and cohorts of the republic. The royal path to

maintain the liberties of Rome was thrice reiterated, at the

bridge, the gate, and on the stairs of the Vatican; and the

distribution of a customary donative feebly imitated the

magnificence of the first Cæsars. In the church of St. Peter, the

coronation was performed by his successor: the voice of God was

confounded with that of the people; and the public consent was

declared in the acclamations of “Long life and victory to our

lord the pope! long life and victory to our lord the emperor!

long life and victory to the Roman and Teutonic armies!” 4 The

names of Cæsar and Augustus, the laws of Constantine and

Justinian, the example of Charlemagne and Otho, established the

supreme dominion of the emperors: their title and image was

engraved on the papal coins; 5 and their jurisdiction was marked

by the sword of justice, which they delivered to the præfect of

the city. But every Roman prejudice was awakened by the name, the

language, and the manners, of a Barbarian lord. The Cæsars of

Saxony or Franconia were the chiefs of a feudal aristocracy; nor

could they exercise the discipline of civil and military power,

which alone secures the obedience of a distant people, impatient

of servitude, though perhaps incapable of freedom. Once, and once

only, in his life, each emperor, with an army of Teutonic

vassals, descended from the Alps. I have described the peaceful

order of his entry and coronation; but that order was commonly

disturbed by the clamor and sedition of the Romans, who

encountered their sovereign as a foreign invader: his departure

was always speedy, and often shameful; and, in the absence of a

long reign, his authority was insulted, and his name was

forgotten. The progress of independence in Germany and Italy

undermined the foundations of the Imperial sovereignty, and the

triumph of the popes was the deliverance of Rome.

2 (return) [ The reader has been so long absent from Rome, that I

would advise him to recollect or review the xlixth chapter of

this History.]

3 (return) [ The coronation of the German emperors at Rome, more

especially in the xith century, is best represented from the

original monuments by Muratori (Antiquitat. Italiæ Medii Ævi,

tom. i. dissertat. ii. p. 99, &c.) and Cenni, (Monument. Domin.

Pontif. tom. ii. diss. vi. p. 261,) the latter of whom I only

know from the copious extract of Schmidt, (Hist. des Allemands

tom. iii. p. 255—266.)]

4 (return) [ Exercitui Romano et Teutonico! The latter was both

seen and felt; but the former was no more than magni nominis

umbra.]

5 (return) [ Muratori has given the series of the papal coins,

(Antiquitat. tom. ii. diss. xxvii. p. 548—554.) He finds only two

more early than the year 800: fifty are still extant from Leo

III. to Leo IX., with the addition of the reigning emperor none

remain of Gregory VII. or Urban II.; but in those of Paschal II.

he seems to have renounced this badge of dependence.]

Of her two sovereigns, the emperor had precariously reigned by

the right of conquest; but the authority of the pope was founded

on the soft, though more solid, basis of opinion and habit. The

removal of a foreign influence restored and endeared the shepherd

to his flock. Instead of the arbitrary or venal nomination of a

German court, the vicar of Christ was freely chosen by the

college of cardinals, most of whom were either natives or

inhabitants of the city. The applause of the magistrates and

people confirmed his election, and the ecclesiastical power that

was obeyed in Sweden and Britain had been ultimately derived from

the suffrage of the Romans. The same suffrage gave a prince, as

well as a pontiff, to the capital. It was universally believed,

that Constantine had invested the popes with the temporal

dominion of Rome; and the boldest civilians, the most profane

skeptics, were satisfied with disputing the right of the emperor

and the validity of his gift. The truth of the fact, the

authenticity of his donation, was deeply rooted in the ignorance

and tradition of four centuries; and the fabulous origin was lost

in the real and permanent effects. The name of _Dominus_ or Lord

was inscribed on the coin of the bishops: their title was

acknowledged by acclamations and oaths of allegiance, and with

the free, or reluctant, consent of the German Cæsars, they had

long exercised a supreme or subordinate jurisdiction over the

city and patrimony of St. Peter. The reign of the popes, which

gratified the prejudices, was not incompatible with the

liberties, of Rome; and a more critical inquiry would have

revealed a still nobler source of their power; the gratitude of a

nation, whom they had rescued from the heresy and oppression of

the Greek tyrant. In an age of superstition, it should seem that

the union of the royal and sacerdotal characters would mutually

fortify each other; and that the keys of Paradise would be the

surest pledge of earthly obedience. The sanctity of the office

might indeed be degraded by the personal vices of the man. But

the scandals of the tenth century were obliterated by the austere

and more dangerous virtues of Gregory the Seventh and his

successors; and in the ambitious contests which they maintained

for the rights of the church, their sufferings or their success

must equally tend to increase the popular veneration. They

sometimes wandered in poverty and exile, the victims of

persecution; and the apostolic zeal with which they offered

themselves to martyrdom must engage the favor and sympathy of

every Catholic breast. And sometimes, thundering from the

Vatican, they created, judged, and deposed the kings of the

world; nor could the proudest Roman be disgraced by submitting to

a priest, whose feet were kissed, and whose stirrup was held, by

the successors of Charlemagne. 6 Even the temporal interest of

the city should have protected in peace and honor the residence

of the popes; from whence a vain and lazy people derived the

greatest part of their subsistence and riches. The fixed revenue

of the popes was probably impaired; many of the old patrimonial

estates, both in Italy and the provinces, had been invaded by

sacrilegious hands; nor could the loss be compensated by the

claim, rather than the possession, of the more ample gifts of

Pepin and his descendants. But the Vatican and Capitol were

nourished by the incessant and increasing swarms of pilgrims and

suppliants: the pale of Christianity was enlarged, and the pope

and cardinals were overwhelmed by the judgment of ecclesiastical

and secular causes. A new jurisprudence had established in the

Latin church the right and practice of appeals; 7 and from the

North and West the bishops and abbots were invited or summoned to

solicit, to complain, to accuse, or to justify, before the

threshold of the apostles. A rare prodigy is once recorded, that

two horses, belonging to the archbishops of Mentz and Cologne,

repassed the Alps, yet laden with gold and silver: 8 but it was

soon understood, that the success, both of the pilgrims and

clients, depended much less on the justice of their cause than on

the value of their offering. The wealth and piety of these

strangers were ostentatiously displayed; and their expenses,

sacred or profane, circulated in various channels for the

emolument of the Romans.

6 (return) [ See Ducange, Gloss. mediæ et infimæ Latinitat. tom.

vi. p. 364, 365, Staffa. This homage was paid by kings to

archbishops, and by vassals to their lords, (Schmidt, tom. iii.

p. 262;) and it was the nicest policy of Rome to confound the

marks of filial and of feudal subjection.]

7 (return) [ The appeals from all the churches to the Roman

pontiff are deplored by the zeal of St. Bernard (de

Consideratione, l. iii. tom. ii. p. 431—442, edit. Mabillon,

Venet. 1750) and the judgment of Fleury, (Discours sur l’Hist.

Ecclésiastique, iv. et vii.) But the saint, who believed in the

false decretals condemns only the abuse of these appeals; the

more enlightened historian investigates the origin, and rejects

the principles, of this new jurisprudence.]

8 (return) [ Germanici.... summarii non levatis sarcinis onusti

nihilominus repatriant inviti. Nova res! quando hactenus aurum

Roma refudit? Et nunc Romanorum consilio id usurpatum non

credimus, (Bernard, de Consideratione, l. iii. c. 3, p. 437.) The

first words of the passage are obscure, and probably corrupt.]

Such powerful motives should have firmly attached the voluntary

and pious obedience of the Roman people to their spiritual and

temporal father. But the operation of prejudice and interest is

often disturbed by the sallies of ungovernable passion. The

Indian who fells the tree, that he may gather the fruit, 9 and

the Arab who plunders the caravans of commerce, are actuated by

the same impulse of savage nature, which overlooks the future in

the present, and relinquishes for momentary rapine the long and

secure possession of the most important blessings. And it was

thus, that the shrine of St. Peter was profaned by the

thoughtless Romans; who pillaged the offerings, and wounded the

pilgrims, without computing the number and value of similar

visits, which they prevented by their inhospitable sacrilege.

Even the influence of superstition is fluctuating and precarious;

and the slave, whose reason is subdued, will often be delivered

by his avarice or pride. A credulous devotion for the fables and

oracles of the priesthood most powerfully acts on the mind of a

Barbarian; yet such a mind is the least capable of preferring

imagination to sense, of sacrificing to a distant motive, to an

invisible, perhaps an ideal, object, the appetites and interests

of the present world. In the vigor of health and youth, his

practice will perpetually contradict his belief; till the

pressure of age, or sickness, or calamity, awakens his terrors,

and compels him to satisfy the double debt of piety and remorse.

