Catherine's marriage.—"Petit Courrier des dames" for 1476.—Four years of prosperity.—Life in Rome in the fifteenth century.—A hunting party in the Campagna.—Guilty or not guilty?—Catherine and her husband leave Rome.
If the death of the Cardinal Riario had seemed, during a few anxious days, to throw a doubt on the succesful termination of the matrimonial schemes projected for Catherine, much greater was the danger to which they were exposed by the untimely death of the Duke. "Catherine herself," says Burriel, "considering the circumstances of her birth, thought that it was now all over with her fortune." And, in truth, it was hardly to be hoped that the Duchess Bona, now Regent, would consent to prejudice her own children by giving up Imola as the dower of a stranger to her blood, obtruded under such circumstances into her family. Meanwhile, the bridegroom Girolamo, and his august, "high-spirited" uncle, had, on their side, been struck by similar misgivings on receiving the news of Maria Galeazzo's death; and they were by no means disposed to relinquish the principality, whose title Girolamo had already assumed.
Sixtus, therefore, well aware, remarks Burriel, of the truth of the proverb which teaches that "this world is given to the active,"[69] lost no time in sending Cardinal Mellini to Milan, with orders to claim the prompt execution of the marriage contract, and to hurry on the performance of the ceremony by every possible means. This active churchman arrived while the Duchess and all Milan were still in the midst of the confusion, anxieties, and uncertainties resulting from the sudden demise of the Crown. The position of the Duchess as Regent and guardian of her son, still in his minority, was precarious and difficult. Subsequent events at Milan abundantly show how difficult a task it was to maintain her own and her son's rights against the pretensions and encroachments of his uncles. The friendship or hostility of the royal-minded and high-handed Servus servorum might be of infinite importance to her and to Milan. The good Bona, too, was inclined to make it a point of honour to carry out the intentions of her murdered husband. The Cardinal, acting up zealously to his instructions, urged unceasingly that "if 'twere done, 'twere well it were done quickly." And thus it was brought about that, without any alteration in the articles previously agreed upon, Catherine was married to Girolamo Riario acting by proxy, in the latter part of May, 1477.
As the mourning for the Duke was not yet over, the ceremony was performed in a comparatively private manner in the presence of the Cardinal and the Duchess. And as no festivities and rejoicings were under the circumstances permissible in Milan, it was determined that the bride should depart immediately for Rome, and that all such celebration should take place there under the auspices of the young couple's magnificent uncle. No record is found of the exact date of the marriage; but Catherine arrived in Rome about the end of May.
The "sensation" produced in Rome by the young bride's arrival is dwelt on by the historians, and may be readily believed. All the contemporary chroniclers agree in describing her as eminently beautiful.[70] A modern historian[71] of Forlì cites in proof of the truth of these assertions two likenesses of her still existing, when he wrote, in the church of St. Jerome in that city. And a Forlì coin and two medals, engraved for the work of Burriel, fully confirm the praises of the old writers. All three of these portraits appear to have been made after the death of Girolamo Riario. The face is hard and even stern, but full of vigour and intelligence. The features are somewhat large, but of beautiful outline and perfect regularity: a face to be admired rather than to be loved.
When at fifteen she rode through the Porta del Popolo into Rome, in the midst of the brilliant cavalcade composed of all that was noblest in the eternal city, those finely-cut features were doubtless softer in their expression, more delicate in their beauty, and more fitted to win all hearts in the manner we are assured they did. It was about a generation later that a jovial prelate,[72] writing to his friend from Rome, protested that nothing was wanting to the pleasures of a residence there save "a court with ladies." But no doubt the same want was a frequent one among the tonsured epicureans of a court in which every high office was held by a priestly incumbent. And now the lamentable deficiency was about to be supplied by the young and lovely bride of the most powerful, most magnificent, and wealthiest prince in Rome. For all this was Girolamo, the survivor of the two favoured brothers, who had divided between them all that Papal affection and munificence could bestow.
Doubtless nothing was left undone which could add brilliancy to the gay cavalcade amid which Girolamo brought his wife to her new home. The period was especially favourable to the display of personal splendour; and the fashion of dress, especially of female costume, had recently assumed an elegance and costly gorgeousness unknown to the previous generation. If we would figure to ourselves our fifteen-year-old heroine as she appeared on her richly-caparisoned "dappled palfrey" to the admiring eyes of the Roman citizens, we must picture her clad in one of those then recently-introduced dresses called "Cyprians," of which we hear so much in the records of the time, and which were the favourite mode of the young and beautiful towards the end of the fifteenth century.
