[11] Select Mediæval Documents, Mathews, p. 115, translated.
In spite of the dazzling success achieved by Innocent, matters were not well with the Church in Italy. Corruption threatened it from within, heresy from without. Simony was rampant; livings were almost put up at auction. Innocent asserted that there was no cure but fire and steel. The prelates of the Roman Curia were "tricky as foxes, proud as bulls, greedy and insatiable as the Minotaur." The priests were often shameless; some became usurers to get money for their bastards, others kept taverns and sold wine. Worship had become a vain repetition of formulas. The monks were superstitious, many of them disreputable. The inevitable consequence of this decay in the Church was heresy. Italy was nearly, if not quite, as badly honeycombed with heretics as Languedoc had been. The Patarini, whom we remember in Hildebrand's time, now become a species of heretics, abounded in Milan; other sects sprang up in towns near by. In Ferrara, Verona, Rimini, Faenza, Treviso, Florence, Prato, anti-sacerdotal sentiment was very strong. In Viterbo the heretics were numerous enough to elect their consul. At Piacenza priests had been driven out, and the city left unshepherded for three years. In Orvieto there had been grave disorders. In Assisi a heretic had been elected podestà (governor).
The great Innocent knitted his brows; he knew well that his noisy triumphs, which echoed over the Tagus, the Thames, the Rhine, and the Golden Horn, were of no avail, if heretics sapped and mined the Church within. It seemed as if the great ecclesiastical fabric, to which he had given the devotion of a life, was tottering from corner-stone to apex; when, one day, a cardinal came to him and said, "I have found a most perfect man, who wishes to live according to the Holy Gospel, and to observe evangelical perfection in all things. I believe that through him the Lord intends to reform His Holy Church in all the world." Innocent was interested, and bade the man be brought before him. This man was Francis Bernadone, known to us as St. Francis, the leader of a small band of Umbrian pilgrims from Assisi, who asked permission to follow literally the example of Jesus Christ. The Pope hesitated. To the cardinals, men of the world, this young man and his pilgrims were fools and their faith nonsense. "But," argued a believer, "if you assert that it is novel, irrational, impossible to observe the perfection of the Gospel, and to take a vow to do so, are you not guilty of blasphemy against Christ, the author of the Gospel?" Thinking the matter over, the Pope dreamed a dream. He beheld the Church of St. John Lateran, the episcopal church of the bishops of Rome, leaning in ruin and about to fall, when a monk, poor and mean in appearance, bent under it and propped it with his back. Innocent awoke and said to himself, "This Francis is the holy monk by whose help the Church of God shall be lifted up and stand again." So he said to Francis and his followers, "Go brethren, God be with you. Preach repentance to all as He shall give you inspiration. And when Almighty God shall have made you multiply in numbers and in grace, come back to us, and we will entrust you with greater things."
So St. Francis, "true servant of God and faithful follower of Jesus Christ," went about his ministry with the blessing of the Church. To the people of Assisi, of Umbria, and afterwards of all Central Italy, his life was a revelation of Christianity. He imparted the gospel anew, as fresh as when it had first been given under the Syrian stars. He embodied peace, gentleness, courtesy, and self-sacrifice. It is not too much to say that he saved the Catholic Church, and put off the Protestant Reformation for three hundred years. His example and influence raised the standard of conduct within the Church; and his love, his devotion, his insistence on the essential parts of Christ's teaching, and his dislike of worldly pomps, deprived heresy of all its weapons. He satisfied the widespread religious hunger better than heresy did. He was so characteristically Italian, and his ministry throws so much light on the state of Italy at the opening of the thirteenth century, that it is worth while to dwell for a few pages on his doings.
Assisi, built for safety on a hill and protected by great walls and gates, was a good example of a little mediæval town. In the centre was the piazza, on which fronted a Roman temple to Minerva, haughtily scornful of its mediæval surroundings. Hard by was the cathedral, where every baby was taken for baptism. On the tiptop of the hill stood a huge castle, where the feudal baron dwelt with his ruffianly soldiers and received his feudal lord, the Emperor, when he stopped at Assisi on his way to Rome. In Francis's boyhood, the people, aided by Pope Innocent, had driven out the German count, and had formed themselves into a free commune, save for their allegiance to the Holy See; but the change was not all gain. The town was divided into discordant classes; the nobility, maintained in idleness by the produce of their estates, the bourgeoisie, engaged in trade (Francis's father was a merchant), the artisans grouped in guilds, and the serfs, who tilled the fields and tended the vineyards and olive orchards. Once rid of the German count, the bourgeoisie endeavoured to rid themselves of the arrogant and idle nobility. Street war broke out. The nobles fled to Perugia, another little town perched on a hill some dozen miles across the plain, and asked for help. Perugia rejoiced in the opportunity. The miseries of a petty war between two little neighbours need no description. Fields and vineyards were devastated, olive orchards destroyed, farm-houses burned. Even in peace the peasants around Assisi lived in constant disquiet, ready to fling down their mattocks and flee to the protection of the city walls.
