himself, a Frenchman of good family and aristocratic prejudice. His
father was the Count of Geneva, his mother Mahault of Auvergne and
Boulogne. In his eyes the revolt of subjects was a crime beyond excuse;
and when, as in the present case, there was added to the denial of the
divine right of sovereigns a heretic apostasy from the dominion of the
Church, his indignation dried the founts of pity in his heart. The
history of his whole life proves the Cardinal to be not naturally cruel,
nor even vindictive; but his campaign in Italy was terrible. With the
Frenchman’s distrust of the Italians, Robert refused to engage Italian
condottieri; he knew that these companies, changing masters continually,
were gentle to the enemy of the moment, the brother-in-arms of yesterday
and to-morrow. The Cardinal, fiercely in earnest, engaged the Breton
Jehan de Malestroit who had cried, “Where the sun can enter, I can
enter!” and the Englishman, Sir John Hawkwood, with his White Company
the most terrible of the day. Supported by these pitiless auxiliaries,
Robert of Geneva quenched in blood the fierce resistance of Florence,
Bologna, Cesena, Faenza, and other rebellious cities. Massacre after
massacre, sack and pillage innumerable marked his progress; but the
voice of the Churchman was never heard to cry for mercy. He had no
admiration for the obstinate courage of the besieged; they were rebels,
and beyond pity. “I will wash my hands in their blood!” he cried at
Bologna and at Cesena there were 5,000 slain. These things made the name
of the young Cardinal an abomination in Italy. But they secured in one
campaign the submission of the Italians.
The laurels of Robert of Geneva still were green when, on March 27,
1378, Gregory the Eleventh died at Anagni. The Pope had been on the
point of returning to Avignon; and the necessity of their prolonged
residence in savage Rome, and the fact that the Conclave must be held
there, fell with the weight of misfortune upon the impatient Cardinals.
It was the first Conclave that had been held in Rome for fifty-seven
years, and the Roman populace clamoured in the streets for a Roman Pope.
But among the sixteen Cardinals of the Conclave, eleven were French.
They might easily have carried the necessary majority of two-thirds had
they been of one mind among themselves; but the hatred of North and
South did not merely divide the French from the Italians; it divided the
Frenchmen among themselves. Gregory and Clement had both been Limousins,
and the majority of the French Cardinals decided to continue this
tradition. The remnant, however—the Gallicans, as they called
themselves—preferred even an Italian to a Limousin; and their spokesman,
Robert of Geneva, made overtures to the Trans-Alpines. The result was
the election of a man of no party, a man who was not even a Cardinal.
Bartolommeo Prignano, Archbishop of Bari, was an Italian; but he was
something more than an Italian; he was a Neapolitan, a subject of Queen
Giovanna, and therefore presumably in favour of the French. He had lived
at Avignon, and was familiar with French customs and French policy. It
was hoped that he might prove a bond of union. Scarcely was his election
accomplished, in haste, amid the noises of the shouting mob outside,
when the impatient Romans burst into the Conclave, clamouring for a
Roman Pope. The Cardinals dared not confess their choice of a
Neapolitan, and in their terror they lied, imposing on the people the
Cardinal of St. Peter’s, a Roman born. This fraud, together with the
constraint put on the Conclave by the violence of the mob, were a few
months later alleged against the validity of the election of Prignano.
But at first no conscience was troubled by this irregularity. For six
months the Archbishop of Bari wore an undisputed tiara, and Urban VI.
succeeded quietly to Gregory. Urban was zealous for reform, passionately
determined against simony, pure in his life, energetic, resolute; but
virtue has seldom been manifest in so unlovable an Avatar. The man was a
Neapolitan peasant: short, squat, coarse, and savage. He flung rude
words and violent speeches like mud in the faces of his elegant French
Cardinals. “Fool!” “Blockhead!” “Simoniacal Pharisee!”—such were the
hard nails with which he studded the ever unpalatable word Reform; and
one day, had not Robert of Geneva caught the holy father by the sleeve,
he would have struck a Cardinal in the assembled Consistory.