Like other innovations in similar matters, this new costume, we are told, gave much offence to the more austere among those who never in their own day had enjoyed any such opportunity of displaying their charms, and who were now too old to profit by it.[73] For, instead of being made to fit close round the throat, the "Cyprian" was contrived to show the entire neck. These dresses were cut square on the bust, were extremely full around the feet, close-fitting from the waist upwards, and had very long and large sleeves. Some ladies would have even three of these celebrated robes: one of blue, one of crimson, and one of watered camblet—"zambellotto undato"—lined with silk or with mixed furs. Beautifully thin and fine veils of white cotton were worn; and the hair was drawn back over hair-cushions, and tied with strings of silk ornamented with gold or with pearls. A girdle of silver gilt or of pearls confined the dress at the waist.
We may be perfectly sure, that the daughter of Sforza and bride of Riario displayed whatever was most costly and most superb, as she passed from the Porta del Popolo to the princely residence of her husband on the Lungara, that long street which runs along the farther bank of the river from St. Peter's to the Porta Settimana. There the Riarii inhabited the spot now marked on the maps as the Palazzo Corsini. Two hundred and fifty years further down on the roll of pontiffs the latter name is met with;[74] the place of the magnificent Riarii knows them no more; and the change of masters, which those delicious terraces, looking down on the Farnese palaces and gardens,—the creations of another Papal[75] family intermediate in time between the Riarii and the Corsini—have undergone, is a quite normal illustration of the working of a system, which is the leading fact of Rome's modern history.
In this magnificent home on the banks of the Tiber, Catherine spent four happy, prosperous, and brilliant years;—probably the most happy, the most prosperous, and the most brilliant of her career. Never, perhaps, since the old times of a Marozia and a Theodora, whose boundless and shameless power in the eternal city had given rise to the fable of a female Pope, had a woman occupied a position of so much power and pre-eminence in Rome. She very shortly became an all-powerful favourite with her uncle (or father-in-law) Sixtus. All Rome was absolutely at her feet. Courtiers in search of favour, litigants in search of justice—(or injustice)—officials in search of promotion, brought their petitions and applications to her. The most important employments were often given according to the recommendations of this girl in her teens, as Burriel[76] assures us, without manifesting the shadow of an idea, that there was anything objectionable in such a mode of administering the Papal power. At this period of her life, writes another[77] chronicler, she was so great a favourite with the Pope, that most of the princes of Italy, who had any request to make of the Apostolic see, availed themselves of the intercession of Catherine for the attainment of their desires.
Though apparently totally unaware, that all this was in any way otherwise than it should have been, the old writers tell us much of Catherine's prudence, discretion and moderation in wielding and managing the great power so strangely entrusted to such hands. We have no recorded facts adducible in direct proof of the justice of this high praise. But we may find some evidence in support of it from the observation of our heroine under adversity; for which some later portions of her career will afford abundant opportunity. Assuredly there must have been materials of high and noble quality in a nature not wholly corrupted and spoiled by such an education and such environment in childhood and in youth, as that which fell to the lot of this young princess.
Dark days were not far distant; but all as yet in her life had been rose-colour:—or purple-tinted rather; for the more modest hue seems hardly gorgeous enough to typify the blaze of prosperous sunshine which had hitherto illumined her path. And now, during these years at Rome, though they had been sufficiently marked already as the minions of fortune, the star of the young couple was still ever rising.
On the 15th of December of the year in which Catherine arrived in Rome, her husband was with much ceremony and speechifying made a citizen of the eternal city.[78]
On the 4th of September 1480, the same fortunate youth received from the Pope investiture of the city and county of Forlì;[79] of which the Duke of Urbino, general of the forces of the Church, took possession in his name. This city, now the capital of a delegation, and one of the most important towns of Romagna, was conveniently situated with regard to the principality of Imola, already acquired by Girolamo in right of his wife. Forlì is some sixteen miles to the south-east of the latter town, in the same rich and highly productive alluvial district, which lies between the Apennines and the Adriatic. It had long been under the dominion of its native lords, of the family of the Ordelaffi. The story of their ousting, with its episodes of poisoning, fighting, love-making, and plotting, though curious enough, would lead us too far away from our more immediate subject. Suffice it that the upshot was the same, as it was in so many other similar cases. The Pope declared that the old family had forfeited their rights, that the fief had devolved to the Holy See; and, accordingly, handed it over to his nephew-son.
On the 8th of September in the same year Count Girolamo was solemnly made generalissimo of the Papal forces. The diarist Jacopo of Volterra[80] tells us how on that day, being the celebration of the nativity of the blessed Virgin, the Pope and all the College of Cardinals attended a solemn mass, in the course of which the Count in full armour knelt at the feet of the Pope, seated in front of the altar, and then and there received the staff of command, and the standard; and took the prescribed oaths, reading, says the historian, the whole formula at length himself;—truly the most arduous part of the matter in all probability to this "non literatus" preux chevalier. All Rome, both clerical and lay, was there, says gossiping Jacobus Volaterranus, as much to see the Count go through his part in the play, as to perform their devotions.