Within the city the streets were narrow, the houses small. Dirt abounded. War brought poverty, dirt brought the pest, Crusaders brought leprosy. At the gates of the town stood lazar-houses, and in remote spots lepers in the earlier stages of disease gathered together. Yet, despite war, pest, and leprosy, life in Umbria could never have been wholly sad. Certainly the sons of the well-to-do enjoyed themselves and whiled away the time carelessly. Sometimes a great personage stopped on his Romeward way; sometimes strolling players exhibited their shows on the piazza before the Temple of Minerva; sometimes a troubadour, escaped from the persecution in Provence, passed by on his way to Sicily, and sang his songs to repay hospitality. Many an afternoon and night the clubs of young gentlemen gave fêtes champêtres and dances. Francis, as a boy, was gayest of the gay, dancing and piping in the market-place, fighting in the front rank against the nobles of Perugia, but when he grew to manhood he could not bear the contrast between mirth and misery. He sought for some universal joy and found it in the love of Christ. He gathered about him a scanty band of holy and humble men of heart, who took the vow of poverty, and devoted themselves to praising God, comforting the wretched, and tending lepers. The abbot of the neighbouring Benedictine monastery gave them a little chapel, where St. Benedict himself had once said mass, which lay in the plain a mile below the town. This little chapel, named the Portiuncula (the little portion), which is now covered by the great church of Santa Maria degli Angeli (St. Mary of the Angels), so called because the songs of angels were heard there, was the cradle of the Franciscan Order. It was a tiny building, twenty feet wide and thirty long, with a steep pitched roof, plain walls, and big, round-arched door, and was sadly dilapidated. St. Francis and his friends built it up, and it became their church. Round it they built their huts, and encompassed all with a hedge. Here it was that St. Clare, the daughter of a nobleman of Assisi, donned the nun's dress. Here Francis passed the happy years of his life, while as yet his disciples were few and all were animated by his passionate longing for self-abnegation. He followed the New Testament literally, superstitiously one would say were it not that this literal obedience was accompanied by ineffable peace of heart and joy. He specially enjoined poverty. A smock, a cord, and sandals were enough for a true brother. Once a novice begged for permission to own a psalter, and teased him, but Francis answered: "After you have the psalter you will covet and long for a breviary; and when you possess a breviary you will sit on a chair like a great prelate, and say to thy brother, fetch me my breviary." Nor would he suffer the brethren to take heed for the morrow. They were only allowed to ask for provisions sufficient for the day. For he, in the rapture of his love, found infinite pleasure in the literal fulfillment of every word that had fallen from Christ's lips. Francis was an orator; he possessed passion, the great source of eloquence, and stirred prelates and Crusaders as well as peasants and lepers. The world wished for sympathy and he gave it. He seemed to be sick with the sick, afflicted with those in affliction, holy with the good; and even sinners felt him one of themselves. To his disciples he was Jesus come again. Joy and happiness radiated from him. All the world felt the charm and beauty of his love of God, and poetry followed him as wild violets attend the spring.
Thus Francis, by rubbing off the incrustations of twelve hundred unchristian years, revealed the poetry of the gospel to an eager world. One charming trait of his character was his love of animals, especially of birds. He wished the ox and the ass, companions of the manger, to share in the Christmas good cheer; and hoped that the Emperor would make a law that nobody should kill larks or do them any hurt. He was always very fond of larks and said that their plumage was like a religious dress. "Wherefore,—according to his disciple, Brother Leo,—it pleased God that these lowly little birds should give a sign of affection for him at the hour of his death. On the eve of the Sabbath day after vespers, just before the night in which he went up to God, a great multitude of larks flew down over the roof of the house where he lay, and all flying together wheeled in circles round the roof and singing sweetly seemed to be praising God."
His disciples went forth from their headquarters, the Portiuncula, like the Apostles, to preach the gospel, first to the people of Umbria and Tuscany, then on to Bologna and Verona, and soon over the Alps and across the seas. The Order had three branches: the begging friars themselves, tonsured and clad in undyed cloth, with cords about their waists and sandals on their feet; the sister Clares, shut up in nunneries, and dressed most simply; and the third order, people who continued to live in the world, but wished to follow the example of Christ and his blessed imitator and servant, Francis. The first rule of the begging friars had been very strict. For Francis the strait gate that led to eternal life was poverty. Even in his lifetime after his Order had become popular, there was grumbling and opposition; and after his death, the literal observance of his wishes was promptly given up. He would never allow his brethren to own a house or have a church; and yet within two years after his death the great basilica in Assisi was begun, dedicated to him, and hurried to magnificent completion. The Church, which held the doctrine of evangelical poverty fit only for mad men of genius, laid her heavy hand on the Order, and guided and governed it as best suited her purposes. But it would be grossly unfair to the Church to blame her for violating Francis's chief dogma. The total rejection of property, the total disregard of the morrow, seemed to her, as they seem to us to-day, doctrines wholly inapplicable to this world in which we find ourselves.
The Church seized the Franciscan Order as a man in danger grasps at a means of safety, and shaped it to her needs; for, in spite of her brilliant triumphs under Innocent, her needs were great. The Papacy and the Empire approached their final struggle; both felt instinctively that the issue must be decisive. Their fundamental incompatibility had been aggravated by the union of the crowns of Sicily and Germany. Innocent had been pushed by circumstances into supporting Frederick's claim to Germany, and though he had striven to prevent the natural consequences by extorting oaths from Frederick, yet as time went on the danger became clearer. Under Innocent's successor, Pope Honorius, the Papacy lay like a cherry between an upper and lower jaw, which watered to close and crunch it; and this extreme peril is the excuse for the bitterness of the Popes in the contest which followed. The Papacy fought for its life.