I have already observed, that the modern times of religious

indifference are the most favorable to the peace and security of

the clergy. Under the reign of superstition, they had much to

hope from the ignorance, and much to fear from the violence, of

mankind. The wealth, whose constant increase must have rendered

them the sole proprietors of the earth, was alternately bestowed

by the repentant father and plundered by the rapacious son: their

persons were adored or violated; and the same idol, by the hands

of the same votaries, was placed on the altar, or trampled in the

dust. In the feudal system of Europe, arms were the title of

distinction and the measure of allegiance; and amidst their

tumult, the still voice of law and reason was seldom heard or

obeyed. The turbulent Romans disdained the yoke, and insulted the

impotence, of their bishop: 10 nor would his education or

character allow him to exercise, with decency or effect, the

power of the sword. The motives of his election and the frailties

of his life were exposed to their familiar observation; and

proximity must diminish the reverence which his name and his

decrees impressed on a barbarous world. This difference has not

escaped the notice of our philosophic historian: “Though the name

and authority of the court of Rome were so terrible in the remote

countries of Europe, which were sunk in profound ignorance, and

were entirely unacquainted with its character and conduct, the

pope was so little revered at home, that his inveterate enemies

surrounded the gates of Rome itself, and even controlled his

government in that city; and the ambassadors, who, from a distant

extremity of Europe, carried to him the humble, or rather abject,

submissions of the greatest potentate of the age, found the

utmost difficulty to make their way to him, and to throw

themselves at his feet.” 11

9 (return) [ Quand les sauvages de la Louisiane veulent avoir du

fruit, ils coupent l’arbre au pied et cueillent le fruit. Voila

le gouvernement despotique, (Esprit des Loix, l. v. c. 13;) and

passion and ignorance are always despotic.]

10 (return) [ In a free conversation with his countryman Adrian

IV., John of Salisbury accuses the avarice of the pope and

clergy: Provinciarum diripiunt spolia, ac si thesauros Crsi

studeant reparare. Sed recte cum eis agit Altissimus, quoniam et

ipsi aliis et sæpe vilissimis hominibus dati sunt in direptionem,

(de Nugis Curialium, l. vi. c. 24, p. 387.) In the next page, he

blames the rashness and infidelity of the Romans, whom their

bishops vainly strove to conciliate by gifts, instead of virtues.

It is pity that this miscellaneous writer has not given us less

morality and erudition, and more pictures of himself and the

times.]

11 (return) [ Hume’s History of England, vol. i. p. 419. The same

writer has given us, from Fitz-Stephen, a singular act of cruelty

perpetrated on the clergy by Geoffrey, the father of Henry II.

“When he was master of Normandy, the chapter of Seez presumed,

without his consent, to proceed to the election of a bishop: upon

which he ordered all of them, with the bishop elect, to be

castrated, and made all their testicles be brought him in a

platter.” Of the pain and danger they might justly complain; yet

since they had vowed chastity he deprived them of a superfluous

treasure.]

Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was exposed to

envy, their powers to opposition, and their persons to violence.

But the long hostility of the mitre and the crown increased the

numbers, and inflamed the passions, of their enemies. The deadly

factions of the Guelphs and Ghibelines, so fatal to Italy, could

never be embraced with truth or constancy by the Romans, the

subjects and adversaries both of the bishop and emperor; but

their support was solicited by both parties, and they alternately

displayed in their banners the keys of St. Peter and the German

eagle. Gregory the Seventh, who may be adored or detested as the

founder of the papal monarchy, was driven from Rome, and died in

exile at Salerno. Six-and-thirty of his successors, 12 till their

retreat to Avignon, maintained an unequal contest with the

Romans: their age and dignity were often violated; and the

churches, in the solemn rites of religion, were polluted with

sedition and murder. A repetition 13 of such capricious

brutality, without connection or design, would be tedious and

disgusting; and I shall content myself with some events of the

twelfth century, which represent the state of the popes and the

city. On Holy Thursday, while Paschal officiated before the

altar, he was interrupted by the clamors of the multitude, who

imperiously demanded the confirmation of a favorite magistrate.

His silence exasperated their fury; his pious refusal to mingle

the affairs of earth and heaven was encountered with menaces, and

oaths, that he should be the cause and the witness of the public

ruin. During the festival of Easter, while the bishop and the

clergy, barefooted and in procession, visited the tombs of the

martyrs, they were twice assaulted, at the bridge of St. Angelo,

and before the Capitol, with volleys of stones and darts. The

houses of his adherents were levelled with the ground: Paschal

escaped with difficulty and danger; he levied an army in the

patrimony of St. Peter; and his last days were embittered by

suffering and inflicting the calamities of civil war. The scenes

that followed the election of his successor Gelasius the Second

were still more scandalous to the church and city. Cencio

Frangipani, 14 a potent and factious baron, burst into the

assembly furious and in arms: the cardinals were stripped,

beaten, and trampled under foot; and he seized, without pity or

respect, the vicar of Christ by the throat. Gelasius was dragged

by the hair along the ground, buffeted with blows, wounded with

spurs, and bound with an iron chain in the house of his brutal

tyrant. An insurrection of the people delivered their bishop: the

rival families opposed the violence of the Frangipani; and

Cencio, who sued for pardon, repented of the failure, rather than

of the guilt, of his enterprise. Not many days had elapsed, when

the pope was again assaulted at the altar. While his friends and

enemies were engaged in a bloody contest, he escaped in his

sacerdotal garments. In this unworthy flight, which excited the

compassion of the Roman matrons, his attendants were scattered or

unhorsed; and, in the fields behind the church of St. Peter, his

successor was found alone and half dead with fear and fatigue.

Shaking the dust from his feet, the _apostle_ withdrew from a

city in which his dignity was insulted and his person was

endangered; and the vanity of sacerdotal ambition is revealed in

the involuntary confession, that one emperor was more tolerable

than twenty. 15 These examples might suffice; but I cannot forget

the sufferings of two pontiffs of the same age, the second and

third of the name of Lucius. The former, as he ascended in battle

array to assault the Capitol, was struck on the temple by a

stone, and expired in a few days. The latter was severely wounded

in the person of his servants. In a civil commotion, several of

his priests had been made prisoners; and the inhuman Romans,

reserving one as a guide for his brethren, put out their eyes,

crowned them with ludicrous mitres, mounted them on asses with

their faces towards the tail, and extorted an oath, that, in this

wretched condition, they should offer themselves as a lesson to

the head of the church. Hope or fear, lassitude or remorse, the

characters of the men, and the circumstances of the times, might

sometimes obtain an interval of peace and obedience; and the pope

was restored with joyful acclamations to the Lateran or Vatican,

from whence he had been driven with threats and violence. But the

root of mischief was deep and perennial; and a momentary calm was

preceded and followed by such tempests as had almost sunk the

bark of St. Peter. Rome continually presented the aspect of war

and discord: the churches and palaces were fortified and

assaulted by the factions and families; and, after giving peace

to Europe, Calistus the Second alone had resolution and power to

prohibit the use of private arms in the metropolis. Among the

nations who revered the apostolic throne, the tumults of Rome

provoked a general indignation; and in a letter to his disciple

Eugenius the Third, St. Bernard, with the sharpness of his wit

and zeal, has stigmatized the vices of the rebellious people. 16

“Who is ignorant,” says the monk of Clairvaux, “of the vanity and

arrogance of the Romans? a nation nursed in sedition,

untractable, and scorning to obey, unless they are too feeble to

resist. When they promise to serve, they aspire to reign; if they

swear allegiance, they watch the opportunity of revolt; yet they

vent their discontent in loud clamors, if your doors, or your

counsels, are shut against them. Dexterous in mischief, they have

never learned the science of doing good. Odious to earth and

heaven, impious to God, seditious among themselves, jealous of

their neighbors, inhuman to strangers, they love no one, by no

one are they beloved; and while they wish to inspire fear, they

live in base and continual apprehension. They will not submit;

they know not how to govern faithless to their superiors,

intolerable to their equals, ungrateful to their benefactors, and

alike impudent in their demands and their refusals. Lofty in

promise, poor in execution; adulation and calumny, perfidy and

treason, are the familiar arts of their policy.” Surely this dark

portrait is not colored by the pencil of Christian charity; 17

yet the features, however harsh or ugly, express a lively

resemblance of the Roman of the twelfth century. 18

12 (return) [ From Leo IX. and Gregory VII. an authentic and

contemporary series of the lives of the popes by the cardinal of

Arragon, Pandulphus Pisanus, Bernard Guido, &c., is inserted in

the Italian Historians of Muratori, (tom. iii. P. i. p. 277—685,)

and has been always before my eyes.]

13 (return) [ The dates of years in the contents may throughout

his this chapter be understood as tacit references to the Annals

of Muratori, my ordinary and excellent guide. He uses, and indeed

quotes, with the freedom of a master, his great collection of the

Italian Historians, in xxviii. volumes; and as that treasure is

in my library, I have thought it an amusement, if not a duty, to

consult the originals.]