Robert of Geneva was thirty-six years old; he was tall, commanding, with
a handsome face and fine manners. His aristocratic urbanity veiled a
nature that did not scorn to do and dare. There could be no greater
contrast to the Pope than he, and he became the idol of the Cardinals,
although, in fact, he, the Arch-Gallican, was the distant cause of the
election of Urban. His reputation for ferocity in battle added a
prestige to his pleasant courtliness: it was he who should have been the
Pope! He would not have kept the College, throughout the sweltering
summer, in Rome where the detested Urban declared that he would live and
die. Something must be done, and at once, for Urban threatened to create
a majority of Italian Cardinals. One by one the Cardinals left Rome for
their health. Their resort was first Anagni, thence they went to Fondi.
It was an open secret in Rome wherefore they found the air so good
there. Urban got wind of their conferences, and on the 18th of September
he created twenty-eight Italian cardinals. Two days later there was a
great ceremony in the church at Fondi. The French Cardinals announced to
the world that at last a legitimate Pope had been elected in succession
to Gregory. He was, of course, a Frenchman; he was Robert of Geneva; he
was Clement VII., the first Antipope of the great Schism.
The Church was terribly divided by this news—Clement, elected by all the
French, was not repudiated by the Italian Cardinals, who, playing the
waiting game of their nation, remained neutral. Yet the contest was a
contest not of persons, but of nationalities. “The significance of
Urban’s election lay in the fact that it restored the Papacy to Rome,
and freed it from the influence of France.”[8] Catharine of Siena
clearly perceived this significance, and wrote of Clement, who was to
undo her sacred mission, as “a devil in the shape of man.” In the North
of Italy the campaign of Clement in the previous year persuaded the
decimated cities of the truth of this opinion; but the South was not
firm for Urban, and Naples openly declared herself the champion of his
rival. The confusion was not only in Italy. The Church everywhere was
shaken to its foundations. In many bishoprics there were two bishops;[9]
there was a terrible doubt in the minds of the Faithful, for of the two
Popes, one must be Antichrist, his followers heretics, and consigned to
eternal damnation. It is not too much to say that the authority of the
Church never recovered from this long and terrible questioning. The
minds of the pious turned from the Church to God; Mysticism and heresy
consoled the uncertain; and false prophets were common in the land.
Footnote 8:
Creighton, “History of the Papacy,” vol. i. p. 64.
Footnote 9:
Especially in Germany—Mayence, Breslau, Constance, Metz, Loire,
Breslau, Lübeck, &c. See Pastor., _op. cit._, book ii. p. 108, _et
seq._
Confusion in the Church was echoed by confusion in the State. England,
because of the war with France, was passionate for Urban. The Empire
also was for Urban; and Brittany, and all whose hand was against the
French. “France desires not merely the Papacy, but the universal
monarchy of the globe,” wrote Urban to the Emperor.[10] But among the
smaller states France had still her supporters; Scotland, Savoy, Naples,
Leon, and Castile followed in her wake, and declared for Clement. There
was great joy in France. Louis of Anjou, perhaps the first of European
princes to send in his adhesion to the Antipope, was consoled for the
departure of Gregory; and when the news was brought to the king, he
exclaimed, “I am Pope at last!” But the joy was the joy of princes, not
the joy of the people. The nation mourned the confusion that had fallen
on the Church, and the University of Paris wrapped itself in a
melancholy neutrality.
Footnote 10:
Sept. 6, 1382. _Vide_ Pastor., p. 108.
VALENTINE VISCONTI.
I.
Valentine Visconti, greater than Helen as the cause of battles, was born
in the Abbey of Pavia, in the year 1366. Her grandfather, Galeazzo
Visconti, had left Milan rather suddenly, being ill with gout and
“temendo la severità” of one so skilled in the use of succession-powders
as Bernabò his brother, co-tyrant with him of Lombardy. He had designed
a safe and splendid castle for himself in Pavia. While it was still
unfinished Valentine was born in the hospitable old Certosa there.[11]
Footnote 11:
At the same time there dwelt in Milan another little Valentine
Visconti, daughter of Bernabò, in after years the widowed Queen of
Cyprus, and herself an interesting and pathetic figure.
Galeazzo Visconti had taken with him from Milan his wife, Blanche of
Savoy, his little daughter Iolanthe, and his married son Giangaleazzo,
with his wife Isabelle. These last were the parents of Valentine. When
she was born her mother was sixteen and her father fifteen years of
age.[12] At her nativity there were, we are told, incredible rejoicings;
for the pride of Galeazzo Visconti was gratified by the birth of a
grandchild who was no less the grand-daughter of a King of France.