The contest affected all Italy. Milan and many cities of the valley of the Po were Guelf; but Pavia and some others were Ghibelline, not that they loved the Emperor, but hated Milan; Florence and the other Tuscan cities, except Ghibelline Pisa and Siena, which hated Florence, were Guelf; Rome was split in two; the Colonna, the Frangipani, and other great families were generally Ghibelline, though permanent allegiance was unfashionable, while the Orsini and others were Guelf. The Gray Friars, who swarmed from the Alps to the Strait of Messina, were steadfast Guelfs, and even carried their loyalty so far, their enemies said, as to subordinate religion to political ends. On the other hand, the aristocracy, which was chiefly of Teutonic descent, held for the Empire.
Frederick himself is the central figure of the period. In his lifetime he excited love and hate to extravagance, and he still excites the enthusiasm of scholars. His is the most interesting Italian personality between St. Francis and Dante. I say Italian, for though Frederick inherited the Hohenstaufen vigour and energy, he got his chief traits from his Sicilian mother. Poet, lawgiver, soldier, statesman, he was the wonder of the world, stupor mundi, as an English chronicler called him. Impetuous, terrible, voluptuous, refined, he was a kind of Cæsarian Byron. In most ways he outstripped contemporary thought; in many ways he outstripped contemporary sympathy. He was sceptical of the Athanasian Creed, of communal freedom, and of other things which his Italian countrymen believed devoutly; while they were sceptical of the divine right of the Empire, of the blessing of a strong central government, and of other matters which he believed devoutly.
Between a stubborn Emperor, a stiff-necked Papacy, and obstinate communes, relations strained taut. The first break occurred between Emperor and Papacy. The Popes honestly desired to reconquer Jerusalem, which had fallen back into infidel hands, and incessantly urged a crusade; but perhaps at this juncture their zeal was heightened by a notion that the most effective defensive measure against the Emperor would be to keep him busy in Palestine. Frederick had solemnly promised to go. He had also solemnly promised to keep the crowns of Germany and of the Two Sicilies separate, by putting the latter on his son's head; but instead of this separation he kept both crowns on his own head, and secured both for his son as his successor. In spite of this violated promise, Pope Honorius, a gentle soul, devoutly eager for the crusade, crowned Frederick Emperor (1220), upon Frederick's renewed promise that he would start on the crusade within a year. The year passed, then another and another, and Frederick, with his crowns safe on his head, did not move a foot towards Jerusalem. The gentle Honorius remonstrated; Frederick made vows, excuses, protestations, but did not go. Finally the mild Pope died, and was succeeded by the venerable Cardinal Ugolino, Gregory IX, (1227-1241). Ugolino was a member of the Conti family of Latium (so preëminently counts that they took their name from their title), and a near relation to Innocent III. His indomitable character proved his kinship. Blameless in private life, a warm friend to St. Francis, deeply versed in ecclesiastical affairs, he had a benign face and noble presence; in fact, to quote the gentle Pope Honorius, he was "a Cedar of Lebanon in the Park of the Church." But, in spite of his virtue, his training, and his fourscore years, he was a very Hotspur, fiery, impatient, and headstrong. It was he who had put the crusader's cross into Frederick's hands and had received his crusader's vow; and now, having bottled up his wrath during the pontificate of Honorius, he could brook no further delay. Frederick made ready to go. Ships and men were gathered at Brindisi, and, in spite of a pestilence which killed many soldiers, the fleet set sail. A few days later word was brought that Frederick had put about and disembarked in Italy.
Gregory was furiously angry, and despatched an encyclical letter to certain bishops in Frederick's kingdom, which sets forth the papal side of the matter: "Out in the spacious amplitude of the sea, the little bark of Peter, placed or rather displaced by whirlwinds and tempests, is so continuously tossed about by storms and waves, that its pilot and rowers under the stress of inundating rains can hardly breathe. Four special tempests shake our ship: the perfidy of infidels, the madness of tyrants, the insanity of heretics, the perverse fraud of false sons. There are wars without and fears within, and it frequently happens that the distressed Church of Christ, while she thinks she cherishes children, nourishes at her breast fires, serpents, and vipers, who by poisonous breath, by bite and conflagration, strive to ruin all. Now, in this time when there is need to destroy monsters of this sort, to rout hostile armies, to still disturbing tempests, the Apostolic See with great diligence has cherished a certain child, to wit, the Emperor Frederick, whom from his mother's womb she received upon her knees, nursed him at her breasts, carried him on her back, rescued him often from the hands of them that sought his life, with great pains and cost studied to educate him until she had brought him to manhood, and led him to a kingly crown and even to the height of the Imperial dignity, believing that he would be a rod of defence, and a staff for her old age."
The encyclical then proceeds to recount Frederick's promises, his delays, evasions, excuses, and the false start from Brindisi, and adds, "Hearken and see if there be any sorrow like the sorrow of your mother the Apostolic See, so cruelly, so totally deceived by a son whom she had nursed, in whom she had placed the trust of her hope in this matter. But we put our hope in the compassion of God that He will show to us a way by which we shall advance prosperously in this affair, and that He will point out men, who in purity of heart and with cleanness of hand shall lead the Christian army. Yet lest, like dumb dogs who cannot bark, we should seem to defer to man against God, and take no vengeance upon him, the Emperor Frederick, who has wrought such ruin on God's people. We, though unwilling, do publicly pronounce him excommunicated, and command that he be by all completely shunned, and that you and other prelates who shall hear of this, publicly publish his excommunication. And, if his contumacy shall demand, more grave proceeding shall be taken."