14 (return) [ I cannot refrain from transcribing the high-colored

words of Pandulphus Pisanus, (p. 384.) Hoc audiens inimicus pacis

atque turbator jam fatus Centius Frajapane, more draconis

immanissimi sibilans, et ab imis pectoribus trahens longa

suspiria, accinctus retro gladio sine more cucurrit, valvas ac

fores confregit. Ecclesiam furibundus introiit, inde custode

remoto papam per gulam accepit, distraxit pugnis calcibusque

percussit, et tanquam brutum animal intra limen ecclesiæ acriter

calcaribus cruentavit; et latro tantum dominum per capillos et

brachia, Jesû bono interim dormiente, detraxit, ad domum usque

deduxit, inibi catenavit et inclusit.]

15 (return) [ Ego coram Deo et Ecclesiâ dico, si unquam possibile

esset, mallem unum imperatorem quam tot dominos, (Vit. Gelas. II.

p. 398.)]

16 (return) [ Quid tam notum seculis quam protervia et

cervicositas Romanorum? Gens insueta paci, tumultui assueta, gens

immitis et intractabilis usque adhuc, subdi nescia, nisi cum non

valet resistere, (de Considerat. l. iv. c. 2, p. 441.) The saint

takes breath, and then begins again: Hi, invisi terræ et clo,

utrique injecere manus, &c., (p. 443.)]

17 (return) [ As a Roman citizen, Petrarch takes leave to

observe, that Bernard, though a saint, was a man; that he might

be provoked by resentment, and possibly repent of his hasty

passion, &c. (Mémoires sur la Vie de Pétrarque, tom. i. p. 330.)]

18 (return) [ Baronius, in his index to the xiith volume of his

Annals, has found a fair and easy excuse. He makes two heads, of

Romani _Catholici_ and _Schismatici_: to the former he applies

all the good, to the latter all the evil, that is told of the

city.]

The Jews had rejected the Christ when he appeared among them in a

plebeian character; and the Romans might plead their ignorance of

his vicar when he assumed the pomp and pride of a temporal

sovereign. In the busy age of the crusades, some sparks of

curiosity and reason were rekindled in the Western world: the

heresy of Bulgaria, the Paulician sect, was successfully

transplanted into the soil of Italy and France; the Gnostic

visions were mingled with the simplicity of the gospel; and the

enemies of the clergy reconciled their passions with their

conscience, the desire of freedom with the profession of piety.

19 The trumpet of Roman liberty was first sounded by Arnold of

Brescia, 20 whose promotion in the church was confined to the

lowest rank, and who wore the monastic habit rather as a garb of

poverty than as a uniform of obedience. His adversaries could not

deny the wit and eloquence which they severely felt; they confess

with reluctance the specious purity of his morals; and his errors

were recommended to the public by a mixture of important and

beneficial truths. In his theological studies, he had been the

disciple of the famous and unfortunate Abelard, 21 who was

likewise involved in the suspicion of heresy: but the lover of

Eloisa was of a soft and flexible nature; and his ecclesiastic

judges were edified and disarmed by the humility of his

repentance. From this master, Arnold most probably imbibed some

metaphysical definitions of the Trinity, repugnant to the taste

of the times: his ideas of baptism and the eucharist are loosely

censured; but a political heresy was the source of his fame and

misfortunes. He presumed to quote the declaration of Christ, that

his kingdom is not of this world: he boldly maintained, that the

sword and the sceptre were intrusted to the civil magistrate;

that temporal honors and possessions were lawfully vested in

secular persons; that the abbots, the bishops, and the pope

himself, must renounce either their state or their salvation; and

that after the loss of their revenues, the voluntary tithes and

oblations of the faithful would suffice, not indeed for luxury

and avarice, but for a frugal life in the exercise of spiritual

labors. During a short time, the preacher was revered as a

patriot; and the discontent, or revolt, of Brescia against her

bishop, was the first fruits of his dangerous lessons. But the

favor of the people is less permanent than the resentment of the

priest; and after the heresy of Arnold had been condemned by

Innocent the Second, 22 in the general council of the Lateran,

the magistrates themselves were urged by prejudice and fear to

execute the sentence of the church. Italy could no longer afford

a refuge; and the disciple of Abelard escaped beyond the Alps,

till he found a safe and hospitable shelter in Zurich, now the

first of the Swiss cantons. From a Roman station, 23 a royal

villa, a chapter of noble virgins, Zurich had gradually increased

to a free and flourishing city; where the appeals of the Milanese

were sometimes tried by the Imperial commissaries. 24 In an age

less ripe for reformation, the precursor of Zuinglius was heard

with applause: a brave and simple people imbibed, and long

retained, the color of his opinions; and his art, or merit,

seduced the bishop of Constance, and even the pope’s legate, who

forgot, for his sake, the interest of their master and their

order. Their tardy zeal was quickened by the fierce exhortations

of St. Bernard; 25 and the enemy of the church was driven by

persecution to the desperate measures of erecting his standard in

Rome itself, in the face of the successor of St. Peter.

19 (return) [ The heresies of the xiith century may be found in

Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Ecclés. p. 419—427,) who entertains a

favorable opinion of Arnold of Brescia. In the vth volume I have

described the sect of the Paulicians, and followed their

migration from Armenia to Thrace and Bulgaria, Italy and France.]

20 (return) [ The original pictures of Arnold of Brescia are

drawn by Otho, bishop of Frisingen, (Chron. l. vii. c. 31, de

Gestis Frederici I. l. i. c. 27, l. ii. c. 21,) and in the iiid

book of the Ligurinus, a poem of Gunthur, who flourished A.D.

1200, in the monastery of Paris near Basil, (Fabric. Bibliot.

Latin. Med. et Infimæ Ætatis, tom. iii. p. 174, 175.) The long

passage that relates to Arnold is produced by Guilliman, (de

Rebus Helveticis, l. iii. c. 5, p. 108.) * Note: Compare Franke,

Arnold von Brescia und seine Zeit. Zurich, 1828.—M.]

21 (return) [ The wicked wit of Bayle was amused in composing,

with much levity and learning, the articles of Abelard, Foulkes,

Heloise, in his Dictionnaire Critique. The dispute of Abelard and

St. Bernard, of scholastic and positive divinity, is well

understood by Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Ecclés. p. 412—415.)]

22 (return) [

——Damnatus ab illo Præsule, qui numeros vetitum

contingere nostros Nomen ad _innocuâ_ ducit laudabile

vitâ.

We may applaud the dexterity and correctness of Ligurinus, who

turns the unpoetical name of Innocent II. into a compliment.]

23 (return) [ A Roman inscription of Statio Turicensis has been

found at Zurich, (D’Anville, Notice de l’ancienne Gaul, p.

642—644;) but it is without sufficient warrant, that the city and

canton have usurped, and even monopolized, the names of Tigurum

and Pagus Tigurinus.]

24 (return) [ Guilliman (de Rebus Helveticis, l. iii. c. 5, p.

106) recapitulates the donation (A.D. 833) of the emperor Lewis

the Pious to his daughter the abbess Hildegardis. Curtim nostram

Turegum in ducatû Alamanniæ in pago Durgaugensi, with villages,

woods, meadows, waters, slaves, churches, &c.; a noble gift.

Charles the Bald gave the jus monetæ, the city was walled under

Otho I., and the line of the bishop of Frisingen, “Nobile Turegum

multarum copia rerum,” is repeated with pleasure by the

antiquaries of Zurich.]

25 (return) [ Bernard, Epistol. cxcv. tom. i. p. 187—190. Amidst

his invectives he drops a precious acknowledgment, qui, utinam

quam sanæ esset doctrinæ quam districtæ est vitæ. He owns that

Arnold would be a valuable acquisition for the church.]

Chapter LXIX: State Of Rome From The Twelfth Century.—Part II.

Yet the courage of Arnold was not devoid of discretion: he was

protected, and had perhaps been invited, by the nobles and

people; and in the service of freedom, his eloquence thundered

over the seven hills. Blending in the same discourse the texts of

Livy and St. Paul, uniting the motives of gospel, and of classic,

enthusiasm, he admonished the Romans, how strangely their

patience and the vices of the clergy had degenerated from the

primitive times of the church and the city. He exhorted them to

assert the inalienable rights of men and Christians; to restore

the laws and magistrates of the republic; to respect the _name_

of the emperor; but to confine their shepherd to the spiritual

government of his flock. 26 Nor could his spiritual government

escape the censure and control of the reformer; and the inferior

clergy were taught by his lessons to resist the cardinals, who

had usurped a despotic command over the twenty-eight regions or

parishes of Rome. 27 The revolution was not accomplished without

rapine and violence, the diffusion of blood and the demolition of

houses: the victorious faction was enriched with the spoils of

the clergy and the adverse nobles. Arnold of Brescia enjoyed, or

deplored, the effects of his mission: his reign continued above

ten years, while two popes, Innocent the Second and Anastasius

the Fourth, either trembled in the Vatican, or wandered as exiles

in the adjacent cities. They were succeeded by a more vigorous

and fortunate pontiff. Adrian the Fourth, 28 the only Englishman

who has ascended the throne of St. Peter; and whose merit emerged

from the mean condition of a monk, and almost a beggar, in the

monastery of St. Albans. On the first provocation, of a cardinal

killed or wounded in the streets, he cast an interdict on the

guilty people; and from Christmas to Easter, Rome was deprived of

the real or imaginary comforts of religious worship. The Romans

had despised their temporal prince: they submitted with grief and

terror to the censures of their spiritual father: their guilt was

expiated by penance, and the banishment of the seditious preacher

was the price of their absolution. But the revenge of Adrian was

yet unsatisfied, and the approaching coronation of Frederic

Barbarossa was fatal to the bold reformer, who had offended,

though not in an equal degree, the heads of the church and state.

