Perhaps the quality which strikes us most in this dawn of our Modern World is its suddenness; Niccolò Pisano gets up, as it were, out of the ground, Giotto follows Cimabue, Dante is born while Guido Guinicelli is still a young man. We are amazed and bewildered, and it is not in the arts alone that the change is so startling. The political structure shifts with equal quickness, and while we are trying to connect and coördinate this outburst of art with the democratic triumph of the communes, the democratic communes disappear under our eyes. At first as we look we are a little puzzled, for the outward form of the commune remains unchanged; the podestà is still there, the Great Council and the inner council are still there, the committees and the sub-committees superintending and directing the affairs of the commonwealth; but further observation discloses a lack of spontaneity. The motive power does not seem the resultant of the debate and argument of numerous discordant wills, but to proceed from some one definite inner source. More careful observation shows that these outward committees are but registering boards that record an inner will, that their members go to one particular palace to have their minds made up, at first privily, but soon openly, and at last confessedly and ostentatiously. This is the regular course. The commune is, as it were, a political chrysalis out of which a full-blown tyrant bursts. The tyrants were men of capacity, who gathered the various functions of the government into their own hands, and by a course of adroitness and fraud, or by a coup d'état, reduced the city to obedience, and then, after having exercised sovereign rights during their lives, bequeathed the principality to their heirs. The reason of their success is plain. It was impossible for trade to flourish, for property to collect its income, for luxury to enjoy itself, under the political confusion that attended the democratic endeavours for self-government. The uncertainty in government, law, and trade, was too high a price to pay for liberty. Men of property, men of business, men of pleasure, preferred the comparative stability of a tyranny.
Before we look at this process in individual states we must eliminate the exceptions. The kingdom of Sicily under the House of Aragon, and that of Naples under the House of Anjou, had become, in great measure, absolute monarchies, for the gifted Emperor Frederick, who was no lover of democracy, had crushed or circumvented the communal spirit in his kingdom. The suppression of popular liberties did not result in the strict enforcement of order in either kingdom, particularly not in Sicily where feudal anarchy was rampant; but we must leave those Southerners to their oranges and lemons, to their flowers and azure skies, to their churches and cloisters, where Romanesque, Byzantine, and Arab influences met and combined in arch and dome and sculptured trimming, and go northward to find the main historical current of the century.
Florence, too, we must except from the tyrannic system, for a democratic government prevailed there for many years to come, and also Rome, where the Papacy prevented Colonna and Orsini from establishing a despotism.
Verona shall serve as the paradigm for the despotic form of government. In this ancient city on the banks of the Adige, where the amphitheatre of Augustus still stood though the churches built by Theodoric the Ostrogoth had crumbled away, the spirit of material and intellectual activity had been busily at work. The stately church of San Zeno (eleventh century), most beautiful of Romanesque churches, coloured with the hues of early dawn and rich with bronze doors and sculptured front, stood proudly apart outside the walls; but within, the cathedral had been begun, and the great Ghibelline tower already lifted its crenellated top high over the market-place. Rushing through the city the headlong Adige turned innumerable mill-wheels, and Veronese girls washed the clothes of the Capulets and Montagues in its waters. Altogether the city was a very desirable signory. This fact had been discovered in Frederick's time, and Ezzelino da Romano, one of the Ghibelline nobles of the North, had made good his power there and distinguished himself by his cruelty, for which he is still remembered. On his most satisfactory death, not long after Frederick's, the Scaligers succeeded to the dominion of the city (1259). These Scaligers were of the best type of tyrant, especially Can Grande (1311-1329), the fifth in possession of the signory, who presents the type in its noblest and most attractive form. Nevertheless, despite his brilliance, his success and magnificence, his chief renown is as host to the exiled Dante, who in gratitude for "my first refuge and first hostelry" dedicated the "Paradiso" to him, and celebrated his carelessness of hardship and of gold, and his doughty deeds from which even enemies could not withhold their praise.
Can Grande, like other despots, had two objects,—to make his signory secure, and to enlarge it. As he was secure of Verona, he cast his covetous glances abroad and fixed them on Vicenza, a little town some thirty miles to the northeast. Vicenza was, so to speak, no longer in the market, as she had been snapped up by her neighbour, Padua, which had had the advantage of being less than twenty miles away. But Can Grande played his cards well, and by help of the Emperor Henry VII, who appointed him Imperial vicar, got possession of the prize. Padua, a rich and prosperous Guelf city, with subject towns round about, and a famous university within, refused to acquiesce in a surrender of Vicenza to a Ghibelline lord. A long war ensued. The fair fields in the forty miles between Verona and Padua were laid waste, the poor peasants were dragged to one city or the other and held for ransom, and the Guelfs in Verona and the Ghibellines in Padua were persecuted, imprisoned, and tortured. At last Padua, her signory over, her neighbours lost, her population fallen away, her citizens fighting among themselves, her nobles destroying one another in the hope of becoming lords of the city, gave way and surrendered to Can Grande. Other cities shared Padua's fate, and Can Grande, by virtue of his conquests as well as of his character, became one of the chief powers in Italy. Can Grande was brave even to recklessness, covetous of dominion, steadfast in his political aims, true to his promises, generous to his enemies. On his death he bequeathed his signory to his nephew; and his body was buried in the churchyard of a little Gothic chapel, where stone effigies of armoured Scaligers on caparisoned steeds surmount Gothic tombs, and the pride of life and conquest strives to overcrow death.