This ban of excommunication was published over the world; bishops gave it out in their dioceses, priests in their parishes; Gray Friars told of it from Sicily to Scotland. Frederick in answer wrote letters to the kings of Europe, saying that the Roman Church was so consumed with avarice and greed, that, not satisfied with her own Church property, she was not ashamed to disinherit emperors, kings, and princes, and make them tributary. To the King of England he wrote:—
"Of these premises the King of England has an example, for the Church excommunicated his father, King John, and kept him excommunicated till he and his kingdom became tributary to her. Likewise all have the example of many other princes, whose lands and persons she squeezed under an interdict till she had reduced them to similar servitude. We pass over her simony, her unheard-of exactions, her open usury, and her new-fangled tricks, which infect the whole world. We pass over her speeches, sweeter than honey, smoother than oil,—insatiable bloodsuckers! They say that the Roman Curia is the Church, our mother and nurse, when that Curia is the root and origin of all evils. She does not act like a mother, but like a stepmother. By her fruits which we know she gives sure proof.
"Let the famous barons of England think of this. Pope Innocent instigated them to rise in revolt against King John as a stubborn enemy of the Church, but after that abnormally celebrated King made obeisance and, like a woman, delivered up himself and his kingdom to the Roman Church, that Pope, putting behind him his respect for man and fear of God, trampled down the nobles, whom he had first supported and pricked on, and left them exposed to death and disinheritance, so that he, after the Roman fashion, should gulp down his impudent throat the fatter morsels. In this way, under the incitement of Roman avarice, England, fairest of countries, was made a tributary. Behold the ways of the Romans; behold how they seek to snare all and each, how they get money by fraud, how they subjugate the free and disturb the peaceable, clad in sheep's clothing but inwardly ravening wolves. They send legates hither and thither, to excommunicate, to reprimand, to punish,—not to save the fruitful seed of God's word, but to extort money, to bind and reap where they have never sown.
"Against us also, as He who sees all things knows, they have raged like bacchantes, wrongfully, saying that we would not cross the sea according to terms fixed, when much unavoidable and arduous business about the going, and about the Church and about the Empire, detained us, not counting sickness. First there were the insolent Sicilian rebels: and it did not seem to us a good plan nor expedient for Christianity to go to the Holy Land," etc. And he ended, so the chronicler says, with an exhortation to all the princes of the world to beware against such avarice and wickedness, because "you are concerned when your neighbour's house is on fire."
These letters show the temper on both sides. Outwardly, however, peace was observed, and Frederick really went on the promised crusade; and, though in Syria he found Patriarch, Templars, Hospitallers, and Franciscans all turned against him, he succeeded in making a treaty by which Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem were ceded to him, and he crowned himself king in Jerusalem. In the mean time hostilities had broken out in Italy. Frederick incited the Roman barons to drive the Pope from Rome, and the Pope preached a crusade against Frederick. But both sides, having many cares within their respective jurisdictions, at length made peace, and Frederick was enabled to go back to his consuetas delicias, his wonted delights.
This phrase, which was used by the Pope, probably contained an innuendo, for gossip busied itself with Frederick's christianity and morals. He tolerated Saracens in his kingdom, lived on friendly terms with them, and preferred them in his army, for they were indifferent to excommunication; and gossip added that he liked Saracen ladies, hinted at a harem, and alleged that in Syria he had accepted the present of a troop of Moslem dancers. Gossip, spread by the glib tongues of mendicant friars, charged him with saying, "If God had seen my beautiful Sicily, he would not have chosen that beggarly Palestine for His Kingdom," "There have been three great impostors who invented religions, and one of them was crucified." Frederick's real offence in ecclesiastical eyes was that he wished to subordinate the spiritual to the secular power. It was natural, however, that pious folk should look askance at a prince who, while Christendom was fighting Islam, hobnobbed with Mohammedans and seemed to find them more sympathetic than Christians.
Frederick's real consuetæ deliciæ were of another kind. In his Sicilian court we catch the first streaks of the dawn that was destined to brighten into the day of the Renaissance. He himself was a highly accomplished man, spoke Italian, German, Arabic, and Greek, and took an interest in mathematics, philosophy, and in general learning. But poetry was his favourite pleasure. The Italian language, recently emerged from dog Latin, had just begun to serve literary uses, and Frederick's court had the honour of producing the first school of Italian poetry. He, his sons Manfred and Enzio, his chief counsellor Pier della Vigna, and many poets and troubadours drawn thither by his fame, so far outstripped the rest of Italy that all Italian poetry, wherever written, was called Sicilian.
Sicily was the most civilized place in Europe, now that Southern France had been crushed by the Albigensian persecution. The old Greek stock kept some trace of their inheritance; the Arabs had brought their culture; the Normans had added chivalric ideas; the Crusades and commerce had enlarged the intellectual boundaries; and Frederick himself had extraordinary versatility. Mathematicians from Granada, philosophers from Alexandria, were as welcome as the troubadours from Provence. Frederick looked after his own royal estates, managed his stud farm in Apulia, decided when brood mares should be fed on barley and when kept to grass. He was a great sportsman, too, and wrote a book on falconry. He enacted a famous code of laws, far superior in many respects to existing legislation, which was conceived with the definite plan of exalting royal authority over feudal prerogatives and communal customs. He deprived the barons of criminal jurisdiction; forbade private war, carrying weapons, etc; he limited trial by ordeal so far as he could, calling it "a species of divination;" he made minute regulations in matters of business and behaviour, and maintained a paternal authority.