The picture of life in Rome at this period, obtainable from the inartistic matter-of-fact narrations of these diarists, the Jacopo just cited, Stefano Infessura, and one or two others of the same class, is a strange and striking one. Their ever-recurring accounts of solemnities, celebrations, and festivals, are chequered with notices almost equally frequent, and as calmly chronicled of such deeds and occurrences, as we are accustomed to hear reported from Sacramento, or San Francisco, and to consider as the product of a new and half-organised state of society. A noble patrician is stabbed to death, while sitting at the door of his own palace enjoying the evening air after supper. The name of the murderer and his motive are briefly told, and no further remark is made about the matter. A raid is made by one family against another and many men are killed; but none worth mentioning save one or two nobles. Of such matters nobody dreams of complaining. But when once on Ascension-day a great mass of people had assembled as usual in expectation of receiving the papal benediction, and Sixtus for some unassigned reason did not come forth to give it, there was great murmuring, and the multitude heaped bitter curses, we are told, on the Pontiff, who had defrauded them of his blessing.
The figures of the recently-married couple, however, with whose fortunes our story is more immediately concerned, appear most frequently, as might be expected, during those years of their prosperity on the bright squares of the chequered board. The Count, indeed, is found figuring in one strange and unpleasant scene a few days previous to his installation as commander-in-chief.
One of the Pope's nephews, Antonio Bassi, is lying grievously ill on his death-bed. His cousin Girolamo visits him the day before his death, and tries to comfort him "with fraternal words," and assurances that he will soon get well. But the dying man, either from the peevishness of suffering, says the chronicler,[81] or because he knew that he could now speak out with impunity what he had long felt, abused his powerful cousin in the most violent manner, "mentioning certain deeds of the Count universally condemned, and certain conduct of his reprobated by all men; on account of which, he said, the judgment of God, from which no human power could avail to protect him, would shortly fall on him. And in speaking of these things, he used a degree of vehemence which none of those who knew him best had ever heard him speak with when in health." The Count, it seems, took it very quietly; but "we all standing round the bed blushed for shame at the scene, and several of us slunk away out of hearing." It would have been satisfactory to have been told what these so universally reprobated deeds and conduct were. Perhaps nephew Bassi would have liked some of the good things that were heaped on nephew Riario. There was, indeed, one dark topic, of which we shall have to speak presently, the indiscreet handling of which might well make discreet courtiers slink out of hearing, lest their ears should become the unwilling depositories of truths so carefully concealed that history, after nearly four hundred years of investigation, has failed in obtaining satisfactory evidence of them. Could it have been that the dying man felt himself so safe from earthly vengeance, and so beyond all considerations of worldly prudence, as to have dared to speak aloud in such a tone of the black Pazzi tragedy? If so, we know how dangerous it might have been to hear him. If so, could Girolamo Riario have been so unmoved by his upbraiding? Be it as it may, the above few hints, so fortuitously, as it seems, floating on the surface of the vast, black, all-devouring pool of oblivion, are all that we have to speculate on in the matter. Antonio Bassi died, and no "judgment" followed—yet awhile.
On the contrary, all sorts of festivities, mingling themselves with the more serious business of prosperous ambition, seem to have made up the life of the young Count and Countess. One constantly recurring cause of pomp and festival at Rome in those days, was the arrival in the eternal city of strangers of note from almost every part of Europe. English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Greek ambassadors, cardinals, or prelates, arrived in the great capital of Christianity to ask favours of Heaven's vicegerent; to plead their international or ecclesiastical causes and quarrels before him; to bring him gifts and compliments from distant potentates; to beg for assistance in money or money's worth; to obtain absolution for national sins committed against the Papal interest; or to secure aid and connivance for such as could be shown to square with it.
On the occasion of such arrivals, cardinals, with their numerous retinues of attendants, lay and clerical, used to go out to meet the strangers at the gate, and bring them in pomp to the lodgings prepared for them. Then followed grand ceremonial services in the basilicas, in which modern Circenses the Roman populace shared with delight, and vast banquets, shared only by the privileged of the earth. Now and then occur descriptions of gay doings of a less exclusive character, in which all classes of that strangely-variegated society are seen mingled in a more pleasing and more picturesque fashion.