Footnote 12:
Corio on different pages puts the date of the birth of Giangaleazzo as
1352 and 1343. The first date, 1352, agrees with the account of
Galeotto del Caretto and the Deed of Majority in Corio.
The mother of Valentine was that little French princess who, six years
ago, had been sold into Lombardy to help to raise the golden millions of
her father’s ransom. John the Good had received for his daughter the sum
of five hundred thousand golden florins, a sort of inverse marriage
portion, the price of a royal alliance. But Galeazzo had not paid for
barren honour only: Isabelle had brought her husband the county and the
title of Vertus in Champagne. Though the little girl had gone weeping
into Italy, her tears were soon dried. She had left a devastated and
ruined country; she came into a land of sumptuous tyranny, of riches and
magnificence. Life was easy at Milan and at Pavia, where Galeazzo was
busied with his new university, where Giangaleazzo—a timid,
intellectual, orderly creature—spent day after day in his study full of
enormous parchment ledgers, directing the staff of secretaries who
copied into them his accounts, his memoranda, and duplicates of his
correspondence. Priests and friars from the old Certosa, professors of
law and learning from the new college, poets also—the English poet,
Master Geoffrey Chaucer, and the prince of poets himself, Messer
Francesco Petrarca,—learned men like Philippe de Mézières, visitors from
so far away as England, France, or Cyprus—these were the guests of the
palace. Gradually the stately home echoed with children’s voices.
Valentine was born in 1366. One brother grew strong and playful at her
side; another died in babyhood. When the third was born, in 1373,
Isabelle died, and a few months afterwards her baby followed her.
The immense castle of Pavia was very quiet now. Iolanthe, the girl-widow
of the Duke of Clarence, had married, in 1372, the Marquis of Monferrat.
There were only the old Visconti and his wife, and the studious young
Count of Vertus and his two little children. It was quieter still when,
in 1378, Galeazzo Visconti died. He had been a terrible old man: cruel,
unscrupulous, scholarly. It was he who obtained from the Emperor,
Charles IV., in 1361, the privilege to found the University of Pavia,
and he who protected it by an edict threatening with heavy punishments
the Milanese who dared to study in another school. And he it was, also,
who threw alive into a fiery furnace two priests who came to him on an
unwelcome message; and he who, with his brother Bernabò, had poisoned a
third brother, co-heir and co-tyrant with them in Lombardy. They had
divided his share, Galeazzo taking Piacenza, Pavia, the west to Novara,
and as far as Como in the north; while Bernabò possessed the rich
province of the east. Both ruled alike in Milan. Both should have been
equally powerful. But Galeazzo had left all his share to the sole Count
of Vertus, and he, too, had only one son to follow him, whereas the
signory of Bernabò was strengthened and divided by eleven turbulent and
violent young sons.
Valentine’s father remembered the fate of his uncle. He kept very quiet,
surrounded himself with priests and guards, ate of no dish before a
score of stewards tasted of it, and dissimulated his ambition. This he
did so well that the timid Count of Vertus became a by-word and a
laughing-stock in the house of Bernabò. Although the young man had taken
care to obtain from the Emperor investitures which conferred upon him
_absolute_ authority;[13] although by his judicious protection of the
people he made himself the desired deliverer of the unhappy Milanese,
still Bernabò and his children could not take their kinsman seriously.
And the better to lull their suspicions, in 1380 the young Count of
Vertus came a-courting to the noisy Castello di Porta Giovio, where
Bernabò kept house with such of his nine-and-twenty children as still
remained in Milan. It was a great riotous house full of voices, full of
splendid young men in armour (Palamedes, Lancilotto, Sagramoro), full of
beautiful women and fair young girls with lovely names (Achiletta,
Verde, Damigella), and not less radiant for their easy familiarity with
evil. One of these dangerous maidens, Caterina, the Count of Vertus took
to be his second wife. In the next year, in 1381, on the 4th of October,
his boy, Astorre, died.
Footnote 13:
Tu, spectabilisque Azo, natus tuus ... auctoritate, bayliâ, nec non
Regiæ Potestatis plenitudine, tam ordinariâ quam absolutâ, &c., Feb.,
1380. Luenig. De Ducatu Mediolanense, in the “Codex Italiæ
Diplomaticus,” No. xxvii. See also Investiture of Asti, 1383, to
Giangaleazzo (vos et heredes vestri) in the Archives Nationales, K.