In fact, Sicily, with its culture, poetry, Moslems, and its unorthodox king, succeeded to the heretical position of Southern France. The Papacy felt instinctively that a civilization so happy in the good things of this world, so lax on many points of morality, so careless of the Roman ecclesiastical system, was a perpetual menace to it. In the nature of things, the peace that had been made with Frederick could not last long.
The breach happened in the North. The Lombard cities revolted. Frederick marched against them and won a victory (1237). Then was the zenith of his power; his very triumph was the cause of his undoing. All the Guelfs of Italy roused themselves for the struggle. The Pope took part, and a second time excommunicated Frederick, enumerating a score of sins. A later Pope held a council at Lyons (a place of safety), excommunicated Frederick again, and deposed him from his Imperial throne (1245). Then an anti-emperor was set up. Blow on blow fell upon Frederick. He was terribly routed at Parma, through carelessness. His gallant son Enzio, the poet, was captured by the Bolognese, who would not release him, though Frederick offered to put a rim of gold round the walls of their city. Enzio spent twenty-three years in prison and there died. Pier della Vigna, who "kept both the keys of Frederick's heart," was suspected of high treason and condemned to death. Frederick himself died in 1250, and the Pope shouted for joy at the news, "Be glad ye Heavens, and let the Earth rejoice!" He had good reason, for the Church had lost its most dangerous enemy.
With the death of Frederick the Empire came to its end. The name of Holy Roman Empire continued till 1806, and from time to time for several hundred years German kings came down across the Alps to receive the Imperial crown, but on Frederick's death the old mediæval Empire practically ceased; and Italy, instead of being an Imperial province, became a series of independent states.
The end of the Hohenstaufens themselves reads like the last act of a bloody Elizabethan tragedy. Within a few years the only survivors among Frederick's descendants were his lawful heir, a baby, Conradin, and an illegitimate son, Manfred. Manfred, who had inherited the charm, the address, the energy and brilliance of his father, succeeded in establishing himself in the Two Sicilies, at first as regent for his nephew, and afterwards, for in those troubled times a regency was precarious, as king in his own right. But the Popes were resolved not to undergo a repetition of the danger they had experienced from Frederick, and laid their plans to destroy the last of the "viper's brood," as they called Frederick's family. They followed the old precedent, set in the days when the Papacy had been in danger from the Lombards, and invited a French prince, Charles of Anjou, brother to St. Louis, to come and depose Manfred, and offered him the crown of the Two Sicilies. The crafty, capable, deep-scheming Charles accepted, and came amid great rejoicing among the Guelfs. Rome made him Senator. Florence made him podestà; in fact, all Guelf Italy was at his feet. The Pope proclaimed a crusade against Manfred, collected tithes and taxes for the holy purpose, and provided Charles with an army. Manfred was defeated and killed (1266), and two years later, the valiant Conradin, a lad of sixteen, who came down in the mad hope of regaining his kingdom, was also defeated, taken prisoner, and, after a mock trial for treason, put to death. Thus the Papacy prevented the union of the Two Sicilies with the Empire, and thus the House of Anjou supplanted the last of the Hohenstaufens at Palermo and Naples.
We are now coming out of the Middle Ages, and the dawn of a new era grows more and more apparent. The Empire, embodiment of an old outworn theory, has already fallen, and its victorious rival, the Papacy, in so far as it embodies the mediæval idea of a theocratic supremacy, is tottering, and it, too, will soon fall before the unsympathetic forces of a new age. So long as the Papacy stood untouched, it looked as potent and sovereign, and spoke with as lofty a tone, as in the days of Innocent; but a hundred years had wrought great changes, and at a push it tumbled and fell.
Hints had already been dropped that the dread thunderbolt, the curse of Rome, which had helped win the proud position of lordship over Europe, had become mere brutum fulmen. Excommunication had been so prodigally used for political purposes that educated men no longer believed that it was really the curse of heaven. Moreover, Europe had not been standing still. The vigorous, compact kingdom of France had come into being, and flushed with a sense of power and importance, determined to take that part in European politics which it regarded as its due. In angry self-confidence the young kingdom confronted the overweening Papacy, savagely tore off its giant's robe, and laid bare its real weakness.
Boniface VIII (1294-1303) was the pontiff under whom the papal empire came to its end. He was a vigorous, energetic, arrogant, eloquent, handsome man, with a wide knowledge of law, diplomacy, and politics. In the cathedral at Florence there is a large statue of him, calm and dignified, almost heroic. He sits with his rochet and tiara on, his right hand raised with two fingers extended as if blessing,—an unusual occupation,—and looks far more of this world than of the other. His contemporary, the Florentine historian, Villani, a Guelf, says: "He was great-minded and lordly, and coveted much honour, ... and was much respected and feared for his learning and power. He was very grasping for money in order to aggrandize the Church and his own relations, making no shame of gain, for he said that he might do anything with what belonged to the Church.... He was very learned in books, very wary and capable, and had great common sense; he had wide knowledge and a good memory, but was extremely cruel and haughty with his enemies and adversaries, ... more worldly than befitted his exalted station, and he did many things displeasing to God." Dante, passionately Ghibelline, calls Boniface "prince of the new Pharisees" and sends him to hell.