On Wednesday,[82] the 22nd of March, 1480, for instance, Ernest, Duke of Saxony, arrives at Rome for the performance of a vow. He is accompanied by the Duke of Brunswick and other German nobles. All are clothed in black, with a staff embroidered in white across the breast, as a symbol of pilgrimage. The Pope and all the Sacred College go out to the Porta del Popolo to meet him; and fortunately we have among us two cardinals who can talk German. These ride one on each side of his Serene Highness, and thus the cortège of some two hundred horses of the Duke's retinue, together with all the trains of Pope and cardinals, sweep on through the streets of Rome towards St. Peter's. Sovereign princes coming to Rome in discharge of vows of pilgrimage are worthy of every encouragement. So Sixtus treats the noble stranger with all possible honour—even to the extent of allowing him to sit at mass and vespers on the bench of the cardinals, and in the stall next below the junior of those dignitaries, an honour rarely granted. Then, as is the case with those whom Rome delighteth to honour, he was presented in St. Peter's with the consecrated golden rose. But on this occasion, strangely enough, the golden rose was not a rose, but a golden oak-bough,[83] which Sixtus, contrary to all custom and precedent, had chosen to consecrate instead of the immemorially accustomed emblem. The substitution of this golden bough, the well-known heraldic bearing of the Della Rovere family, is a curious manifestation of the family feeling, which was so intense in Sixtus, and was the ever-present motive of all his crimes.
But the most pleasing of the doings in honour of the Elector recorded by the old diarist, is a grand hunting party given him by our Count Girolamo. It took place on the 10th of April, 1480, a day remembered by the people of Rome long afterwards, says Jacopo of Volterra. For the hunting took place only eight miles from the city, in the neighbourhood of the Fonte Malliane, to the south-west of Rome, and all classes of the citizens made holiday. Even the boys were able to join and enjoy the sport. The foreign princes themselves, with their retinue, all mounted on splendid horses, holding the hounds in leash, and shining, says the diarist, with gold and jewels, were the most interesting part of the sight to the populace. A very great quantity of stags and deer were taken, "and some beasts were captured by the hands of the princes themselves, as if the creatures suffered themselves to be caught from the wish to contribute to the happiness of so great an occasion"—a somewhat left-handed compliment to a sportsman, friend Jacopo, and savouring more of the antechamber than the greenwood. A more joyous scene, adds the diarist, cannot be imagined than that afforded by those hill-sides and woods thronged with eager sportsmen, and resounding far and near with the notes of the horns, the halloes of the hunters, the barking of the dogs, and the voices of singing and rejoicing. Then at the Fonte Malliane a magnificent banquet was prepared under the ilex woods of a shady hill-side, not for the invited guests only, but for all present. The Roman dames, with Catherine mistress of the revel, mingling in their brilliant and gorgeous-coloured[84] costume among the carousing knights, amid the dark-green verdure that shaded the hill-side, give what was wanted in colour to make the gay scene perfect. At respectful distance amid the surrounding woods, the Roman citizens are making the most of the rare opportunity; not less loud in their mirth, or less jovial over the good things provided at the cost of taxes drawn by the good Count from faraway provinces, than their masters. Their stalwart forms, clad in russet jerkin or hempen frock, mingled with hounds in leash, and richly-caparisoned horses, group well as seen among the trunks of the trees against the dark background of the ilex woods. "It is not to be told," says Jacopo, thus winding up his unusually detailed description, "how much those German chiefs, rejoicing after their own fashion, enjoyed themselves on that memorable day!" Is it intended, good Jacopo, by those words of yours, "Germani illi proceres lætantes more suo," that we should catch a glimpse of our Teuton friends riding back the eight miles into Rome rather less steadily than they sat on those tall horses of theirs in the morning?
Four days afterwards, at any rate, the Elector and his company are ready to start on their homeward journey; and the Pope, as a parting gift, presents them with wax candles blessed by his own holy fingers: "so that, accompanied by such holy things, they might reach their own country in safety without any ill encounters by the way."
Thus, amid honours, pleasures, and the agreeable business arising out of her large share in the administion of Papal favour, passed four brilliant years of the heyday prime of Catherine's life. Was there no darker woof to chequer the bright web—no shading to so much sunlight? That terrible death-bed scene, when Girolamo's cousin, Antonio Bassi, lay a-dying, has led us already to the mention of the dark story of the Pazzi murders. This celebrated episode of Florentine history, which has been made again and again the novelist's and poet's as well as the historian's subject, is too well known for it to be necessary to do more here than briefly recapitulate the familiar facts, especially as the present story is only concerned with the question, how far the Riarii were implicated in them.
On Easter day, the 26th of April, 1478, Lorenzo de Medici, afterwards "the Magnificent," and his brother Giuliano were, while at worship before the high altar of the Cathedral, stabbed by the daggers of assassins—Lorenzo inefficiently, Giuliano mortally. Francesco de Pazzi and his adherents were the murderers. A Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, was also one of the conspirators, to whom had been assigned the part of seizing the Palazzo Pubblico while the others did the murder. The daggers of the assassins, however, having done only half their work, and the populace of Florence showing themselves in no wise inclined to rise against the Medici, or make any demonstration in favour of the conspirators, the game was lost. Francesco and the numerous family of the Pazzi were almost wholly exterminated; and the stout republicans of Florence, having no fear of the Church before their eyes, hung the Archbishop Salviati out of a window of the Palazzo Pubblico in a very summary manner.