In their interview at Viterbo, the pope represented to the

emperor the furious, ungovernable spirit of the Romans; the

insults, the injuries, the fears, to which his person and his

clergy were continually exposed; and the pernicious tendency of

the heresy of Arnold, which must subvert the principles of civil,

as well as ecclesiastical, subordination. Frederic was convinced

by these arguments, or tempted by the desire of the Imperial

crown: in the balance of ambition, the innocence or life of an

individual is of small account; and their common enemy was

sacrificed to a moment of political concord. After his retreat

from Rome, Arnold had been protected by the viscounts of

Campania, from whom he was extorted by the power of Cæsar: the

præfect of the city pronounced his sentence: the martyr of

freedom was burned alive in the presence of a careless and

ungrateful people; and his ashes were cast into the Tyber, lest

the heretics should collect and worship the relics of their

master. 29 The clergy triumphed in his death: with his ashes, his

sect was dispersed; his memory still lived in the minds of the

Romans. From his school they had probably derived a new article

of faith, that the metropolis of the Catholic church is exempt

from the penalties of excommunication and interdict. Their

bishops might argue, that the supreme jurisdiction, which they

exercised over kings and nations, more especially embraced the

city and diocese of the prince of the apostles. But they preached

to the winds, and the same principle that weakened the effect,

must temper the abuse, of the thunders of the Vatican.

26 (return) [ He advised the Romans,

Consiliis armisque sua moderamina summa Arbitrio

tractare suo: nil juris in hâc re Pontifici summo,

modicum concedere regi Suadebat populo. Sic læsâ stultus

utrâque Majestate, reum geminæ se fecerat aulæ.

Nor is the poetry of Gunther different from the prose of Otho.]

27 (return) [ See Baronius (A.D. 1148, No. 38, 39) from the

Vatican MSS. He loudly condemns Arnold (A.D. 1141, No. 3) as the

father of the political heretics, whose influence then hurt him

in France.]

28 (return) [ The English reader may consult the Biographia

Britannica, Adrian IV.; but our own writers have added nothing to

the fame or merits of their countrymen.]

29 (return) [ Besides the historian and poet already quoted, the

last adventures of Arnold are related by the biographer of Adrian

IV. (Muratori. Script. Rerum Ital. tom. iii. P. i. p. 441, 442.)]

The love of ancient freedom has encouraged a belief that as early

as the tenth century, in their first struggles against the Saxon

Othos, the commonwealth was vindicated and restored by the senate

and people of Rome; that two consuls were annually elected among

the nobles, and that ten or twelve plebeian magistrates revived

the name and office of the tribunes of the commons. 30 But this

venerable structure disappears before the light of criticism. In

the darkness of the middle ages, the appellations of senators, of

consuls, of the sons of consuls, may sometimes be discovered. 31

They were bestowed by the emperors, or assumed by the most

powerful citizens, to denote their rank, their honors, 32 and

perhaps the claim of a pure and patrician descent: but they float

on the surface, without a series or a substance, the titles of

men, not the orders of government; 33 and it is only from the

year of Christ one thousand one hundred and forty-four that the

establishment of the senate is dated, as a glorious æra, in the

acts of the city. A new constitution was hastily framed by

private ambition or popular enthusiasm; nor could Rome, in the

twelfth century, produce an antiquary to explain, or a legislator

to restore, the harmony and proportions of the ancient model. The

assembly of a free, of an armed, people, will ever speak in loud

and weighty acclamations. But the regular distribution of the

thirty-five tribes, the nice balance of the wealth and numbers of

the centuries, the debates of the adverse orators, and the slow

operations of votes and ballots, could not easily be adapted by a

blind multitude, ignorant of the arts, and insensible of the

benefits, of legal government. It was proposed by Arnold to

revive and discriminate the equestrian order; but what could be

the motive or measure of such distinction? 34 The pecuniary

qualification of the knights must have been reduced to the

poverty of the times: those times no longer required their civil

functions of judges and farmers of the revenue; and their

primitive duty, their military service on horseback, was more

nobly supplied by feudal tenures and the spirit of chivalry. The

jurisprudence of the republic was useless and unknown: the

nations and families of Italy who lived under the Roman and

Barbaric laws were insensibly mingled in a common mass; and some

faint tradition, some imperfect fragments, preserved the memory

of the Code and Pandects of Justinian. With their liberty the

Romans might doubtless have restored the appellation and office

of consuls; had they not disdained a title so promiscuously

adopted in the Italian cities, that it has finally settled on the

humble station of the agents of commerce in a foreign land. But

the rights of the tribunes, the formidable word that arrested the

public counsels, suppose or must produce a legitimate democracy.

The old patricians were the subjects, the modern barons the

tyrants, of the state; nor would the enemies of peace and order,

who insulted the vicar of Christ, have long respected the unarmed

sanctity of a plebeian magistrate. 35

30 (return) [ Ducange (Gloss. Latinitatis Mediæ et Infimæ Ætatis,

Decarchones, tom. ii. p. 726) gives me a quotation from Blondus,

(Decad. ii. l. ii.:) Duo consules ex nobilitate quotannis

fiebant, qui ad vetustum consulum exemplar summærerum præessent.

And in Sigonius (de Regno Italiæ, l. v. Opp. tom. ii. p. 400) I

read of the consuls and tribunes of the xth century. Both

Blondus, and even Sigonius, too freely copied the classic method

of supplying from reason or fancy the deficiency of records.]

31 (return) [ In the panegyric of Berengarius (Muratori, Script.

Rer. Ital. tom. ii. P. i. p. 408) a Roman is mentioned as

consulis natus in the beginning of the xth century. Muratori

(Dissert. v.) discovers, in the years 952 and 956, Gratianus in

Dei nomine consul et dux, Georgius consul et dux; and in 1015,

Romanus, brother of Gregory VIII., proudly, but vaguely, styles

himself consul et dux et omnium Roma norum senator.]

32 (return) [ As late as the xth century, the Greek emperors

conferred on the dukes of Venice, Naples, Amalphi, &c., the title

of upatoV or consuls, (see Chron. Sagornini, passim;) and the

successors of Charlemagne would not abdicate any of their

prerogative. But in general the names of _consul_ and _senator_,

which may be found among the French and Germans, signify no more

than count and lord, (_Signeur_, Ducange Glossar.) The monkish

writers are often ambitious of fine classic words.]

33 (return) [ The most constitutional form is a diploma of Otho

III., (A. D 998,) consulibus senatûs populique Romani; but the

act is probably spurious. At the coronation of Henry I., A.D.

1014, the historian Dithmar (apud Muratori, Dissert. xxiii.)

describes him, a senatoribus duodecim vallatum, quorum sex rasi

barbâ, alii prolixâ, mystice incedebant cum baculis. The senate

is mentioned in the panegyric of Berengarius, (p. 406.)]

34 (return) [ In ancient Rome the equestrian order was not ranked

with the senate and people as a third branch of the republic till

the consulship of Cicero, who assumes the merit of the

establishment, (Plin. Hist. Natur. xxxiii. 3. Beaufort,

République Romaine, tom. i. p. 144—155.)]

35 (return) [ The republican plan of Arnold of Brescia is thus

stated by Gunther:—

Quin etiam titulos urbis renovare vetustos; Nomine

plebeio secernere nomen equestre, Jura tribunorum,

sanctum reparare senatum, Et senio fessas mutasque

reponere leges. Lapsa ruinosis, et adhuc pendentia muris

Reddere primævo Capitolia prisca nitori.

But of these reformations, some were no more than ideas, others

no more than words.]

In the revolution of the twelfth century, which gave a new

existence and æra to Rome, we may observe the real and important

events that marked or confirmed her political independence. I.