Boniface's chief enemies, as was usual in the case of a Pope who had enemies, were Romans. If the Papacy had been able to reduce Rome to real obedience, its history would have been different. The rebellious commune and the rebellious barons were constantly on the watch for favourable opportunities to revolt, or, as they regarded it, to assert their rights and liberties, and Boniface's first struggle came with the great House of Colonna. The Colonnas were haughty; he was imperious. They hinted that he was not legally Pope; he excommunicated them, proclaimed a crusade, captured and destroyed their fortresses in the Campagna, and made them deadly enemies. This victory was achieved at a price thereafter to be paid in full. But for the time Boniface was triumphant, and seemed, to himself at least, to sit as high as the great Innocent a hundred years before.
In the year 1300 he originated the custom, ever since observed, of a papal jubilee to celebrate the centennial year. For centuries Palestine had been the destination of pilgrims, and the holy character of Rome had been passed by, but, now that Palestine was completely lost, Rome reasserted herself as the pilgrims' city, and crowds again visited the Roman basilicas. Eager to encourage a practice which he saw would increase the prestige and the income of the Holy See, Boniface issued his Bull of Jubilee which promised remission of sins to all pilgrims who should visit the basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul during the year.
Pious folk came from everywhere; on an average there were two hundred thousand at a time. They gave their offerings so generously that, as an eyewitness says, "Day and night two priests stood beside the altar in St. Paul's, holding rakes in their hands, raking in the money." It was noticed, however, that there were no kings or princes in the throng. That year was the summit of Boniface's prosperity.
In the mean time the quarrel with France had already begun. The French king, Philip the Fair, who was the personification of the new lay spirit, enacted a series of laws against the clergy, and, going counter to the accepted doctrine of clerical immunity from secular taxation, levied taxes upon them. This step was portentous. Boniface answered by absolutely forbidding both taxation and payment of taxes. The King of France not only persisted in taxation, but also forbade the exportation of any money from his kingdom, and so deprived the Pope of all his French revenues. Other angry words and acts followed, and a papal bull was publicly burnt in Paris.
Boniface, who had a marked predilection for vehement language, issued a bull, which deserves to be quoted as it sums up the extreme papal doctrine and also incidentally reveals how completely he misunderstood the drift of public opinion. "We are compelled, our faith urging us, to believe and hold—we do firmly believe and simply confess—that there is one holy and Apostolic Church, outside of which there is neither salvation nor remission of sins.... In this Church there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism.... Of this one and only Church there is one body and one head,—not two heads as if it were a monster,—Christ, namely, and the Vicar of Christ, St. Peter, and the successor of St. Peter.... We are told by the word of the gospel that in this His fold there are two swords,—namely, a spiritual and a temporal.... Both swords ... are in the power of the Church; the one, indeed, to be wielded for the Church, the other by the Church; the one by the hand of the priest, the other by the hand of kings and knights, but at the will and sufferance of the priest. One sword, moreover, ought to be under the other, and the temporal authority to be subjected to the spiritual.... That the spiritual exceeds any earthly power in dignity and nobility we ought the more plainly to confess the more spiritual things excel temporal ones.... A spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is judged by no one. This authority, moreover, even though it is given to man, and exercised through man, is not human but rather divine, being given by divine lips to Peter and founded on a rock for him and his successors through Christ Himself; the Lord Himself saying to Peter: 'Whatsoever thou shalt bind,' etc. Whoever, therefore, resists this power thus ordained by God, resists the ordination of God. Indeed, we declare, announce, and define, that it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff."
In retort the king, knowing that the country was behind him, convoked the States-General of the kingdom; which upheld him, charged Boniface with all sorts of misbehaviour, and called for a general council of the Church to judge the matters in dispute.
The crafty king, however, had determined on other means of revenge than decrees, accusations, and burning bulls; he devised a plot to kidnap Boniface and fetch him prisoner to France. One William Nogaret, once a professor of law in a French university, now deep in the king's counsels, went to Italy, met a vindictive member of the Colonna family, Sciarra Colonna, and the two arranged the details of the plot. There were many conspirators, for not only the Colonnas were eager to revenge themselves, but numerous nobles, dispossessed to make room for the Pope's relations, were ready to lend a hand. The unsuspecting Boniface, now an old man of eighty-six years, was at Anagni (a little fortified town not far from Rome), his native place, but nevertheless honeycombed with treason; here, from the pulpit of the cathedral where Emperors had been excommunicated, he proposed to excommunicate the King of France. Two days before the day set for the excommunication, Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna, with a troop of soldiers, entered the city which had been opened by traitors; many of the townsmen ranged themselves under the French banner. The conspirators broke into the episcopal palace, where they found the valiant old man seated on a throne, in his pontifical garments, with the tiara on his head, and a cross in his hand. Sciarra Colonna dragged him down and would have stabbed him with his dagger but that Nogaret withheld him by main force. The Pope was made prisoner and the palace sacked; but in a few days sympathy turned, papal partisans stormed the palace, rescued Boniface, and carried him to Rome. Here the Orsini, pretending to befriend him, kept him shut up in the Vatican, half crazed by fright and fury, till death happily released him (October 11, 1303). Then men remembered an old prophecy uttered concerning him: "He shall enter like a fox, reign like a lion, and die like a dog." Thus dramatically the hollowness of papal power was revealed.
France did not rest content with this insolent act. A year or two later, a Frenchman of Gascony, the archbishop of Bordeaux, was made Pope by the French king's influence. This Pope, Clement V (1305-14), never went to Rome, but took up his abode at Avignon, a little city on the Rhone, not very far from its mouth. The place was under the overlordship of the Angevin kings of Naples, but really under the influence of the kings of France. Here the Papacy stayed for nearly seventy years, practically a dependency of France. A series of French Popes succeeded one another. They built on the bank of the Rhone a gigantic fortress, regarded Rome, the source of their greatness, as a dismal and dangerous out-of-the-way place, and believed that they had transferred the seat of the Papacy permanently. This period of exile was regarded by the Italians as a Babylonish captivity.