Now, that the great Florentine family of the Pazzi should hate, worry, and conspire against the great Florentine family of the Medici, was as intelligible, as much according to the habitudes of the place and time, and as natural, as that one butcher's mastiff should fly at the throat of another. And if the deed of that Easter Sunday had involved no other persons in its causes and consequences, than the Medici and the Pazzi, the destruction of the losing party would have been the natural ending and completion of the story. But, in the first place, an Archbishop had been publicly hung in Florence;—a deed more difficult to be wiped out, than the blood of scores of laymen, whether Medici or Pazzi. And, in the second place, the municipal and commercial rivalry and hatred of those two families had been exasperated and put into fatal action by being involved with the yet more culpable hatred of the Riarii for the rival parvenu princes of the Medicean race. Both Medici and Pazzi were bankers in Rome. The former had held the lucrative appointment of treasurers to the Apostolic chamber. Sixtus IV. took this from them, and gave it to the Pazzi. These were friends and allies of the Riarii. And there seems no reason to doubt the assertion of the Florentine writers, that Girolamo was one of the conspirators, if not the original contriver of the whole scheme.
The Pope launched his interdict against Florence, in punishment for the execution of the Archbishop; and followed up this spiritual attack by a less formidable secular one. The republicans were able to defend themselves against the latter; but were obliged by the former tremendous weapon to humiliate themselves before the Papal throne. It is clear enough, in short, that all the sympathies of the Pope after the deed were with the perpetrators of it. Was he a consenting and abetting party to it before the fact? This is a question, which has occupied the attention and investigations of historians, anxious to decide the matter according to their respective prepossessions, more perhaps than its importance deserves. One more crime, however dark, added to the list of those which history has heaped up at the door of the Servi servorum, can effect but little any of the vexed questions raised between the defenders and the accusers of Popes and Papacy. A synod of the Tuscan prelates, which met in July of the year 1478, solemnly accused Sixtus of having instigated the murder. The Florentine historians are nearly unanimous in making the same accusation. And most of the arguments on the point have been based on consideration of this testimony. But we have less suspected evidence to the same purpose in the direct assertion of Stefano Infessura, the Roman diarist. Having briefly told the circumstances and upshot of the attempt, he adds:[85] "These things were ordered by Pope Sixtus, together with the Count Girolamo, and others, to take away the dominion [of Florence] from Lorenzo de Medici, and give it to the Count Girolamo." A moment's consideration of the mode in which Sixtus and his son, or nephew, Girolamo, worked in concert and pulled together during the whole of his papacy for the founding and advancement of the family greatness, and a little reflection on the perfect confidence and community of aims and wishes existing between them, will add all the weight which extreme probability can give to the opinion that the Pope was one of the conspirators.
But then arises the question more nearly touching the subject of these pages; What guilty knowledge may Catherine have had of her husband's crime? Did the young bridegroom, within the first year of his married life, take counsel with his girl-wife, at that time within a few weeks of having become for the first time a mother at sixteen years of age, respecting this deed of blood to be done for the furthering of their mutual greatness? Did he seek to gratify her ambition,—certainly no less worldly, less gross in quality, or less a ruling passion than his own,—and obtain her admiring smiles by laying at the proud beauty's feet these high hopes to be realised at the price of a daring deed? Or, when returning from dark plottings with priests and desperate men in the most secret council closet of the Papal palace to the brilliant home of his young wife, did he mutter Macbeth-like, "Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, till thou applaud the deed"? No written word survives to throw the least light on this question. And each reader must judge of the probabilities of the case according to his knowledge and theories of human character. It was certainly Riario's practice, as we shall see, to take counsel of his wife in state matters of less unlawful kind. And thoroughly does she seem to have been capable of seconding and aiding in all the rough business that might fall to the hand of a stirring and ambitious prince in those unquiet times;—truly a help-meet for one who had to hold his own by craft in the council-chamber, as well as by energy and valour in the field. Certainly, bearing in mind the character of the times, and the character of the women, there can be small doubt, that had Catherine found herself called to queen it in fair Florence, she would have "applauded the deed," that placed her there.... Yet ... at sixteen, and at this period of her life at all events, (however much we may at a later time find her wholly busied in virile struggles for power and supreme rule), occupied with the more womanly and more holy cares of wife and mother-hood, it may be fairly hoped that she was innocent of this black guilt, despite the nearness of her connection with Heaven's vicegerent!
During these four years in Rome, Catherine presented her husband with three children. The first was a disappointment to the ambitious pair. Bianca, a daughter, born in March, 1478, was greeted, we may be sure, with scant welcome. But on the 1st of September, 1479, the long-sighted—yet so short-seeing—hopes of the parents and of the Pontiff were gratified by the birth of a son, christened Ottaviano. And on the 24th of August, 1480, a second son, named Cesare, was born to them.