The story of the Scaligers must be continued somewhat further, for they exhibit the phenomenon, so frequent in Northern Italy at this time, of a despotism that begins in vigour, continues in energy and success, and then dies down under degenerate heirs to go out at last like a candle. Can Grande's nephew, Mastino (1329-51),—the family had a fondness for canine appellations. Great Dog and Mastiff,—began his career with ability and courage; he conquered Brescia to the west, halfway to Milan, and Parma, which lies beyond Mantua. These particular acts of aggression helped his ruin, for Milan and Mantua took alarm and joined a league against him. But that was not till later. In the days of his prosperity Mastino was very magnificent. Soldiers, horse and foot, attended him; his palace was thronged with lords, gentlemen, and buffoons; his stables were full of chargers and palfreys, his bird-sheds of falcons. At his court there were innumerable fashionable devices for driving care away, dancing, singing, jousting; everything was luxurious; men and furniture were decked with embroidery, cloth of gold, cloth from France, and cloth from Tartary. When Mastino rode forth all Verona rushed to the windows; when he was angry all Verona trembled. He was a dark-skinned, bearded man, with heavy features and a great belly; in later life he ate grossly, and sank into dissipation. Seldom on a Friday or Saturday, or even in Lent, would he refrain from meat; and he did not care a rap for excommunication. He became arrogant and vainglorious. His dissipation and lack of piety, however, were less direct causes of his fall than his ambition; he coveted, rumour said, a kingdom of Lombardy or even of all Italy. But at last he overreached himself in dealing with the Florentines. They wished to get possession of Lucca, and he undertook to buy it for them,—it was a fourteenth-century custom to sell a city,—but when he got possession of Lucca he kept it for himself. The Florentines declared war, and induced all his rival despots, the Visconti of Milan, the Gonzaga of Mantua, the Estensi of Ferrara, to join a league against him. Venice also joined, being indignant with the Scaligers for levying tolls upon merchandise that went up the Po, and for interference with the Venetian monopoly of salt. The league was victorious and forced the Scaligers to hard terms. Venice took the towns near her, thus acquiring her first territory on the Italian mainland; the great Paduan family, the Carrara, took back Padua; the Visconti of Milan took Brescia (1338). The Scaligers were shorn of their power, and from this time on the house dwindled; assassinations of brother by brother darkened its close, and at the end of the century it lost Verona and all.
What the Scaligers did at Verona other great families were doing elsewhere. The Gonzaga established themselves in Mantua, the Estensi in Ferrara, the Bentivogli in Bologna, the da Polenta in Ravenna, the Malatesta in Rimini, the Montefeltri in Urbino, the Baglioni in Perugia, and greatest of all the Visconti in Milan. The city of Milan has so important a place in the history of Italy, that we must pause over the Visconti. This family succeeded in dispossessing its rivals and in becoming masters of the city in 1295, about the time that the oligarchy was clinching its hold on Venice, and the democracy becoming all powerful in Florence. In fact, one may accept this date as the point at which Florence, Venice, and Milan start on their upward careers towards becoming three of the six chief divisions of Italy. Convenience has its rights, and it is eminently convenient to start the Renaissance, politically as well as intellectually, in this eager, passionate last quarter of the thirteenth century.
The Visconti, however, were not firm in their seats till the gallant Henry VII, Dante's hope, came down into Italy to revive the Empire. We have seen that Henry did not revive the Empire, but he did strengthen Can Grande, his loyal lieutenant in Verona, and also the Visconti, his loyal friends in Milan. It is pathetic, even now, to think of that high-aspiring Henry, with his noble, old-fashioned ideas concerning the Roman Empire and universal brotherhood under the shelter of the Roman eagle, and of the great Dante fastening all his hopes on those same old-fashioned ideas, while the crafty lords of Milan and Verona, laughing in their sleeves, professed the most devout Imperial creed and feathered their own nests. On the Emperor's death (1313) the Visconti were firmly seated. The signory descended from one generation to the next. Their sway was extended over the cities round about, until it included most of Lombardy. Ambition, growing by what it fed on, aimed at the cities of Pisa, Bologna, and Genoa. Such plans aroused both jealousy and fear. The ambition of the Visconti to take Pisa alarmed Florence, who had marked Pisa as her own; that to take Bologna stirred the absentee Popes, who went through the old forms of excommunication, interdict, and crusade; but Genoa, crippled by her wars with Venice, rent asunder by internal factions, wearily gave herself to Milan, in the vain hope of winning peace and security. In spite of checks here and there, the state of Milan became more and more powerful, and the signory of the Visconti by far the greatest of the tyrannies in Italy.
There were, of course, many men who attempted to become despots and failed; and others who succeeded for their lifetimes, but were not able to make their signories so strong as to become family possessions to be enjoyed by their heirs after them. Of the latter kind one must be mentioned. In Lucca Castruccio Castracane (died 1328), a very brilliant politician and soldier, became so powerful that he reduced to subjection much of the country round and nearly succeeded in conquering Florence, with whom he was long at war. Like other successful tyrants he called himself a Ghibelline, and drew what advantage he could from his profession of faith, but really only aimed to acquire a principality for himself. He died in the prime of life (to the great relief of the Florentines), and left so brilliant a reputation for the qualities which achieve success by fair means or foul, that two centuries later Machiavelli held him up as an example for princes to follow.
We are now well started on the fourteenth century, and it will be well to glance at the chief Italian states in order to get our bearings.
Sicily was in a state of hopeless despondency. The island was nominally subject to the House of Aragon, but its kings were not men of sufficient character to impose their authority, and the unfortunate kingdom was beginning to go down hill. The Kingdom of Naples was, for the time being, much better off, for its king, Robert, grandson of Charles of Anjou, was a man of unusual gifts and capacity, but he was succeeded by a foolish, frivolous, light-minded, light-mannered granddaughter, Joan (1343-81), who brought forty years of trouble to her kingdom, and under her Naples started rolling down that same incline on which Sicily was rolling somewhat ahead of her. The failure of Sicily and Naples to take part in the great career in matters intellectual now opening before Northern Italy is partly due to the race that populated them, a miscellaneous mixture of bloods (at least it is customary to explain unknown causes of success and failure by saying good blood and bad blood), and partly to the autocratic will of the brilliant Frederick II, who crushed out independence in his kingdom, and so deprived it of that communal life which is the only obvious factor, except "good blood," in the intellectual success of Northern Italy.