Political degradation was not all. The Roman Curia became a collection of men of pleasure. The ambitious Popes, even Boniface, had had a touch of the heroic in them, and erred through pride, arrogance, and hate; but these Avignonese Popes, though some of them were good men, suffered the papal court to become a place of amusement, banqueting, and dissipation.
After the Papacy had been dragged in servitude to France, the Empire, like a dying soldier who gets on his feet to shout one shout of triumph over his enemy's fall, made a last gallant effort to recover life and strength. The effort was very gallant but very ineffectual, and owes its chief celebrity to its connection with the great man, who summed up and reiterated the Imperial creed, somewhat in the same way that Pope Boniface had summed up and reiterated the papal creed. Both creeds were dead, but each man believed his fervently, and as Boniface's bulls set forth the doctrines of Hildebrand and Innocent III, so Dante's treatises and letters set forth the beliefs of Barbarossa and Frederick II.
The year of Boniface's jubilee is the year to which Dante assigns his journey to the abodes of departed spirits, and as the jubilee marked the close of the mediæval Papacy, so the "Divine Comedy" marks the close of mediæval theology, and Dante himself stands as the greatest mark at the boundary between the old world passing away and the modern world coming in. Giovanni Villani, who was about fifteen years younger, described him in this way: "He was deeply versed in almost all learning, although he was a layman; he was a very great poet, a philosopher, and a complete master of rhetoric in prose and verse as well as in public speech; a most noble writer, very great in rhyme, with the most beautiful style that ever was in our language up to his time and since. In his youth he wrote the book on 'The New Life of Love,' and then when he was in exile he composed twenty ethical poems and many admirable poems on love; and he wrote among others three noble epistles; one he sent to the government of Florence, complaining of his banishment from no fault of his; another he sent to the Emperor Henry, when he was at the siege of Brescia, blaming him for his delay, in the tone of a prophet; the third to the Italian cardinals, during the vacancy after the death of Pope Clement (V), that they should come to an accord and elect an Italian Pope; all in Latin, in lofty style, with excellent reasonings and appeals to authority, which were much praised by men of judgment. This Dante by reason of his knowledge was somewhat arrogant, haughty, and disdainful, and, like an ungracious philosopher, he could not talk easily with unlearned men; but because of his other merits, the learning and the worth of this great citizen, it seems fitting to give him perpetual remembrance in this chronicle of mine, notwithstanding that his noble works left to us in writing bear true testimony to what he was and confer honourable fame upon our city."[12]
Dante, by passages in his "Divine Comedy," but more particularly by his treatise "De Monarchia" (On Universal Empire), enables us to understand how the Empire could raise its head in Italy sixty years after Frederick II had died. In Germany after an interregnum, the House of Hapsburg had mounted the throne, but no one had ventured to cross the Alps for the Imperial crown. Nevertheless, Dante and the Ghibellines could not bring themselves to believe that the old familiar institution had fulfilled its function and was to be cast aside. The conception of Europe as a group of equal nations had not yet arisen, and Ghibellines still believed that a Roman Emperor could put down confusion, anarchy, political chaos, and cure all the ills of Italy. The Ghibellines believed in the Emperor as Mohammedans believed in Mohammed; if he should return, exiles (like Dante) would be restored, peace would bloom, and Rome again become the head of a just and universal empire. Dante, in the "De Monarchia," first contends that universal empire is necessary to the well-being of the world; having established that proposition, he argues that this universal empire rightly belongs to the Roman people, and proves his point by appeals to Virgil and the New Testament; then he proceeds to show that the authority of the Empire is derived directly from God. "Some say," he says, "that Constantine when he was cleansed of the leprosy by the prayers of Silvester, then Pope, gave the seat of the Empire, to wit Rome, to the Church, together with many other dignities appertaining to the Empire. Therefore, they argue, since then no one can receive those dignities, except he shall receive them from the Church, to whom they belong.... This proposition I deny; and when they put forth their proof, I say it proves nothing, because Constantine could not alienate the dignities of the Empire, nor the Church receive them.... No man has a right to do things by means of an office entrusted to him, which go directly counter to that office.... Therefore an Emperor has no right to divide the Empire ... and the Church in no wise is able to receive temporal things because the precept expressly forbids it, as we have it in Matthew 'Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey,' etc."
This Ghibelline theory was in flat contradiction to Boniface's theory, just as the Imperial creed had always contradicted the papal creed. In Dante's time the two conflicting theories seemed to have become mere ghosts; when of a sudden the Imperial theory started up in reality. A new king of the Romans, Henry VII, announced that he was coming into Italy to take his Imperial crown. The Ghibellines welcomed him with boundless enthusiasm. Dante, in undeserved exile from Florence, flushed with the hope of return to his dearly beloved city, wrote a circular letter to all the princes of Italy:—
"Behold now is the acceptable time, in which arise signs of consolation and peace. For a new day begins to shine, showing the dawn that shall dissipate the darkness of long calamity. Now the breezes of the East begin to blow, the lips of heaven redden, and with serenity comfort the hopes of the peoples. And we who have passed a long night in the desert shall see the expected joy.