The Capitoline hill, one of her seven eminences, 36 is about four

hundred yards in length, and two hundred in breadth. A flight of

a hundred steps led to the summit of the Tarpeian rock; and far

steeper was the ascent before the declivities had been smoothed

and the precipices filled by the ruins of fallen edifices. From

the earliest ages, the Capitol had been used as a temple in

peace, a fortress in war: after the loss of the city, it

maintained a siege against the victorious Gauls, and the

sanctuary of the empire was occupied, assaulted, and burnt, in

the civil wars of Vitellius and Vespasian. 37 The temples of

Jupiter and his kindred deities had crumbled into dust; their

place was supplied by monasteries and houses; and the solid

walls, the long and shelving porticos, were decayed or ruined by

the lapse of time. It was the first act of the Romans, an act of

freedom, to restore the strength, though not the beauty, of the

Capitol; to fortify the seat of their arms and counsels; and as

often as they ascended the hill, the coldest minds must have

glowed with the remembrance of their ancestors. II. The first

Cæsars had been invested with the exclusive coinage of the gold

and silver; to the senate they abandoned the baser metal of

bronze or copper: 38 the emblems and legends were inscribed on a

more ample field by the genius of flattery; and the prince was

relieved from the care of celebrating his own virtues. The

successors of Diocletian despised even the flattery of the

senate: their royal officers at Rome, and in the provinces,

assumed the sole direction of the mint; and the same prerogative

was inherited by the Gothic kings of Italy, and the long series

of the Greek, the French, and the German dynasties. After an

abdication of eight hundred years, the Roman senate asserted this

honorable and lucrative privilege; which was tacitly renounced by

the popes, from Paschal the Second to the establishment of their

residence beyond the Alps. Some of these republican coins of the

twelfth and thirteenth centuries are shown in the cabinets of the

curious. On one of these, a gold medal, Christ is depictured

holding in his left hand a book with this inscription: “The vow

of the Roman senate and people: Rome the capital of the world;”

on the reverse, St. Peter delivering a banner to a kneeling

senator in his cap and gown, with the name and arms of his family

impressed on a shield. 39 III. With the empire, the præfect of

the city had declined to a municipal officer; yet he still

exercised in the last appeal the civil and criminal jurisdiction;

and a drawn sword, which he received from the successors of Otho,

was the mode of his investiture and the emblem of his functions.

40 The dignity was confined to the noble families of Rome: the

choice of the people was ratified by the pope; but a triple oath

of fidelity must have often embarrassed the præfect in the

conflict of adverse duties. 41 A servant, in whom they possessed

but a third share, was dismissed by the independent Romans: in

his place they elected a patrician; but this title, which

Charlemagne had not disdained, was too lofty for a citizen or a

subject; and, after the first fervor of rebellion, they consented

without reluctance to the restoration of the præfect. About fifty

years after this event, Innocent the Third, the most ambitious,

or at least the most fortunate, of the Pontiffs, delivered the

Romans and himself from this badge of foreign dominion: he

invested the præfect with a banner instead of a sword, and

absolved him from all dependence of oaths or service to the

German emperors. 42 In his place an ecclesiastic, a present or

future cardinal, was named by the pope to the civil government of

Rome; but his jurisdiction has been reduced to a narrow compass;

and in the days of freedom, the right or exercise was derived

from the senate and people. IV. After the revival of the senate,

43 the conscript fathers (if I may use the expression) were

invested with the legislative and executive power; but their

views seldom reached beyond the present day; and that day was

most frequently disturbed by violence and tumult. In its utmost

plenitude, the order or assembly consisted of fifty-six senators,

44 the most eminent of whom were distinguished by the title of

counsellors: they were nominated, perhaps annually, by the

people; and a previous choice of their electors, ten persons in

each region, or parish, might afford a basis for a free and

permanent constitution. The popes, who in this tempest submitted

rather to bend than to break, confirmed by treaty the

establishment and privileges of the senate, and expected from

time, peace, and religion, the restoration of their government.

The motives of public and private interest might sometimes draw

from the Romans an occasional and temporary sacrifice of their

claims; and they renewed their oath of allegiance to the

successor of St. Peter and Constantine, the lawful head of the

church and the republic. 45

36 (return) [ After many disputes among the antiquaries of Rome,

it seems determined, that the summit of the Capitoline hill next

the river is strictly the Mons Tarpeius, the Arx; and that on the

other summit, the church and convent of Araceli, the barefoot

friars of St. Francis occupy the temple of Jupiter, (Nardini,

Roma Antica, l. v. c. 11—16. * Note: The authority of Nardini is

now vigorously impugned, and the question of the Arx and the

Temple of Jupiter revived, with new arguments by Niebuhr and his

accomplished follower, M. Bunsen. Roms Beschreibung, vol. iii. p.

12, et seqq.—M.]

37 (return) [ Tacit. Hist. iii. 69, 70.]

38 (return) [ This partition of the noble and baser metals

between the emperor and senate must, however, be adopted, not as

a positive fact, but as the probable opinion of the best

antiquaries, * (see the Science des Medailles of the Père

Joubert, tom. ii. p. 208—211, in the improved and scarce edition

of the Baron de la Bastie. * Note: Dr. Cardwell (Lecture on

Ancient Coins, p. 70, et seq.) assigns convincing reasons in

support of this opinion.—M.]

39 (return) [ In his xxviith dissertation on the Antiquities of

Italy, (tom. ii. p. 559—569,) Muratori exhibits a series of the

senatorian coins, which bore the obscure names of _Affortiati_,

_Infortiati_, _Provisini_, _Paparini_. During this period, all

the popes, without excepting Boniface VIII, abstained from the

right of coining, which was resumed by his successor Benedict

XI., and regularly exercised in the court of Avignon.]

40 (return) [ A German historian, Gerard of Reicherspeg (in

Baluz. Miscell. tom. v. p. 64, apud Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands,

tom. iii. p. 265) thus describes the constitution of Rome in the

xith century: Grandiora urbis et orbis negotia spectant ad

Romanum pontificem itemque ad Romanum Imperatorem, sive illius

vicarium urbis præfectum, qui de suâ dignitate respicit utrumque,

videlicet dominum papam cui facit hominum, et dominum imperatorem

a quo accipit suæ potestatis insigne, scilicet gladium exertum.]

41 (return) [ The words of a contemporary writer (Pandulph.

Pisan. in Vit. Paschal. II. p. 357, 358) describe the election

and oath of the præfect in 1118, inconsultis patribus.... loca

præfectoria.... Laudes præfectoriæ.... comitiorum applausum....

juraturum populo in ambonem sublevant.... confirmari eum in urbe

præfectum petunt.]

42 (return) [ Urbis præfectum ad ligiam fidelitatem recepit, et

per mantum quod illi donavit de præfecturâ eum publice

investivit, qui usque ad id tempus juramento fidelitatis

imperatori fuit obligatus et ab eo præfecturæ tenuit honorem,

(Gesta Innocent. III. in Muratori, tom. iii. P. i. p. 487.)]

43 (return) [ See Otho Frising. Chron. vii. 31, de Gest.

Frederic. I., l. i. c. 27.]

44 (return) [ Cur countryman, Roger Hoveden, speaks of the

single senators, of the _Capuzzi_ family, &c., quorum temporibus

melius regebatur Roma quam nunc (A.D. 1194) est temporibus lvi.

senatorum, (Ducange, Gloss. tom. vi. p. 191, Senatores.)]

45 (return) [ Muratori (dissert. xlii. tom. iii. p. 785—788) has

published an original treaty: Concordia inter D. nostrum papam

Clementem III. et senatores populi Romani super regalibus et

aliis dignitatibus urbis, &c., anno 44º senatûs. The senate

speaks, and speaks with authority: Reddimus ad præsens....

habebimus.... dabitis presbetria.... jurabimus pacem et

fidelitatem, &c. A chartula de Tenementis Tusculani, dated in the

47th year of the same æra, and confirmed decreto amplissimi

ordinis senatûs, acclamatione P. R. publice Capitolio

consistentis. It is there we find the difference of senatores

consiliarii and simple senators, (Muratori, dissert. xlii. tom.

iii. p. 787—789.)]

The union and vigor of a public council was dissolved in a

lawless city; and the Romans soon adopted a more strong and

simple mode of administration. They condensed the name and

authority of the senate in a single magistrate, or two

colleagues; and as they were changed at the end of a year, or of

six months, the greatness of the trust was compensated by the

shortness of the term. But in this transient reign, the senators

of Rome indulged their avarice and ambition: their justice was

perverted by the interest of their family and faction; and as

they punished only their enemies, they were obeyed only by their

adherents. Anarchy, no longer tempered by the pastoral care of

their bishop, admonished the Romans that they were incapable of

governing themselves; and they sought abroad those blessings

which they were hopeless of finding at home. In the same age, and

from the same motives, most of the Italian republics were

prompted to embrace a measure, which, however strange it may

seem, was adapted to their situation, and productive of the most

salutary effects. 46 They chose, in some foreign but friendly

city, an impartial magistrate of noble birth and unblemished

character, a soldier and a statesman, recommended by the voice of

fame and his country, to whom they delegated for a time the

supreme administration of peace and war. The compact between the

governor and the governed was sealed with oaths and

subscriptions; and the duration of his power, the measure of his

stipend, the nature of their mutual obligations, were defined

with scrupulous precision. They swore to obey him as their lawful

superior: he pledged his faith to unite the indifference of a

stranger with the zeal of a patriot. At his choice, four or six

knights and civilians, his assessors in arms and justice,

attended the _Podesta_, 47 who maintained at his own expense a

decent retinue of servants and horses: his wife, his son, his

brother, who might bias the affections of the judge, were left

behind: during the exercise of his office he was not permitted to

purchase land, to contract an alliance, or even to accept an

invitation in the house of a citizen; nor could he honorably

depart till he had satisfied the complaints that might be urged

against his government.