The whole pontifical state, from the fortresses of the Colonna on the Tiber to the strongholds of the Malatesta in Rimini, was in the vortex of confusion.
Florence was well off, for though the foreigners whom she had invited to be protectors against Castruccio Castracane and others were rather detrimental than useful, and though there were signs of a new struggle between the Grandi and the Burghers, her commerce prospered, her dominion spread over the towns round about, and her luxury grew so fast that the troubled elders passed all sorts of sumptuary laws to prescribe what should be worn and what not, by both fashionable and simple.
In the northwest, now Piedmont, there were, besides the Counts of Savoy, several struggling claimants who severally asserted titles to their own and other strips of territory. In the northeast, Venice, which had acquired a footing on the mainland destined to grow into the province of Venetia, was prosperous. And between Piedmont and Venice the successful Visconti of Milan, soon to receive the keys of Genoa, were likewise well satisfied. The political situation may now be dismissed, and we may turn to the distinguishing mark of the century, the classical revival.
The distinction which Italy enjoys as the most famous country in Europe is due to three ages,—first, the ancient epoch of Augustus Cæsar and Trajan, when the Roman Empire imposed the pax romana on a grateful world; second, the mediæval epoch of Hildebrand and Innocent III, when the Papacy, following its great prototype with unequal steps, imposed its pax romana on both troubled souls and angry hands; and third, the epoch of the Renaissance, when Italy took the lead in the intellectual development of modern Europe. It would be as absurd to subordinate intellectual life to politics in the period of the Renaissance as it would be to subordinate the religion of the era of Hildebrand to its art, or the politics of the Augustan age to its religion. The highest life of Italy, the life which gives importance to the history of this coming period, is its intellectual life, and, though we must not forget politics entirely, we should lay the chief stress on intellectual rather than on political matters.
Since the date of the Pisan pulpit, prosperity had increased fast, and curiosity, the desire to investigate, the wish to know, had grown lustily. There were still the same two stores of knowledge,—nature and the classics,—but the first, for many reasons, seemed vague, intangible, when compared to the second, in which the demi-gods (so they appeared then) of the ancient world had garnered the rich harvest of their thoughts. The classical heritage, the record of a higher civilization, seemed a lay Bible, the revelation of truth, the means of salvation; and the young generation emerging in the dawn of intellectual light turned thirstily to this newly found inheritance. The leader of this pilgrimage to the land flowing with intellectual milk and honey was Francis Petrarch (1304-74).
Petrarch was a Florentine, but he lived in exile. His father had been banished at the same time with Dante, and after a few wandering years had settled at Avignon. Petrarch studied law at the University of Bologna and became a confirmed Ghibelline. This item of biography is important, because it reminds us that Petrarch's passion for the classic world, though it had its roots in the traditional admiration for Rome, received strength and justification not only from Latin literature, but also from the Civil law. Men who grasped the complexity and richness of the Roman law necessarily admired Roman civilization, and inferred that all other manifestations of that civilization must be as admirable as the law, and perhaps less dry. Petrarch found the law dry, but he left Bologna with a passion for the classic world; and when he went back to Avignon he met all the most cultivated men of Europe. Learning still attended the papal court, and Avignon served to make this charming young scholar of genius known to the world. He flung up the law and devoted himself to literature. Cicero was his hero. Petrarch was the first of the humanists, the herald of the Renaissance, and, if we look farther forward still, the harbinger of the Reformation. Petrarch's importance was very great because he was not too far ahead of his generation. He shouted aloud the glory of Rome, of Roman literature and Roman thought, and the echo resounded throughout Europe. In the year 1341, in Rome, upon the Capitoline Hill, Petrarch received the crown of laurel, as scholar and poet, from the Senate and People of Rome. The King of Naples was his sponsor, and the tyrants of the North applauded. This ceremony was the conspicuous recognition that a new period was opening before Italy; and Petrarch's laurel crown may be put beside the Imperial wreath of Augustus and the tiara of Hildebrand, as the starting-point of Italy's third great period of triumph.
After his coronation, Petrarch went about Italy spreading the seeds of the new enthusiasm. He lived or made visits at Parma, Bologna, Verona, Florence, Arezzo, Naples, Rome, Milan, Padua, and Venice. He became tremendously fashionable. The Pope invited him to be papal secretary, the King of France extended the hospitality of Paris to him, the Emperor bade him to Prague, the Visconti wanted him at Milan, the Scaligers at Verona, the Cararresi at Padua, the lord high Seneschal at Naples; the Florentines asked him to accept a chair in their new university, the Venetians offered him a house. All this honour ostensibly shown to Petrarch was really the salutation to the new dawn.
The strength of this classic revival, though most effective in literature and the arts, is perhaps still more noticeable in the political career of another young man of genius who had as passionate a love of classic Rome as Petrarch himself. Cola di Rienzo (1314-54) was an imaginative, poetical dreamer, who fed his youth on Livy, Cicero, Seneca, and delighted to muse on the glories of Julius Cæsar and to study the antique monuments of Rome. His public career began as envoy on one of the unsuccessful embassies which used to entreat the Popes to return to the deserted city. Cola was handsome, eloquent, ardent, a sort of Don Quixote, and roused the Roman populace to share his dreams and to believe in the possible restoration of the Senate and People of Rome to their ancient grandeur. He led the people against the nobility, forced the riotous barons to submit to his rule as tribune of the people, and established a government of law in the city; but his ambition flew far beyond the city walls. He dreamed of the confederation of all Italy under the lead of Rome. He would have smiled at limiting imitation of the great days of old to the arts or to literature; he intended to restore the Roman Republic as it had been in its high and palmy days. His wild aspirations throw a backward light over the history of the city of Rome throughout the Middle Ages, and over that republicanism which played so important a part in the struggle between Empire and Papacy, and light up the old theories under which the Roman people claimed the right to elect both Emperor and Pope; just as Boniface's bulls portray the outworn papal theories, and Dante's "De Monarchia" the dead Imperial beliefs.