"Rejoice, O Italy, pitied even by the heathen, now shalt thou be the envy of the earth, because thy bridegroom, the comfort of the world and the glory of the people, the most merciful Henry, Divus, Augustus, Cæsar, hastens to thy espousals. Dry thine eyes, put off the trappings of woe, O thou Fairest; for he is at hand who shall free thee from the prison of the ungodly, who shall smite the malignant, and destroy them with the edge of the sword, and shall give his vineyard to other husbandmen, who will render the fruits of justice in the time of harvest."
The hope that Henry would restore peace and establish order warmed even the Guelfs; and almost all the Italian cities, excepting stubborn Florence, sent envoys to greet him as he came to take the Imperial crown. The French Pope was greatly perplexed as to what to do. On the one hand, he had begun to wish for an Emperor to subdue the Roman barons and to be a counterweight to the French king, whom he found too masterful a protector; on the other hand, he was afraid to displease the French king, and to do anything that might set the Ghibellines on their feet again. So he played a double game: he encouraged Henry in the North, and in the South he strengthened the Angevin King of Naples, the leader of the Guelfs. Henry VII crossed the Alps in October, 1310. He was brave, honest, and just; he believed devoutly in his Imperial mission, desired peace, and wished to be Emperor of Guelf and Ghibelline alike. At first all went well; many cities opened their gates and received Imperial vicars; Milan lowered her flags as Henry entered, and her Guelf archbishop put the iron crown of Lombardy upon his head. But this happy calm could not last long. Henry was poor, he asked Milan for a great deal of money, and then demanded, ostensibly as a guard of honour for his journey to Rome but really as hostages, fifty noblemen from each of the two parties. The Ghibellines assented: but the Guelfs suspected treachery and refused; their leaders fled and their houses were sacked and burned. This was the end of peace. Henry attempted to enforce obedience. He sacked Cremona, razed her walls to the ground, and laid siege to Brescia. The horrors of the siege were fearful; the citizens fought with desperation, but yielded at last to famine and pestilence. The unfortunate Henry had now been forced into the old position of German tyrant and Ghibelline party chief; and, instead of marching directly on Rome, or on rich Florence which was the head and front of the Guelf cause in the North, he had wasted valuable time in taking unimportant cities. The Ghibellines were in a fever of impatience. Dante wrote:—
"To the most holy Conqueror, and only lord, our lord Henry, by divine providence King of the Romans, ever Augustus, your Dante Alighieri, a Florentine and undeserving exile, and all Tuscans everywhere, who wish for peace on earth, kiss your feet.
"For a long time have we wept by the rivers of confusion, and have incessantly prayed for the protection of a just king, who should ... put us back in our just rights. When you, successor of Cæsar and Augustus, crossing the ridges of the Apennines, brought back the venerable insignia of Rome ... like the sun suddenly uprising, new hope of better time for Italy shone out. But now men think you delay, or surmise that you are going back ... and we are constrained by doubt to stand uncertain and to cry, like John the Baptist, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?... Do you not know, most excellent of Princes, do you not see from the watch-tower of your exalted height, where the stinking little fox lurks, safe from the hunters? In truth, the evil beast does not drink of the headlong Po, nor of your Tiber, but its wickedness pollutes the rushing waters of the Arno, and the name of this dire, pernicious creature (do you not know?) is Florence. She is the viper turned against the breast of its mother; she is the sick sheep that contaminates the whole herd of her master. Indeed with the fierceness of a viper she strives to tear her mother; she sharpens the horns of rebellion against Rome, who made her in her own image and likeness....
"Up, then, break this delay, take confidence from the eyes of the Lord God of Hosts, in whose sight you act, and lay low this Goliath with the sling of your wisdom and the stone of your strength; for with his death the dark night of fear shall cover the camp of the Philistines, and they shall flee, and Israel shall be set free. And just as now, exiles in Babylon, we mourn remembering holy Jerusalem, so, then, citizens and at home, we shall breathe in peace and turn the miseries of confusion into joy.
"Written in Tuscany ... fourteen days before the kalends of May, 1311, in the first year of the coming into Italy of the divine and most happy Henry."
Henry did go south, but there were greater obstacles in his way than Dante imagined. The spirit of the age was against him. It was vain to try to bring back the past. Florence shut her gates, manned her walls, sent more money to his enemies, and headed a league of the Guelf cities in Tuscany and Umbria. Even Rome was half against him. The Ghibelline nobles received him and took him to their part of the town; but the Guelfs held St. Peter's, and though there was fierce fighting in the streets, the Guelfs stood their ground, and Henry was forced to receive the Imperial crown from the papal legate (the Pope was too prudent to leave Avignon) in the basilica of St. John Lateran. Here the luckless Emperor stayed for a time in the midst of ruin, material, political, and moral. Then he attempted to crush Florence, the ringleader of disobedience, but her walls were too strong; the impotent Emperor could do no more than harry the country-side. He fell back upon Ghibelline Pisa, and set patiently to work to gather together a new army. The Ghibellines gallantly responded to his call, and Henry actually set forth on his way to Naples, to punish the House of Anjou and avenge the Hohenstaufens, but death cut short his lofty plans. He died in a little town near Siena (1313), and the hopes of Dante and the Ghibellines were ruined forever. The last flicker of the Empire had gone out.
Other Emperors, it is true, crossed the Alps, but not as masters. The connection of Italy with the Holy Roman Empire ends with the death of the gallant Henry. The mediæval Papacy and the mediæval Empire had passed away, for the Middle Ages themselves had come to an end.