At length, in the summer of 1481, some brief pause in the business of sharing the Papal councils, making and breaking of leagues, persecuting the Colonnas, and entertaining ambassadors, made it possible for Girolamo and his wife to visit for the first time their dominions of Forlì and Imola. There were to be grand doings in Rome on the 30th of June, 1481. The Pope in grand gala, and with much ceremony and great rejoicings, was to bless the fleet, now coming up from Ostia to the city. There were to be feasts, candles, processions, and other such like "divine services," with "Florentine ambassador washing the Pope's hands at the beginning of the sacred rites; Venetian ambassadors washing them in the middle, and the Prefect of Rome at the end of the same;"[86] and drink and Papal blessings distributed to all comers.
But, despite all these attractions, Girolamo and Catherine with their retinue left Rome at daybreak on that day. It caused great surprise, says the chronicler, that they should not have chosen, at the cost of one day's delay, to be present at all these gay doings. But it was understood that that special day and hour had been indicated to him as fortunate for his journey, by the planets.
From Rome to Forlì with bag and baggage.—First presentation of a new lord and lady to their lieges.—Venice again shows a velvet paw to a second Riario.—Saffron-hill in brocade and ermine.—Sad conduct on the part of our lieges.—Life in Rome again.—"Orso! Orso!—Colonna! Colonna!"—A Pope's hate, and a Pope's vengeance.—Sixtus finally loses the game.
Journeys in the fifteenth century were important undertakings,—especially journeys of women and children. But this expedition of the Count Girolamo and his family was a very serious affair indeed. His departure from Rome resembled a veritable exodus. For he determined on transporting to Forlì, not only the whole of his numerous establishment of servants and retainers of all kinds, but also all his immense wealth in goods and chattels of all sorts. This kind of property formed a very much larger part of a rich man's substance in those times, than it does in these days of public debts and investments in all kinds of industrial undertakings. A rich man's wealth in the fifteenth century consisted of large masses of hoarded coin,—very much smaller in numerical amount, however, than the sums with which the traders and men of property of our day are daily conversant,—of horses, and long trains of richly caparisoned mules,—of large quantities of silks and other rich stuffs, both for clothing and furniture,—of arms and armour,—of jewels, and gold and silver plate,—and of the various other articles of household plenishing. In all such things the Count Riario, who had inherited all those rich possessions of his spendthrift brother the Cardinal, which, we are assured,[87] were for their quantity and magnificence one of the wonders of that age, was rich beyond any other individual of his contemporaries. And all this vast mass of miscellaneous property he now carried with him from Rome to Forlì.[88]
For eight days[89] the long road by Orte, Terni, Spoleto to Perugia, and thence over rough and picturesque Apennine passes to Ancona, and so through the flat and rich plains of Romagna to the distant provincial city, was thronged with beasts of burden and vehicles, and the servants and men-at-arms guarding them. As far as the eye could reach from the highest tower-top in Forlì over the straight dusty line of the ancient Via Emilia, long strings of laden mules, and carts, might be seen labouring onwards under the July sun, and, at length, slowly passing under the city gateway into the welcome shade of the narrow streets. Each mule load was covered with an embroidered cloth, showing the arms of Rovere and Sforza; and was bound with silken cords; and each cart similarly protected. For eight days the citizens of Forlì watched with ever-increasing wonder the arrival within their little city of all this wealth; and congratulated themselves on belonging to a master, whose riches, they trusted, would have the effect of making him less extortionate towards his new subjects.
At Rome, meanwhile, much gossip and speculation was excited by this departure of Girolamo, with bag and baggage; men observed, and whispered to each other, that Sixtus was growing old, and was latterly much broken. Some went so far as to assert, that his death had been foretold as to occur in the July or August of that year.[90] At all events, the Pontiff could not be expected to survive many years. And Rome, always a turbulent and dangerous place for wealthy men during the lawless interval between the death of one Pope and the election of his successor, would be like to be especially so to the immoderately enriched kinsman of a very much hated Pontiff. It was surmised, accordingly, that the prudent Count judged it to be time to think of abandoning a falling house, and preparing himself to ride out the storms which were sure to follow the death of Sixtus, in the comparatively safe anchorage of the provincial city he had made his own, during the hay-making time of Papal sunshine.