Cola's first step was to invite all the princes and communes of Italy to attend a general meeting in Rome; and as all Italy had responded to Petrarch's appeal in behalf of the classic past, so did she, for the moment, respond to Cola's appeal. Milan, Genoa, Lucca, Florence, Siena, and the smaller cities nearer by, answered with apparent sympathy. Petrarch was mad with delight, and hailed Cola as Camillus, Brutus, Romulus. For the moment, such was the strength of classical illusion, the dream seemed to be real. Cola wrote to the Florentines (September, 1347), "We have made all citizens of the states of Holy Italy Roman citizens, and we admit them to the right of election. The affairs of Empire have naturally devolved upon the Holy Roman People. We desire to renew and strengthen the old union with all the principalities and states of Holy Italy, and to deliver Holy Italy itself from its condition of abject subjection and to restore it to its old state and to its ancient glory. We mean to exalt to the position of Emperor some Italian whom zeal for the union of his race shall stir to high efforts for Italy."[15]
Cola's great idea was destined to wait five hundred years for fulfilment. The time was not ripe, and he himself not a suitable instrument. His career was brief. He became not only vainglorious but also very cruel. He grew fat, and lost the charm of youth and novelty. The nobles and the upper classes of Rome hated him; and when, in need of money, he increased the taxes, the Roman populace turned upon him, stormed the Capitol, captured him as he tried to slink away in disguise, and murdered him on the steps leading down from the palace. His head was cut off, his body was dragged through the streets and burned, and the ashes scattered to the winds.
The mad dream had been, in its nature, evanescent. The classical heritage was too purely intellectual, too remote from existing needs, to be able to shape politics. But that fourteen hundred years after the death of Julius Cæsar, Cola should have been able to establish himself as Roman tribune on the Capitoline Hill, and to act as if the Republic of the days of the Gracchi had been but temporarily superseded, shows the immense influence of Rome over the mediæval imagination, and helps us to understand the autocratic power of the classical heritage in shaping and directing the intellectual revolution in Italy.
[15] Rome in the Middle Ages, Gregorovius, vol. vi, p. 295, note 1 (translated).
The fourteenth century undoubtedly felt itself emancipated from the limitations of the Middle Ages, and with justice, so far as the classical revival was concerned, but it did little or nothing to free itself from ills that were distinctly of a mediæval character,—plague, lawlessness, and tyranny. In that respect, the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern World was slow and made a striking contrast with the rapid evolution of art.
The chief of these ills was the plague. Only in remote places of the East, if at all, does the scourge of disease now fall as it then did in the most civilized cities of the world, and it was from the East that these plagues came, brought by sailors. One blasted Tuscany in 1340, one Lombardy in 1361; but the worst was the awful Black Death of 1348, which wrought havoc in various parts of Italy and then swept northward across the Alps on its destructive path. It was this plague which Boccaccio describes in the beginning of the "Decameron." It spread like fire among dry wood which has been sprinkled with oil. At first swellings appeared the size of an egg or an apple, then black and hard spots; on the third day came death. Even animals caught the disease. Boccaccio saw two pigs which had chewed the garment of a plague-stricken man die in convulsions. Medicine was useless. Some thought the wisest course was to live on the daintiest food and drink, and never speak of the plague; others believed in carousing and jollity, and went about from tavern to tavern seeking diversion, but always keeping sober enough to avoid the sick. Private houses were deserted and lay open to anybody. Loyalty disappeared. All who could fled into the country. Thousands fell sick daily. In place of decent burial, dead bodies were tossed huggermugger into trenches. Between March and July, Boccaccio says, more than 100,000 people died within the walls of Florence.
Florence was not singular. In Siena 80,000 people, three quarters of the population, died; in Genoa, 40,000; in Pisa, seven out of ten, and so on in Venice, Rome, Naples, and Sicily. These figures seem incredible; but Petrarch says: "Posterity will not believe that there ever was a period in which the world remained almost entirely depopulated, houses empty of families, cities of inhabitants, the country of peasants. How will the future believe it, when we ourselves can hardly credit our eyes? We go outdoors, walk through street after street, and find them full of dead and dying; when we get home again we find no live thing within the house, all having perished within the brief interval of absence. Happy posterity, to whom such calamities will seem imaginings and dreams." Poor Petrarch! The lovely Laura, of whom he wrote so many perfect sonnets, died of the Black Death in Avignon. Giovanni Villani, the historian, died in Florence. This terrible calamity throws into high relief the great classical impulse, to which the last chapter was devoted. In earlier times men would have turned to religion and the Church; but now Petrarch, a most devout Christian, and his disciples continued to worship Cicero and the heroes of the Augustan age, and to talk of Cæsar and Pompey, Scylla and Charybdis, as the most important and interesting of things.
Another great evil which rivalled the plague as a curse, was the host of mercenary soldiers who swarmed over Italy like locusts. In the days of Barbarossa, battles like that of Legnano had been fought between the train-bands of the communes on one side and the feudal chivalry and men-at-arms on the other. But since then a great change had come over the methods of raising soldiers. Under the feudal system the term of service in the field for the liegemen of the Emperor had been forty days; but that time was too short for an effective campaign. When the Emperor wished to cross the Alps and go to Rome in order to receive the Imperial crown, he was obliged to hire soldiers; and, as years went on and these Imperial descents became mere adventurous expeditions, the character of the soldiers degenerated, until in Petrarch's time the Imperial armies were made up of ruffians recruited anywhere. There were also other reasons for establishing mercenaries in place of militia. The despots of Northern Italy did not wish their subjects trained to arms. The burghers of mercantile cities did not wish to leave their counting-rooms, nor to have their employees mustered out, so they too preferred hired soldiers to a native militia. Moreover, warfare had changed; cavalry needed frequent man[oe]uvres, bowmen and pikemen required drill and continuous discipline. Thus the old train-band system of the communes, under which the militia hurried to their appointed posts on the ringing of the bells, gave way to the system of mercenary troops led by soldiers of fortune, condottieri, as the Italians call them.