46 (return) [ Muratori (dissert. xlv. tom. iv. p. 64—92) has

fully explained this mode of government; and the _Occulus

Pastoralis_, which he has given at the end, is a treatise or

sermon on the duties of these foreign magistrates.]

47 (return) [ In the Latin writers, at least of the silver age,

the title of _Potestas_ was transferred from the office to the

magistrate:—

Hujus qui trahitur prætextam sumere mavis; An Fidenarum

Gabiorumque esse _Potestas_. Juvenal. Satir. x. 99.11]

Chapter LXIX: State Of Rome From The Twelfth Century.—Part III.

It was thus, about the middle of the thirteenth century, that the

Romans called from Bologna the senator Brancaleone, 48 whose fame

and merit have been rescued from oblivion by the pen of an

English historian. A just anxiety for his reputation, a clear

foresight of the difficulties of the task, had engaged him to

refuse the honor of their choice: the statutes of Rome were

suspended, and his office prolonged to the term of three years.

By the guilty and licentious he was accused as cruel; by the

clergy he was suspected as partial; but the friends of peace and

order applauded the firm and upright magistrate by whom those

blessings were restored. No criminals were so powerful as to

brave, so obscure as to elude, the justice of the senator. By his

sentence two nobles of the Annibaldi family were executed on a

gibbet; and he inexorably demolished, in the city and

neighborhood, one hundred and forty towers, the strong shelters

of rapine and mischief. The bishop, as a simple bishop, was

compelled to reside in his diocese; and the standard of

Brancaleone was displayed in the field with terror and effect.

His services were repaid by the ingratitude of a people unworthy

of the happiness which they enjoyed. By the public robbers, whom

he had provoked for their sake, the Romans were excited to depose

and imprison their benefactor; nor would his life have been

spared, if Bologna had not possessed a pledge for his safety.

Before his departure, the prudent senator had required the

exchange of thirty hostages of the noblest families of Rome: on

the news of his danger, and at the prayer of his wife, they were

more strictly guarded; and Bologna, in the cause of honor,

sustained the thunders of a papal interdict. This generous

resistance allowed the Romans to compare the present with the

past; and Brancaleone was conducted from the prison to the

Capitol amidst the acclamations of a repentant people. The

remainder of his government was firm and fortunate; and as soon

as envy was appeased by death, his head, enclosed in a precious

vase, was deposited on a lofty column of marble. 49

48 (return) [ See the life and death of Brancaleone, in the

Historia Major of Matthew Paris, p. 741, 757, 792, 797, 799, 810,

823, 833, 836, 840. The multitude of pilgrims and suitors

connected Rome and St. Albans, and the resentment of the English

clergy prompted them to rejoice when ever the popes were humbled

and oppressed.]

49 (return) [ Matthew Paris thus ends his account: Caput vero

ipsius Brancaleonis in vase pretioso super marmoream columnam

collocatum, in signum sui valoris et probitatis, quasi reliquias,

superstitiose nimis et pompose sustulerunt. Fuerat enim

superborum potentum et malefactorum urbis malleus et extirpator,

et populi protector et defensor veritatis et justitiæ imitator et

amator, (p. 840.) A biographer of Innocent IV. (Muratori, Script.

tom. iii. P. i. p. 591, 592) draws a less favorable portrait of

this Ghibeline senator.]

The impotence of reason and virtue recommended in Italy a more

effectual choice: instead of a private citizen, to whom they

yielded a voluntary and precarious obedience, the Romans elected

for their senator some prince of independent power, who could

defend them from their enemies and themselves. Charles of Anjou

and Provence, the most ambitious and warlike monarch of the age,

accepted at the same time the kingdom of Naples from the pope,

and the office of senator from the Roman people. 50 As he passed

through the city, in his road to victory, he received their oath

of allegiance, lodged in the Lateran palace, and smoothed in a

short visit the harsh features of his despotic character. Yet

even Charles was exposed to the inconstancy of the people, who

saluted with the same acclamations the passage of his rival, the

unfortunate Conradin; and a powerful avenger, who reigned in the

Capitol, alarmed the fears and jealousy of the popes. The

absolute term of his life was superseded by a renewal every third

year; and the enmity of Nicholas the Third obliged the Sicilian

king to abdicate the government of Rome. In his bull, a perpetual

law, the imperious pontiff asserts the truth, validity, and use

of the donation of Constantine, not less essential to the peace

of the city than to the independence of the church; establishes

the annual election of the senator; and formally disqualifies all

emperors, kings, princes, and persons of an eminent and

conspicuous rank. 51 This prohibitory clause was repealed in his

own behalf by Martin the Fourth, who humbly solicited the

suffrage of the Romans. In the presence, and by the authority, of

the people, two electors conferred, not on the pope, but on the

noble and faithful Martin, the dignity of senator, and the

supreme administration of the republic, 52 to hold during his

natural life, and to exercise at pleasure by himself or his

deputies. About fifty years afterwards, the same title was

granted to the emperor Lewis of Bavaria; and the liberty of Rome

was acknowledged by her two sovereigns, who accepted a municipal

office in the government of their own metropolis.

50 (return) [ The election of Charles of Anjou to the office of

perpetual senator of Rome is mentioned by the historians in the

viiith volume of the Collection of Muratori, by Nicholas de

Jamsilla, (p. 592,) the monk of Padua, (p. 724,) Sabas Malaspina,

(l. ii. c. 9, p. 308,) and Ricordano Malespini, (c. 177, p.

999.)]

51 (return) [ The high-sounding bull of Nicholas III., which

founds his temporal sovereignty on the donation of Constantine,

is still extant; and as it has been inserted by Boniface VIII. in

the _Sexte_ of the Decretals, it must be received by the

Catholics, or at least by the Papists, as a sacred and perpetual

law.]

52 (return) [ I am indebted to Fleury (Hist. Ecclés. tom. xviii.

p. 306) for an extract of this Roman act, which he has taken from

the Ecclesiastical Annals of Odericus Raynaldus, A.D. 1281, No.

14, 15.]

In the first moments of rebellion, when Arnold of Brescia had

inflamed their minds against the church, the Romans artfully

labored to conciliate the favor of the empire, and to recommend

their merit and services in the cause of Cæsar. The style of

their ambassadors to Conrad the Third and Frederic the First is a

mixture of flattery and pride, the tradition and the ignorance of

their own history. 53 After some complaint of his silence and

neglect, they exhort the former of these princes to pass the

Alps, and assume from their hands the Imperial crown. “We beseech

your majesty not to disdain the humility of your sons and

vassals, not to listen to the accusations of our common enemies;

who calumniate the senate as hostile to your throne, who sow the

seeds of discord, that they may reap the harvest of destruction.

The pope and the _Sicilian_ are united in an impious league to

oppose _our_ liberty and _your_ coronation. With the blessing of

God, our zeal and courage has hitherto defeated their attempts.

Of their powerful and factious adherents, more especially the

Frangipani, we have taken by assault the houses and turrets: some

of these are occupied by our troops, and some are levelled with

the ground. The Milvian bridge, which they had broken, is

restored and fortified for your safe passage; and your army may

enter the city without being annoyed from the castle of St.

Angelo. All that we have done, and all that we design, is for

your honor and service, in the loyal hope, that you will speedily

appear in person, to vindicate those rights which have been

invaded by the clergy, to revive the dignity of the empire, and

to surpass the fame and glory of your predecessors. May you fix

your residence in Rome, the capital of the world; give laws to

Italy, and the Teutonic kingdom; and imitate the example of

Constantine and Justinian, 54 who, by the vigor of the senate and

people, obtained the sceptre of the earth.” 55 But these splendid

and fallacious wishes were not cherished by Conrad the

Franconian, whose eyes were fixed on the Holy Land, and who died

without visiting Rome soon after his return from the Holy Land.

53 (return) [ These letters and speeches are preserved by Otho

bishop of Frisingen, (Fabric. Bibliot. Lat. Med. et Infim. tom.

v. p. 186, 187,) perhaps the noblest of historians: he was son of

Leopold marquis of Austria; his mother, Agnes, was daughter of

the emperor Henry IV., and he was half-brother and uncle to

Conrad III. and Frederic I. He has left, in seven books, a

Chronicle of the Times; in two, the Gesta Frederici I., the last

of which is inserted in the vith volume of Muratori’s

historians.]