53, dossier 22.
Valentine was now his only heir, for during the first eight years of
their marriage Caterina Visconti had no children. Valentine was fifteen
years old, of an age to be dowered and married. Her father, however,
kept her at home with him, teaching her many things—too much, some
people said, for they thought her as wise as Medea. She could invent
posies; she could read not only Italian books, but Latin, French, and
German. Into whatever court she might hereafter marry, she would be not
only the daughter of the Duke of Milan, but his diplomatic agent. I do
not know if she could speak English, but in those years of warfare the
English were often at Milan, and Valentine when a little girl had seen
(a brilliant, sudden vision) her English uncle of Clarence, who had died
so strangely at Alba, and was buried at Pavia. She was a scholarly
maiden, possessing of her own no less than eleven books; more than her
grandfather, King John, had ever owned in his royal library at Paris.
And she could write as well as read—a clear, excellent hand, of which
the signature still exists in the Paris archives. Froissart in later
days remarked on the frequent letters that she wrote to her father:
“Madame Valentine wrote him all she knew.”
I do not know if Valentine was beautiful. A line in “Le Pastouralet”
speaks of her as
“Maret, qui le miex dasoit,”
and mentions the courtesy of “la touse mignotte”—the dainty dame. This
conveys an impression of nothing more positive than elegance and grace.
We can fill up the frame with a couple of portraits which still exists
in the Bibliothèque Nationale: small grisaille illuminations adorning a
manuscript poem[14] in defence of Valentine. There is nothing very
distinctive in either portrait—no accent of striking personality or
resemblance. They represent the same young and slender woman, rather
tall, with a long neck and slim arms, and a bust both full and delicate.
The head is small, the hair parted from ear to ear across the middle of
the head, the back locks being tied in a Greek knot, the front ones
divided again in the middle and looped in pendant braids above the ear.
Under this severe coiffure we discern a serious gentle placid face—long
narrow eyes, a high forehead, a full mouth with pretty pursed lips; a
face too closely following the mediæval ideal for it to impress us very
strongly as a likeness. Valentine is clothed in a low-cut, tight gown
girdled round the hips, with long, tight sleeves descending to the
knuckles of the slim and delicate hands—over this she wears a very ample
trained surtout, also low in the neck, falling in rich folds to her feet
and buttoned down the front to the hips, where it is sewn together, but
split up at the arms in immense wide sleeve-holes, a yard long,
revealing the under dress. If the young duchess was not precisely
beautiful, yet certainly she was beautifully attired. The catalogue of
her gala-dresses is a thing to wonder on: scarlet, and silver, and cloth
of gold, and rich embroidery; cloths of peacock-green and mulberry
colour; tissues of netted pearls. And she had as many pearls, diamonds,
sapphires, and balass-rubies as any princess in a fairy-story. She wore
them sewn all over her caps, round her girdles, encircling her young
throat, and showered broadcast across the brocades and embroidery of her
gowns. With all this, at sixteen, and with the subtle sweetness of the
natural Lombard grace, it is not necessary to be beautiful.
Footnote 14:
“L’Apparicion de Maistre Jehan de Meun,” Fr. ii., 7203. MSS. Bib. Nat.
II.
In 1382 certain guests came to Milan, who marvelled at the magnificence
of these Viscontis, who talked much with Valentine’s father, and who
spread abroad the tale of his daughter’s wisdom and her splendour. They
must also have impressed on the mind of this young girl the strength,
the beauty, and the wealth of France. And they must no less have spurred
the silent and vigilant ambition of her father; for in the late May of
1382, along the roads of Lombardy, four thousand men rode together to be
the guests of Milan. They were all mounted on beautiful chargers
caparisoned in silk and precious metals; they were all clad in suits of
burnished armour; light aigrettes floated from their helmets. “They
seemed the army of Xerxes,” wrote the Monk of St. Denis; “their beasts
of burden went slowly under loads of gold and treasure. Those that
beheld them, astrologers and prophets, read in the future the records of
their fabulous glory.” In truth, they were a host of heroes. Knights
like the Count of Savoy and the Count of Polenza went in the ranks. At
their head rode a tall, square-shouldered man, with fair locks beginning
to grizzle, and a handsome countenance. He was magnificent in his cloak
of woven gold and lilies. This was Louis of Anjou, King of Sicily,
setting out for Naples to conquer his new kingdom.