These soldiers, who had come down from the North to serve Emperors, or despots like the Visconti, or perhaps had sailed from Spain to fight under the House of Aragon in Sicily, as soon as the immediate war was ended, having been left unpaid or having taken a liking to a trade in which the labor was congenial, the risk small and booty enormous, decided not to disband, but to continue to try their luck together. They sold their services to whatever city or despot would pay them most, or wandered about in a nomadic fashion, capturing a city if they could, if not, living on the country-side. One can imagine these rogues among unwarlike peasants, or in a pleasant little city like Lucca or Cremona. They were very fickle, fought one another only upon compulsion, and then most reluctantly and gently, and were very nearly as terrible to their employers as to their adversaries. They were organized, sometimes very well, in bands under a general or a council of officers, and had such names as The Company of St. George, or The Great Company. Some of their leaders became very famous, like Duke Werner, who proclaimed himself "Lord of the Great Company, enemy to God, to Pity, and to Mercy." The most interesting of these leaders, at least for us, is John Hawkwood, an English adventurer, who began life as a London tailor, but dropped scissors and needle to enlist for Edward III's French campaign, and then, seeing fortune smile most sweetly from distraught Italy, crossed the Alps and led his company all over the peninsula. There is a full length fresco of him on horseback in the Duomo at Florence, painted in gratitude for his deeds in life or merely for his death.
For a hundred years and more these ruffians swaggered about Italy. Petrarch finds in them one cause the more to hold out his arms toward the mighty past. He writes in a letter: "Oh, would that you were alive, Brutus, Great-heart, that I might turn to you. O Manlius—O Great Pompey—O Julius Cæsar [etc., etc., etc.], O Jesus, Lord of the world, what has happened? Why do I moan and groan for grief? Oh! a vile handful of robbers, spewed out of their nasty dens, walks and rides over the ancient queen of the world, Italy. Christ Jesus, in tears and supplication I turn to Thee. Oh, if we have abused Thy goodness more than was right, if we have shown ourselves too proud in Thy aid and favour, if we have borne ourselves ill towards Thee, well mayst Thou not permit us to be free; but let not this slaughter, these sacrileges, these robberies, these deeds of violence, these ravishings of wives and maidens, find mercy in Thine eyes. Put an end to this evil. To the wicked who have said in their hearts 'There is no God,' show that Thou art; and to us however unworthy, show that we are Thy children. O Almighty Father, help us; in Thee alone we put our hope, and in supplication we invoke Thy name, weeping and confessing that there is none who shall fight for us, unless Thou, our Lord, be he."
This strange mixture of classic enthusiasm and Christian piety, this odd idea that the triumphant cause of the Roman Republic was due to the favour of Christ, shows us that Petrarch had not yet got wholly clear of mediæval beliefs. But, as with Cola di Rienzo, everything Petrarch says testifies to the power of the Roman tradition.
A third evil, yet not to be compared with the plague and the condottieri, was the tyranny of the despots. The founders of despotisms were men of vigour and political capacity, and gave to their subjects in lieu of liberty greater security and order than they had enjoyed before. Their descendants, like proverbial heirs, finding hard work both distasteful and unnecessary, gave themselves up to dissipation and cruelty; they dropped their ancestors' attitude of leading citizens and treated the principalities as private property, intended for their amusement. The Visconti, though they retained their family ability and force of character longer than most princely houses, shall serve to illustrate the general dynastic development, more especially as the history of Milan, which had become the chief power in Italy, will be the best thread to carry us to the end of the century.
Towards the middle of the century Archbishop Giovanni Visconti had become the lord of Milan (1349-54). He was a clever, cultivated man, interested in letters. He employed scholars to prepare a commentary on the "Divine Comedy," and by urgent persuasion induced Petrarch to take up his abode at Milan. On the archbishop's death his three nephews succeeded jointly to the signory. As one of these three nephews, Bernabò (1354-85), illustrates the moral degeneracy of the tyrant we will glance at his habits. Bernabò was addicted to the chase. Nobody else was allowed to keep a dog, but he kept five thousand. These he billeted on the citizens of Milan. Every fortnight the masters of his kennels made their rounds; if the dogs were too thin, a fine was imposed; if dead, a general confiscation. If a man killed a wild boar or a hare, he was maimed or hanged, or sometimes, in mercy, merely obliged to eat the quarry raw. Bernabò was afraid of conspiracies and rebellion. No man might go out into the street after dark for any cause whatever, under pain of having a foot cut off. No man might utter the words "Guelf" or "Ghibelline," under penalty of having his tongue cut out. Once Bernabò shut up his two secretaries in a cage with a wild boar. On another occasion a young man who had pulled a policeman's beard was condemned to pay a small fine, but Bernabò ordered his right hand cut off. The podestà delayed execution of the sentence, so that the lad's parents might have time to ask mercy. For this Bernabò caused the lad's two hands to be cut off and also the podestà's right hand. A sexton who demanded too much for digging a grave was buried alive side by side with the dead body. Two monks who came to remonstrate with Bernabò for his cruelty were burnt alive. Nevertheless, Bernabò protested himself devout; he fasted, built churches and monasteries. This amiable man had thirty-two children. His brother, joint heir of the principality, Galeazzo II, was of the same stuff, except that in place of piety he substituted an interest in letters; he founded the University of Pavia, and exchanged figs, flowers, and flattery with Petrarch. Galeazzo's son, Gian Galeazzo (1378-1402), rose still higher in the world; he gave 300,000 sequins to the King of France, and in return received the king's daughter in marriage. For a second wife he married his cousin, daughter of his amiable uncle Bernabò, who thought that this marriage would bind his nephew to him by bonds of filial affection. Gian Galeazzo however, by means of a trick, got his father-in-law within his reach, arrested him, accused him of witchcraft, put him in prison and poisoned him, and so became sole lord of Milan. This worthy lord converted his principality into a dukedom and became duke (1395); but as we have followed the family to the end of the century, and long enough to make ourselves acquainted with the habits of tyrants, we must leave them.