54 (return) [ We desire (said the ignorant Romans) to restore the

empire in um statum, quo fuit tempore Constantini et Justiniani,

qui totum orbem vigore senatûs et populi Romani suis tenuere

manibus.]

55 (return) [ Otho Frising. de Gestis Frederici I. l. i. c. 28,

p. 662—664.]

His nephew and successor, Frederic Barbarossa, was more ambitious

of the Imperial crown; nor had any of the successors of Otho

acquired such absolute sway over the kingdom of Italy. Surrounded

by his ecclesiastical and secular princes, he gave audience in

his camp at Sutri to the ambassadors of Rome, who thus addressed

him in a free and florid oration: “Incline your ear to the queen

of cities; approach with a peaceful and friendly mind the

precincts of Rome, which has cast away the yoke of the clergy,

and is impatient to crown her legitimate emperor. Under your

auspicious influence, may the primitive times be restored. Assert

the prerogatives of the eternal city, and reduce under her

monarchy the insolence of the world. You are not ignorant, that,

in former ages, by the wisdom of the senate, by the valor and

discipline of the equestrian order, she extended her victorious

arms to the East and West, beyond the Alps, and over the islands

of the ocean. By our sins, in the absence of our princes, the

noble institution of the senate has sunk in oblivion; and with

our prudence, our strength has likewise decreased. We have

revived the senate, and the equestrian order: the counsels of the

one, the arms of the other, will be devoted to your person and

the service of the empire. Do you not hear the language of the

Roman matron? You were a guest, I have adopted you as a citizen;

a Transalpine stranger, I have elected you for my sovereign; 56

and given you myself, and all that is mine. Your first and most

sacred duty is to swear and subscribe, that you will shed your

blood for the republic; that you will maintain in peace and

justice the laws of the city and the charters of your

predecessors; and that you will reward with five thousand pounds

of silver the faithful senators who shall proclaim your titles in

the Capitol. With the name, assume the character, of Augustus.”

The flowers of Latin rhetoric were not yet exhausted; but

Frederic, impatient of their vanity, interrupted the orators in

the high tone of royalty and conquest. “Famous indeed have been

the fortitude and wisdom of the ancient Romans; but your speech

is not seasoned with wisdom, and I could wish that fortitude were

conspicuous in your actions. Like all sublunary things, Rome has

felt the vicissitudes of time and fortune. Your noblest families

were translated to the East, to the royal city of Constantine;

and the remains of your strength and freedom have long since been

exhausted by the Greeks and Franks. Are you desirous of beholding

the ancient glory of Rome, the gravity of the senate, the spirit

of the knights, the discipline of the camp, the valor of the

legions? you will find them in the German republic. It is not

empire, naked and alone, the ornaments and virtues of empire have

likewise migrated beyond the Alps to a more deserving people: 57

they will be employed in your defence, but they claim your

obedience. You pretend that myself or my predecessors have been

invited by the Romans: you mistake the word; they were not

invited, they were implored. From its foreign and domestic

tyrants, the city was rescued by Charlemagne and Otho, whose

ashes repose in our country; and their dominion was the price of

your deliverance. Under that dominion your ancestors lived and

died. I claim by the right of inheritance and possession, and who

shall dare to extort you from my hands? Is the hand of the Franks

58 and Germans enfeebled by age? Am I vanquished? Am I a captive?

Am I not encompassed with the banners of a potent and invincible

army? You impose conditions on your master; you require oaths: if

the conditions are just, an oath is superfluous; if unjust, it is

criminal. Can you doubt my equity? It is extended to the meanest

of my subjects. Will not my sword be unsheathed in the defence of

the Capitol? By that sword the northern kingdom of Denmark has

been restored to the Roman empire. You prescribe the measure and

the objects of my bounty, which flows in a copious but a

voluntary stream. All will be given to patient merit; all will be

denied to rude importunity.” 59 Neither the emperor nor the

senate could maintain these lofty pretensions of dominion and

liberty. United with the pope, and suspicious of the Romans,

Frederic continued his march to the Vatican; his coronation was

disturbed by a sally from the Capitol; and if the numbers and

valor of the Germans prevailed in the bloody conflict, he could

not safely encamp in the presence of a city of which he styled

himself the sovereign. About twelve years afterwards, he besieged

Rome, to seat an antipope in the chair of St. Peter; and twelve

Pisan galleys were introduced into the Tyber: but the senate and

people were saved by the arts of negotiation and the progress of

disease; nor did Frederic or his successors reiterate the hostile

attempt. Their laborious reigns were exercised by the popes, the

crusades, and the independence of Lombardy and Germany: they

courted the alliance of the Romans; and Frederic the Second

offered in the Capitol the great standard, the _Caroccio_ of

Milan. 60 After the extinction of the house of Swabia, they were

banished beyond the Alps: and their last coronations betrayed the

impotence and poverty of the Teutonic Cæsars. 61

56 (return) [ Hospes eras, civem feci. Advena fuisti ex

Transalpinis partibus principem constitui.]

57 (return) [ Non cessit nobis nudum imperium, virtute sua

amictum venit, ornamenta sua secum traxit. Penes nos sunt

consules tui, &c. Cicero or Livy would not have rejected these

images, the eloquence of a Barbarian born and educated in the

Hercynian forest.]

58 (return) [ Otho of Frisingen, who surely understood the

language of the court and diet of Germany, speaks of the Franks

in the xiith century as the reigning nation, (Proceres Franci,

equites Franci, manus Francorum:) he adds, however, the epithet

of _Teutonici_.]

59 (return) [ Otho Frising. de Gestis Frederici I., l. ii. c. 22,

p. 720—733. These original and authentic acts I have translated

and abridged with freedom, yet with fidelity.]

60 (return) [ From the Chronicles of Ricobaldo and Francis Pipin,

Muratori (dissert. xxvi. tom. ii. p. 492) has translated this

curious fact with the doggerel verses that accompanied the gift:—

Ave decus orbis, ave! victus tibi destinor, ave! Currus

ab Augusto Frederico Cæsare justo. Væ Mediolanum! jam

sentis spernere vanum Imperii vires, proprias tibi

tollere vires. Ergo triumphorum urbs potes memor esse

priorum Quos tibi mittebant reges qui bella gerebant.

Ne si dee tacere (I now use the Italian Dissertations, tom. i. p.

444) che nell’ anno 1727, una copia desso Caroccio in marmo

dianzi ignoto si scopri, nel campidoglio, presso alle carcere di

quel luogo, dove Sisto V. l’avea falto rinchiudere. Stava esso

posto sopra quatro colonne di marmo fino colla sequente

inscrizione, &c.; to the same purpose as the old inscription.]

61 (return) [ The decline of the Imperial arms and authority in

Italy is related with impartial learning in the Annals of

Muratori, (tom. x. xi. xii.;) and the reader may compare his

narrative with the Histoires des Allemands (tom. iii. iv.) by

Schmidt, who has deserved the esteem of his countrymen.]

Under the reign of Adrian, when the empire extended from the

Euphrates to the ocean, from Mount Atlas to the Grampian hills, a

fanciful historian 62 amused the Romans with the picture of their

ancient wars. “There was a time,” says Florus, “when Tibur and

Præneste, our summer retreats, were the objects of hostile vows

in the Capitol, when we dreaded the shades of the Arician groves,

when we could triumph without a blush over the nameless villages

of the Sabines and Latins, and even Corioli could afford a title

not unworthy of a victorious general.” The pride of his

contemporaries was gratified by the contrast of the past and the

present: they would have been humbled by the prospect of

futurity; by the prediction, that after a thousand years, Rome,

despoiled of empire, and contracted to her primæval limits, would

renew the same hostilities, on the same ground which was then

decorated with her villas and gardens. The adjacent territory on

either side of the Tyber was always claimed, and sometimes

possessed, as the patrimony of St. Peter; but the barons assumed

a lawless independence, and the cities too faithfully copied the

revolt and discord of the metropolis. In the twelfth and

thirteenth centuries the Romans incessantly labored to reduce or

destroy the contumacious vassals of the church and senate; and if

their headstrong and selfish ambition was moderated by the pope,

he often encouraged their zeal by the alliance of his spiritual

arms. Their warfare was that of the first consuls and dictators,

who were taken from the plough. The assembled in arms at the foot

of the Capitol; sallied from the gates, plundered or burnt the

harvests of their neighbors, engaged in tumultuary conflict, and

returned home after an expedition of fifteen or twenty days.

Their sieges were tedious and unskilful: in the use of victory,

they indulged the meaner passions of jealousy and revenge; and

instead of adopting the valor, they trampled on the misfortunes,

of their adversaries. The captives, in their shirts, with a rope

round their necks, solicited their pardon: the fortifications,

and even the buildings, of the rival cities, were demolished, and

the inhabitants were scattered in the adjacent villages. It was

thus that the seats of the cardinal bishops, Porto, Ostia,

Albanum, Tusculum, Præneste, and Tibur or Tivoli, were

successively overthrown by the ferocious hostility of the Romans.