Catherine and her husband reached Forlì on the 15th of July, 1481, having been preceded by their children and goods. Prepared by all they had witnessed during the previous eight days, to expect something very magnificent, indeed, when their hitherto unseen lord should at length make his appearance, the citizens of Forlì did their utmost to welcome their young sovereigns. Nor, as it appears from the details of their festal entry preserved to us,[91] were the young couple less anxious to impress their subjects favourably. All the youth of both sexes, dressed uniformly in white, and bearing olive branches in their hands, went out to meet them, headed by the clergy and magistrates, in full canonicals and robes of office. On meeting this procession, the Count and Countess descended from their horses, and received their greetings standing. Catherine, we are told, had decked herself for the occasion in the most magnificent gala dress she possessed, and had put on all her most precious pearls and diamonds. "Her mind and intellect being filled moreover with the choicest Roman manners," says Burriel, "and joining to these her own elegance, and select and polished diction, and dexterously taking care, moreover, that the dazzling beauty of her personal perfections was not hidden from the spectators," she made conquest at first sight of the eyes and hearts of the Forlivesi.
Girolamo also did his best to make his entry as imposing as possible; and came attended on his journey by a party of the first nobles in Rome. It is very curious, and strikingly indicative of the degree to which Papal splendour outshone all other splendour in the old capital of the world, and Papal favour lifted the objects of it, be they what they might, far above all other grandeurs and greatnesses, however proud, during the brief period of a Pope's incumbency, to find this low-born kinsman of a mendicant friar attended on his journey by a Colonna,[92] two princes of the Orsini, one of the great Savelli family, and others of the oldest patrician families of Rome.
Inside the city every sort of revelry prevailed for three days. In the principal square of Forlì, admirably adapted, say the Forlì writers, for such purposes, from its handsome regularity and ample size, a tournament was held, in which the Roman princes condescended to run a course; and then a vast wooden castle, constructed in the middle of the square for this purpose, was besieged and defended by two parties of the townsfolk, with a reward from the Count to the first of the besieging party who should enter it; a distinction cheaply won by a Forlì youth, at the cost of an eye poked out by the zeal of the defenders.
Then there was a magnificent ball, in which the Count and Countess led off the dance, followed first by the Roman guests, and then by all the "beau monde" of Forlì. The chronicler, Leon Cobelli, who is recorded to have been also a painter, musician, and ballet-master, was there playing on his rebeck at the Count's elbow; and winds up his account of the festival by saying that he had never seen such a ball, and never should again in his days.
There were, of course, triumphal arches, allegorical paintings, cunning carpentry devices moving by unseen means, eating, drinking, and speechifying, in prose and verse, to a wonderful extent. "And charming it was to see the Lady Countess and all her damsels come forth in different magnificent dresses every day for a whole week, and the great buffets, ten feet high, in the banqueting hall of the palace, loaded every day with a fresh service of silver and gold."[93] Every room in the palace, too, was hung with tapestry, "however large, and however irregular in form."
But the crowning joy of all was, when, on the occasion of receiving the homage of the city, offered in "a very elegant oration by Dr. Guido Peppi, a perfect master not only of the vulgar tongue, but of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew,"[94] the gracious Count was pleased to remit the corn duties to his loving subjects of Forlì. Yet while relinquishing this important source of revenue, the new sovereigns, at the same time, undertook various expensive works for the amelioration and improvement of their cities of Forlì and Imola. At the former, the strong fortress of Ravaldino, commenced by the preceding dynasty, was carried to completion. The palace was enlarged and newly ornamented. The public square was adorned with new buildings and handsome porticoes. Schools were established both there and at Imola. In the latter city, such portions as had been built of mud were destroyed, and rebuilt of stone. The public square was enlarged and beautified, the paving of the streets improved, and an Academy of Fine Arts instituted.[95] In short, the young sovereigns seem to have been really anxious for the well-being of the people committed to their rule; and to have started at least with some idea of having duties to perform, and some intention of performing them.[96]
After thus winning golden opinions in Forlì, Girolamo and Catherine left that city for their other capital, Imola, on the 12th of August; having sojourned among the Forlivesi a little less than a month. There a similar welcome, and similar gala doings on a somewhat smaller scale, awaited them. There also their time was as busily occupied in making beneficent arrangements for the improvement of the town, and in striving to obtain the affections of their subjects; and their stay as short. For Girolamo was called away from these duties and interests more properly his own, by the necessity of attending to affairs of the Pope, which made it necessary for him to visit Venice. For this purpose he left Imola together with Catherine, on the 2nd of September, after a stay there of three weeks only.
All Italy was filled with uneasy suspicions and jealousies at this visit of the Pope's nephew, favourite, general and right-hand-man-in-ordinary to the powerful republic. Every little court was on thorns, and had spies on the alert to ascertain if possible the object and the degree of success attending the move. All sorts of things were suspected, asserted, and chattered of by these busy gentry; and subsequent historians have had to pick a somewhat thorny path amid their contradictory statements.[97] The most probable, and indeed scarcely doubtful explanation of the matter seems, however, sufficiently simple.