Poor Italy suffering from these three evils, plagues, condottieri, and tyrants, naturally sought for a cure, and, with what seems to us a singular lack of imagination, turned to the old remedies, Emperor and Pope. From time to time Emperors came into Italy, but the Hapsburgs were very different from the Hohenstaufens, and their trips to Rome were mere money-getting excursions. They sold privileges and honours, imposed what taxes they could collect, and sneaked back to Germany. Obviously there was no hope from Emperors. Then rose the cry for the return of the Papacy. Every Italian, however he might hate or despise the Popes, felt proud that the Papacy was an Italian institution, and believed that every Pope, good or bad, should live in Rome and sit on his throne at St. Peter's. Sentiment grew strong, especially among the women; Petrarch thundered, St. Catherine of Siena pleaded. Moreover, the sharper argument was urged with great practical effect, that the Papal State might shake off the papal dominion if the Pontiffs did not look after it themselves. The Popes began to stir uneasily. The cardinals indeed, accustomed to the safe city of Avignon, did not care to go to turbulent Rome, or perhaps, as Petrarch said, they could not bear to leave their Burgundian wines. But finally Gregory XI (1370-78) raised his courage to the sticking point. He returned to Rome in 1377, and the Babylonish Captivity of seventy years ended.
The return of the Papacy to Rome was an event of importance both for Italy and the Catholic Church. Had it remained in France, it must have dwindled and shrunk, like Antæus, kept away from its source of strength. Nevertheless, the Papacy was no longer what it once had been; it cannot serve us now as a central channel for the course of Italian history, and will rank no higher than the first of half-a-dozen little channels, which we must pursue separately.
The returning Pope found his territory in greater obedience than he deserved; for a brilliant Spanish cardinal, Albornoz who had been sent some time before had reduced almost all the cities to subjection (1353-67); even Bologna, successfully disputed with the Visconti, acknowledged papal dominion. But there was neither peace nor tranquillity. Everywhere turbulence and murmurous threatenings rumbled; and worse was to come. The very year after the return from the Babylonish Captivity the Great Schism rent the Church asunder for forty years. There were two parties in the College of Cardinals, the French and the Italian, with little love lost between them. The Italians were in control and elected Urban VI (1378-89), a domineering, cruel, most unpastoral person, who insulted the foreign cardinals, and so angered them that they left Rome, declared his election illegal, and elected one of themselves as Pope in his stead. This anti-pope, attended by his troop of cardinals, returned to Avignon. Christian Europe divided in two: some countries recognized Urban, others recognized the anti-pope. Thus the schism began, and prepared the way for the next great split of Christian Europe into Catholics and Protestants. There were now two sources of apostolic succession, two supreme rulers, and two systems of taxation. Misbehaviour and confusion at the top lowered the moral tone of the whole Church. The Curia in Rome was scandalously venal. Indulgences were sold; offices were bestowed for money. Nobody in Rome respected the Pope, hardly anybody respected the clergy.
All Christendom felt that reformation was necessary, and that, first of all, the schism must be closed. Thereupon some outward deference was paid to public opinion; the Roman Pope went so far as to make ostensible overtures to his rival at Avignon, and he of Avignon bowed and smiled most politely in return. Friendly greetings went to and fro, and a meeting was talked of. It became obvious, however, after a time, that neither Pope had the slightest intention of abdicating in the other's favour. Christendom remained insistent, and the two batches of cardinals took the matter into their own hands. They held a Council at Pisa, which deposed both Popes, and elected a third (1409), but, as the other two Popes refused to acknowledge their deposition, matters were worse than before. The situation recalled the old days when a German Emperor had come down to Rome and had deposed three rival Popes together. The need seemed to revive the past. The Emperor Sigismund (1410-37) assumed to speak as the head of Christendom. He summoned an Ecumenical Council to meet at the city of Constance, on the Lake of Constance, to judge the schismatic quarrel and to consider the general state of the Church. Other troubles besides schism had begun to appear. The failure of Rome to satisfy the conscience of Europe had borne fruit. Heresy had appeared. In England, Wyclif (1327-84) had denounced the higher clergy for greed and arrogance; he had disavowed allegiance to the divided Papacy, and had opposed the doctrine of transubstantiation. In Bohemia, Jerome of Prague rejected the temporal jurisdiction of priests, and John Huss asserted that Constantine had done great wrong when he endowed Pope Silvester with lands and temporal power.
Christendom responded to the Emperor's call. Prelates and scholars of the highest character and standing assembled at Constance (1414). It was a great occasion, and belongs to the history of Europe. This Council, the seventeenth Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church (1414-18), deposed all three Popes, and elected a Roman, of the House of Colonna, Martin V (1417-31), and so closed the schism and restored unity to the Church. The more difficult matter of crushing heresy was not so readily dealt with. The two reformers, Jerome of Prague and John Huss, refused to recant or modify their views. They were condemned and handed over to the secular arm for punishment; and the Emperor, heedless of the safe-conduct he had given, burnt them at the stake (1415-16).
To follow the proceedings of this interesting Council more fully would take us too far into papal affairs. It must suffice to say that the Reformation can be sniffed in the air. Rome had not done its elementary duties as head of Christendom, and Christendom insisted on a change and on reform; but Rome was powerful and would not submit. Two parties appear, the reformers and the papists. The former wished to purify the Roman Curia and the whole Church, and to give the Papacy a republican character,—to make the Pope a president, as it were, and the College of Cardinals a senate. The latter liked the old easy ways and wished the Pope to be absolute monarch. The papal party by dexterous politics foiled the plans of the reformers and prevented change of any kind, although no doubt it acted less from desire to obstruct reform than to prevent the anti-monarchical party from getting control of the Church and using the prestige of reform to attack the papal autocracy. From this time on the papal party consistently pursued this course, and therefore reformation came not from Rome, but from Germany, and instead of being a reform from within, came practically as an attack from without, and caused the permanent schism of the Reformation. We must now leave the Papacy, which follows its wilful course—via Babylonish Absenteeism, Schism, and refusal to reform—and steers directly towards the rocks of the Reformation, and betake ourselves to the other parts of Italy.