A kingdom in Italy! It was the dearest vision of the age. The kingdom of
Adria, a dream never realized; the kingdom of Naples, a phantom eluding
for two hundred years the eager grasp of France. In the subtle mind of
Giangaleazzo Visconti, a third, a vaster kingdom, was already taking
shape—a kingdom dead and buried for near five hundred years—the kingdom
of Italy!
But to gain Italy it was necessary to be secure in Milan. While his
guests rode on triumphantly to famine and disaster, the Count of Vertus
elaborated his plan. When the King of Sicily, wrapped in a remnant of
homespun daubed with painted yellow lilies, lay dead in his unconquered
kingdom, defeated in his grave at Bari, Giangaleazzo Visconti ruled
supreme in Lombardy.
He had plotted so well that one sole death secured this change. On the
6th of May, 1385, Giangaleazzo, apparently _en route_ for the shrine of
our Lady of Varese, passed by the gates of Milan. His uncle and his
cousins went out to meet him, smiling at the immense guard which ever
attended the timid Hermit of Pavia. But now Giangaleazzo dropped the
mask. In an hour Milan was his, his cousins his prisoners, and his
uncle, with his _dilettissima amante_, fast in the Castle of Trezzo.
Giangaleazzo, no less skilled in poisons than his father, had him
poisoned there, and buried him in Milan in a sepulchre of splendid
marble. But he showed no wanton cruelty. His cousins escaped, destitute
indeed, but unharmed. No unnecessary pain attended the murder of the
tyrant Bernabò, decently executed by a well-cooked dish of vegetables.
Ambition, not revenge, nor the blood-mania of his race, was the master
passion of the new Lord of Lombardy. If any questioned his proceedings,
he could produce the investiture of Wenzel, granting him absolute
authority and final judgment. The children of Bernabò were stupefied and
did not rebel; most of the sons went to fight in the ranks of Sir John
Hawkwood; and the people of Milan hailed the Count of Vertus as a
deliverer. He taxed them heavily, indeed, but without disorder; and his
police were so excellent that he used to smile and say, “I am the only
robber in my provinces.” Giangaleazzo was now master of a great domain,
immensely rich, three-and-thirty. He meant to go far. In 1386 he sent to
Pope Urban, demanding the title of _King of Italy_.
Urban refused, and in future the Ghibelline Count of Vertus addressed
his requests to the Emperor, or else to the Anti-Pope at Avignon, who
asked nothing better than to make himself a party in Italy. But first of
all, Giangaleazzo began to conquer his kingdom. Verona, Padua, Pisa,
Siena, Perugia, Assisi, Bologna, Spoleto, fell like ninepins before his
gathering force. Florence began to tremble. Foreign countries began to
talk of this new conqueror, of his force, his wealth, his one young
daughter. Clement the Pope of Avignon, among others, perceived that with
Anjou in the south and Visconti in the north, a great Gallic party might
be formed in Italy. Clement was at once the creature and the patron of
the kings of France. In the winter of 1386-87, while the Milanese
messenger still were in the saddle arranging a marriage between
Valentine and the Emperor’s brother, suddenly the Governor of Vertus
arrived at Pavia. He brought a message from the King of France, the
young Charles VI. The King demanded the hand of Valentine for his only
brother, Louis.
This was an important step. The two first children of the King of France
had died as soon as they were born, and Louis was still the heir to the
Crown. Valentine, six years after her father’s second marriage, was
still his only child. It was current in France that the Count of Vertus
turned to his daughter and said, “When I see you again, fair daughter, I
trust you will be Queen of France.”
III.
This proposal, which came as a surprise to Europe and almost as an
outrage to the Emperor, was no surprise to the Lord of Milan. Months
before Giangaleazzo had laid his plans. There exists at Paris in the
Archives Nationales (K. 554, No. 7) the summary of a Project of Marriage
between Louis and Valentine, dated the 26th of August, 1386.
It is interesting to note that in this early draft there is no thought
of any possible French claim to Milan. Valentine is dowered with Asti
and its revenue—for which her husband was never to be constrained to pay
homage; she was also to bring her husband 450,000 golden florins, and to
come to him “bien joyellée et aornée de joyaulx.” And, only after the
death of her father, she was to succeed to the county of Vertus in
Champagne.