63 Of these, 64 Porto and Ostia, the two keys of the Tyber, are

still vacant and desolate: the marshy and unwholesome banks are

peopled with herds of buffaloes, and the river is lost to every

purpose of navigation and trade. The hills, which afford a shady

retirement from the autumnal heats, have again smiled with the

blessings of peace; Frescati has arisen near the ruins of

Tusculum; Tibur or Tivoli has resumed the honors of a city, 65

and the meaner towns of Albano and Palestrina are decorated with

the villas of the cardinals and princes of Rome. In the work of

destruction, the ambition of the Romans was often checked and

repulsed by the neighboring cities and their allies: in the first

siege of Tibur, they were driven from their camp; and the battles

of Tusculum 66 and Viterbo 67 might be compared in their relative

state to the memorable fields of Thrasymene and Cannæ. In the

first of these petty wars, thirty thousand Romans were overthrown

by a thousand German horse, whom Frederic Barbarossa had detached

to the relief of Tusculum: and if we number the slain at three,

the prisoners at two, thousand, we shall embrace the most

authentic and moderate account. Sixty-eight years afterwards they

marched against Viterbo in the ecclesiastical state with the

whole force of the city; by a rare coalition the Teutonic eagle

was blended, in the adverse banners, with the keys of St. Peter;

and the pope’s auxiliaries were commanded by a count of Thoulouse

and a bishop of Winchester. The Romans were discomfited with

shame and slaughter: but the English prelate must have indulged

the vanity of a pilgrim, if he multiplied their numbers to one

hundred, and their loss in the field to thirty, thousand men. Had

the policy of the senate and the discipline of the legions been

restored with the Capitol, the divided condition of Italy would

have offered the fairest opportunity of a second conquest. But in

arms, the modern Romans were not _above_, and in arts, they were

far _below_, the common level of the neighboring republics. Nor

was their warlike spirit of any long continuance; after some

irregular sallies, they subsided in the national apathy, in the

neglect of military institutions, and in the disgraceful and

dangerous use of foreign mercenaries.

62 (return) [ Tibur nunc suburbanum, et æstivæ Præneste deliciæ,

nuncupatis in Capitolio votis petebantur. The whole passage of

Florus (l. i. c. 11) may be read with pleasure, and has deserved

the praise of a man of genius, (uvres de Montesquieu, tom. iii.

p. 634, 635, quarto edition.)]

63 (return) [ Ne a feritate Romanorum, sicut fuerant Hostienses,

Portuenses, Tusculanenses, Albanenses, Labicenses, et nuper

Tiburtini destruerentur, (Matthew Paris, p. 757.) These events

are marked in the Annals and Index (the xviiith volume) of

Muratori.]

64 (return) [ For the state or ruin of these suburban cities, the

banks of the Tyber, &c., see the lively picture of the P. Labat,

(Voyage en Espagne et en Italiæ,) who had long resided in the

neighborhood of Rome, and the more accurate description of which

P. Eschinard (Roma, 1750, in octavo) has added to the

topographical map of Cingolani.]

65 (return) [ Labat (tom. iii. p. 233) mentions a recent decree

of the Roman government, which has severely mortified the pride

and poverty of Tivoli: in civitate Tiburtinâ non vivitur

civiliter.]

66 (return) [ I depart from my usual method, of quoting only by

the date the Annals of Muratori, in consideration of the critical

balance in which he has weighed nine contemporary writers who

mention the battle of Tusculum, (tom. x. p. 42—44.)]

67 (return) [ Matthew Paris, p. 345. This bishop of Winchester

was Peter de Rupibus, who occupied the see thirty-two years,

(A.D. 1206—1238.) and is described, by the English historian, as

a soldier and a statesman. (p. 178, 399.)]

Ambition is a weed of quick and early vegetation in the vineyard

of Christ. Under the first Christian princes, the chair of St.

Peter was disputed by the votes, the venality, the violence, of a

popular election: the sanctuaries of Rome were polluted with

blood; and, from the third to the twelfth century, the church was

distracted by the mischief of frequent schisms. As long as the

final appeal was determined by the civil magistrate, these

mischiefs were transient and local: the merits were tried by

equity or favor; nor could the unsuccessful competitor long

disturb the triumph of his rival. But after the emperors had been

divested of their prerogatives, after a maxim had been

established that the vicar of Christ is amenable to no earthly

tribunal, each vacancy of the holy see might involve Christendom

in controversy and war. The claims of the cardinals and inferior

clergy, of the nobles and people, were vague and litigious: the

freedom of choice was overruled by the tumults of a city that no

longer owned or obeyed a superior. On the decease of a pope, two

factions proceeded in different churches to a double election:

the number and weight of votes, the priority of time, the merit

of the candidates, might balance each other: the most respectable

of the clergy were divided; and the distant princes, who bowed

before the spiritual throne, could not distinguish the spurious,

from the legitimate, idol. The emperors were often the authors of

the schism, from the political motive of opposing a friendly to a

hostile pontiff; and each of the competitors was reduced to

suffer the insults of his enemies, who were not awed by

conscience, and to purchase the support of his adherents, who

were instigated by avarice or ambition a peaceful and perpetual

succession was ascertained by Alexander the Third, 68 who finally

abolished the tumultuary votes of the clergy and people, and

defined the right of election in the sole college of cardinals.

69 The three orders of bishops, priests, and deacons, were

assimilated to each other by this important privilege; the

parochial clergy of Rome obtained the first rank in the

hierarchy: they were indifferently chosen among the nations of

Christendom; and the possession of the richest benefices, of the

most important bishoprics, was not incompatible with their title

and office. The senators of the Catholic church, the coadjutors

and legates of the supreme pontiff, were robed in purple, the

symbol of martyrdom or royalty; they claimed a proud equality

with kings; and their dignity was enhanced by the smallness of

their number, which, till the reign of Leo the Tenth, seldom

exceeded twenty or twenty-five persons. By this wise regulation,

all doubt and scandal were removed, and the root of schism was so

effectually destroyed, that in a period of six hundred years a

double choice has only once divided the unity of the sacred

college. But as the concurrence of two thirds of the votes had

been made necessary, the election was often delayed by the

private interest and passions of the cardinals; and while they

prolonged their independent reign, the Christian world was left

destitute of a head. A vacancy of almost three years had preceded

the elevation of George the Tenth, who resolved to prevent the

future abuse; and his bull, after some opposition, has been

consecrated in the code of the canon law. 70 Nine days are

allowed for the obsequies of the deceased pope, and the arrival

of the absent cardinals; on the tenth, they are imprisoned, each

with one domestic, in a common apartment or _conclave_, without

any separation of walls or curtains: a small window is reserved

for the introduction of necessaries; but the door is locked on

both sides and guarded by the magistrates of the city, to seclude

them from all correspondence with the world. If the election be

not consummated in three days, the luxury of their table is

contracted to a single dish at dinner and supper; and after the

eighth day, they are reduced to a scanty allowance of bread,

water, and wine. During the vacancy of the holy see, the

cardinals are prohibited from touching the revenues, or assuming,

unless in some rare emergency, the government of the church: all

agreements and promises among the electors are formally annulled;

and their integrity is fortified by their solemn oath and the

prayers of the Catholics. Some articles of inconvenient or

superfluous rigor have been gradually relaxed, but the principle

of confinement is vigorous and entire: they are still urged, by

the personal motives of health and freedom, to accelerate the

moment of their deliverance; and the improvement of ballot or

secret votes has wrapped the struggles of the conclave 71 in the

silky veil of charity and politeness. 72 By these institutions

the Romans were excluded from the election of their prince and

bishop; and in the fever of wild and precarious liberty, they

seemed insensible of the loss of this inestimable privilege. The

emperor Lewis of Bavaria revived the example of the great Otho.

After some negotiation with the magistrates, the Roman people

were assembled 73 in the square before St. Peter’s: the pope of

Avignon, John the Twenty-second, was deposed: the choice of his

successor was ratified by their consent and applause. They freely

voted for a new law, that their bishop should never be absent

more than three months in the year, and two days’ journey from

the city; and that if he neglected to return on the third

summons, the public servant should be degraded and dismissed. 74

But Lewis forgot his own debility and the prejudices of the

times: beyond the precincts of a German camp, his useless phantom

was rejected; the Romans despised their own workmanship; the

antipope implored the mercy of his lawful sovereign; 75 and the

exclusive right of the cardinals was more firmly established by

this unseasonable attack.

68 (return) [ See Mosheim, Institut. Histor. Ecclesiast. p. 401,

403. Alexander himself had nearly been the victim of a contested

election; and the doubtful merits of Innocent had only

preponderated by the weight of genius and learning which St.

Bernard cast into the scale, (see his life and writings.)]

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) · 第 77 / 79 章

While they expected the descent of the tardy angel, the doors