The Kingdom of Naples would have been badly off at best under its light-mannered queen, Joan I (1343-81), but it became involved in the papal schism, and got into a wretched plight. The queen rashly took sides with the Avignon Pope, and the irascible Roman Pope vowed vengeance. He set her cousin, Charles, who belonged to the Durazzo branch of the House of Anjou, on the throne in her stead. The story is a miserable mixture of treasons, battles, and vulgar crimes. Charles got possession of the unfortunate queen and strangled her, and he and his heirs fought her adopted heirs for years. Each side hired mercenaries. John Hawkwood was there, and other notable leaders. Poor Naples, taxed, robbed, and ravaged by rival kings, their favourites, and mistresses, rolled rapidly from bad to worse. Exception must be made in favour of Charles's son Ladislaus (1390-1414), a bold, enterprising soldier, who played a part in the affairs of Italy like that of his ancestor, Charles of Anjou. But he failed in not leaving a son to inherit the crown, and was succeeded by his sister, another Queen Joan (1414-35), likewise light-mannered. There is nothing memorable to grace her career, except the presence of a soldier of fortune, once a Romagnol peasant, Muzio Attendolo, better known as Attendolo Sforza (strength). His son was Francesco Sforza, destined to a brilliant career in Milan. The queen did one thing, however, for which we, who clutch at any unification of Italian history, must thank her. She adopted, not wholly of her free will, Alfonso of Aragon, King of Sicily, and so brought about, though for a few years only, the reunion of the Two Sicilies.
With regard to Sicily we need say nothing except that the royal House, which still had a strain of Hohenstaufen-Norman blood, died out, and that Sicily passed as a marriage portion to the crown of Aragon, and became a mere appanage of that kingdom (1409). Finally, as I have said, King Alfonso was adopted as heir to the second Queen Joan, and took part in the civil wars that devastated Naples. Then began the long struggle of Spaniard against Frenchman (the Neapolitan House of Anjou was still French), which was destined to be so disastrous to Italy. Alfonso conquered and was acknowledged King of the Two Sicilies by his suzerain the Pope (1443). Thus for a time the Southern Kingdom was united and at peace. It is a happy moment to leave it and go northward, in the hope of finding greater moral and intellectual activity, if not greater tranquillity and order.
To the northeast, Venice had been growing in power; but with the growth of her power the number of her enemies and their bitterness towards her had grown. Her possessions on the mainland, wrested from Verona, brought her into hostility with Padua; her Adriatic possessions, Istria and Dalmatia, made her an enemy of Hungary; her coastwise empire and trade in the Levant made Genoa her deadly rival; and her imperial expansion entangled her in war after war. Both the war with Padua and that with Hungary told upon her, but the struggle with Genoa was far worse. During the last grapple, known as the war of Chioggia (1378-81), Venice was reduced to narrow straits, and but for her great admirals, Vettor Pisani and Carlo Zeno, would have been defeated. Genoa never recovered from the losses she sustained; but Venice regained her strength, and renewed her conquests on the mainland. She conquered Padua (1404) and strangled the last heirs of the House of Carrara, though they were prisoners of war; she seized Verona, and set a price on the heads of the last of the Scaligers, though they had been her allies. Her chief expansion on the mainland of Italy was under the Doge Francesco Foscari (1423-57), when she annexed Bergamo and Brescia, and carried her western boundary to the river Adda. For the sake of convenience we may divide the life of Venice into four stages: first, her lusty youth, which closed with the profligate capture of Constantinople and the piratical dismemberment of the Byzantine Empire (1204); second, her vigorous prime, which lasted till she annexed Italian territory, threw in her lot with Italy, and from being almost an Oriental outsider became an Italian state (1338); third, her glorious maturity, which continued till the League of Cambrai, when almost all Europe united to destroy her (1508); and fourth, her long period of ebbing fortune, during which she slipped slowly into decrepitude. In the present chapter we deal with the earlier part of her maturity, when Venice was contesting with Milan for primacy in power and importance.
During all this period the oligarchy had been tightening its hold on the government, and was now absolute and secure. One last attempt had been made to overthrow it, but had easily been put down. No one knows exactly what led to the conspiracy, or what was the exact purpose of the conspirators. The ringleader was the Doge himself, Marino Faliero, one of the old nobility. The story is that he wished to revenge himself for a gross insult from a young nobleman, and it seems likely that a personal quarrel had some connection with a general plot which aimed to overthrow the oligarchy, and substitute a government of the old nobility supported by the people. The plot was betrayed. Nine of the conspirators were hanged from the windows of the Ducal Palace. Faliero's head was cut off, his portrait in the hall of the Ducal Palace was painted out, and in the blank space was written: "This is the place of Marino Faliero, beheaded for his crimes."
The oligarchy did not fail in its duty to itself, but neither did it fail in its duty to the state. Commerce was the life of Venice; and the oligarchy tended it with the utmost care. The famous Venetian arsenal was the foster-mother of that commerce. There the money-getting ships were built and equipped: caracks with three decks and great depth of hold, galleasses with high forecastle and poop, galleys with long rows of oars and lateen sails, all of different builds to suit the rough Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, or the safer Adriatic.
Riches, a firm rule, and the security of an island home, showed visibly in Venice. Instead of fortresses with massive walls and solid towers, light, elegant palaces, decked with gay balconies and incrusting marbles, lined the canals. All revealed tranquillity and prosperity; and the adoption of Gothic architecture in place of Byzantine, and in especial the long Gothic arcades of the Ducal Palace (1300-40), testified how Venice had turned her face from the East to the West. In contrast with Sicily and Naples, rolling down hill separately or together, and with the troubled Papal States, Venice appears altogether happy and successful as she passes from the fourteenth into the fifteenth century.
Milan we have brought to the dignity of a dukedom, for which Gian Galeazzo Visconti (1378-1402), the amiable nephew of the too-confiding Bernabò, paid the price of 100,000 sequins to the fount of honour, the ultramontane Emperor. This nephew, despite a moral inadequacy in his family relations, was in many respects an excellent ruler. He reduced the more burdensome taxes (in one city, it is said, he cut them down from 12,000 florins to 400), and abolished others altogether. He corrected abuses, reorganized the administration of justice, and enacted wise laws. He understood the pride of the Milanese in their city, and laid the foundations of the great Gothic cathedral on a scale to gratify that pride; he began the beautiful church of the Cistercian monks, the Certosa, at Pavia; he completed the palace at Pavia, whither he transported his famous collection of books and an equally famous collection of holy bones. He had the family ambition, and annexed Vicenza, Verona, Padua, Siena, Assisi, Perugia, Pisa, and Bologna. Rumour said that he aspired to a kingdom of Lombardy, and even of all Italy. But Venice and Florence were too powerful for the success of his plans. Venice, perhaps, might have regarded herself as still too much detached from Italy to care to oppose him single-handed; but the doughty burghers of Florence were zealously democratic and would not endure any suggestion of foreign dominion. They had fought the Pope, when they suspected him of designs on their city, and now they organized a league against Gian Galeazzo. Perhaps it would have been a most fortunate thing for Italy if the Duke of Milan had been able to consolidate all Italy, or even all the North, in one kingdom. Centuries of suffering, of ignominy, of foreign domination might have been avoided; but then, perhaps, the great intellectual harvest, that gave Italy for the third time primacy over Europe, would not have attained its full growth. These are idle speculations, for Gian Galeazzo died in his prime (1402), and the universal dominion of Milan became an academic question. Nevertheless, one cannot withhold a sensation of regret. There was undoubted brilliance in Gian Galeazzo; whatever he did was done royally. His ambitions were high, planned always on a large scale. His purchases of the French king's daughter and of the ducal title were splendidly prodigal. The design of the cathedral was noble and bold. It was an endeavour to give the Gothic style an Italian character. In this it is easy to find symbolism. The Gothic style represented the Ghibelline cause, as well as Teutonic blood and influence, whereas the Italian represented the Guelf cause and also Latin blood. The high-aspiring Gian Galeazzo wished to use both Teutonic and Italian elements as the materials for his kingdom. In view of his intellectual gifts, one readily slurs over his moral inadequacy, if that term may be applied to traits which would have done honour to Iago; in fact, prior to Cæsar Borgia, he was the most distinguished example of the type of intellectual, murderous Italian, which exercised so powerful an attraction over the wild fancy of the Elizabethan dramatists.
Gian Galeazzo's death left his dukedom in a chaotic condition. A widow, a regent committee, and three boys were left to see the state, built up with so much care and astuteness, fall away piecemeal into the hands of the petty despots, who had been dispossessed during the process of integration. Venice took Verona, Padua, and other cities near by; the Papacy got back Bologna, Florence managed to secure Pisa. Thus the dukedom was carved up. The eldest son died soon, leaving behind him a memory of the pleasure he took in watching mastiffs tear his prisoners to pieces; but the second son, Filippo Maria (1412-47), inherited his father's craft and much of his ability. By means of two famous condottieri, Carmagnola, best remembered as the victim of Venetian anger, and Francesco Sforza, of whom we have heard in the Neapolitan service, he gradually restored the dukedom very nearly to its boundaries under his father. Filippo Maria was the last of his race, and we will leave him, engaged in speculation as to the best political use of his marriageable daughter Bianca Maria.
We must pass over the Counts of Savoy, now become dukes (1416), the marquesses of Monferrat and Saluzzo, and the lords of other petty territories, and turn our attention to Florence. Florence was always in a state of struggle, always engaged in exiling, deposing, or in some way suppressing aristocrats. Forced, in days of peril, to receive foreign lords as military leaders, she had managed to expel the last of them, one Walter of Brienne, a clever knave, who bore the odd title of Duke of Athens, which he had inherited from his grandfather, one of the gentlemen adventurers who had gone to the East. His father had been expelled from Athens, and the son was happily driven out of Florence. The burghers followed up their victory (1343) with new laws against the aristocrats, and held the government for a generation. Then first appears the name of Medici. One Salvestro dei Medici, as Gonfaloniere of Justice, the supreme officer in Florence under the existing constitution, proposed further laws in favour of the people. The lower classes, with whetted appetites, wanted more. The mechanics and artisans of the lower guilds, and more particularly the wool carders and combers (the Ciompi) of the great wool guilds, rose in riot, overturned the government, and put a wool-carder, Michele di Lando, at the head of the city (1378). Florence was democratic, but not so democratic as to submit to the rule of a wool-carder. The rich burghers would not stomach a plebeian any more than they would a king. A reaction set in, and the government passed into the very competent hands of an oligarchy of distinguished citizens. This oligarchy governed well. Its leaders, Maso degli Albizzi, and Niccolò da Uzzano, acted patriotically and wisely. They resisted the aggressions of Milan from the north, and of Naples (under that exceptional king Ladislaus) from the south, and made it their policy to maintain the balance of power in Italy. Under this oligarchy began the great development of art, known as the Renaissance, or, to be more exact in quoting the textbooks, the First or Early Renaissance. To that subject, which shall give us for a time at least a centre, and save us from these puzzling political subdivisions, we joyfully proceed; only remembering that at this period Italy has these main political divisions,—the Kingdom of Sicily, the Kingdom of Naples (the two temporarily reunited), the Papal States, the city of Florence, the duchy of Milan, and the city of Venice.