The Turks were in possession of Otranto. The Turkish raids were the constant terror and bugbear of Italy in these centuries, as were those of the Danes to our own island at an earlier period. Like the Danish inroads too to our monarchs, the aggressions of the Turks were sometimes a motive, and constantly a pretext to the popes for raising troops and money, and requiring the assistance of the other states of Italy. The Venetians had in the year before granted no such aid to Sixtus against the infidels. To obtain the promise of such now from the Signory was the avowed motive of the Count's visit. But no Italian potentate ever believed anything that was avowed. Besides, whenever the Pope was bent on hiding the real causes of movements, whose true scope was some iniquitous spoliation or ambitious scheme, he always had the Turks in his mouth.
Now for the real motive. Hercules, Duke of Ferrara, had quarrelled with the Venetians. He was also in disgrace with Sixtus. In the war, which had ensued between the Pope and Florence, in consequence of the Pazzi affair, and the hanging of the Archbishop of Pisa, Duke Hercules had accepted the place of General on the Florentine side. For which highly irreligious conduct Heaven's vicar had excommunicated him, and declared him deprived of his dukedom. Hercules of Ferrara however declared, that excommunicated he might be, but that Duke of Ferrara he would live and die by the grace of his own right arm.
The business in hand therefore between Sixtus and the Republic was first to unite their force for the destruction of this audacious rebel, and then to decide who was to have the spoil. The Republic said they would have Ferrara;—and meant it. The Pope said that it should belong to the Church; but meant, that it should fall to the lot of Girolamo, and form the main pillar of that edifice of family greatness, for which Sixtus lived and laboured.
But in stating the high policy of princes with this naked brutality,—into which the necessity of brevity has betrayed the writer—there is a danger, that perverse and ill-constituted idiosyncrasies may picture to themselves Counts, high and mighty Signors, and even Heaven's Vicegerent himself under the figure and similitude of some Bill Sikes, Artful Dodger, and reverend Fagin contending with mutually deceptive intentions respecting some equally nobly won booty. It becomes the historian therefore to lose no time in having recourse to those means, which the time-honoured practice and general consent of the world have appointed for the decorous draping and nobilitating similar passages of history. Bill Sikes in Doge's bonnet and ermine cloak, a venerable Fagin duly tiara-ed and apostolically elected, and an Artful Dodger in knightly guise, with a lovely and brilliant she-dodger by his side, gracefully going through decorous festivities in ducal halls in the midst of admiring satellites, will offend no proprieties.
Hasten we then to the all-potent upholstery, which decently differences the monarch and the burglar.
Of these Venetian festivities, it so happens, that our old Roman friend Jacopo of Volterra has left us the account of an eye-witness. Taking a rare holiday from diary-writing in the capital of the world, he had gone, he tells us,[98] to visit certain relations at Lucca. And thence, led by the desire of seeing the world, "videndi studio," he visited Bologna, Ferrara, and Padua. In the latter city he heard that the Count Girolamo and his noble lady had just arrived at Venice, having passed not by the route of Padua, but by Comacchio and the marshes, for the sake of avoiding Ferrara. So our curious Jacopo, who like a gadabout gossip as he was, could not resist the temptation of being present on such an occasion, left his horses with the innkeeper at Padua; and hiring a boat on the Brenta, sailed for Venice—"Navigavi Venetias."
The day after his arrival was Sunday, on which day at noon "the noble Virgins of Venice, to the number of an hundred and thirty-two, all, if not equally beautiful, equally loaded with gems, gold, and pearls, offered the Count, in the great hall of the ducal palace, a most magnificent spectacle, worthy of being remembered throughout all time." Giovanni Mocenigo, the Doge, sat on a lofty dais between Girolamo and Catherine. All the nobility of Venice were ranged tier above tier around the hall, in such numbers, that Jacopo never remembered having seen such an assembly even at Rome, except on occasion of the jubilee. Dancing was kept up till it was dark. Then white wax-candles were lighted in such numbers that night became more brilliant than day. Games of various kinds were then exhibited till the fourth hour after sunset. Then the feasting began—feasting of which it was difficult to say whether quantity or quality were the more wonderful! The women's dresses, "ut a peritis intelligo,"—as I am given to understand by such as are up in such matters, were estimated to be worth three hundred thousand gold pieces.
Other particulars of the doings at Venice on this occasion, and of the great honour shown to the Count by the Signory, have been preserved in a letter[99] by the Archdeacon of Forlì, to Lorenzo de' Medici, from the tone of which it should seem that, although in the suite of his sovereign, his real business at Venice was to act as spy for Lorenzo. This good Archdeacon tells his correspondent that it cannot be denied that the Signory have treated the Count in the most distinguished manner, that any prince was ever treated by them in the memory of man. He relates how forty noble citizens were sent to meet him at Malamocco; how the Senators themselves, with the Doge on board the Bucentaur, and an hundred and fifteen noble ladies to do honour to the Countess Catherine, came out to St. Clement in the Lagoon, two miles from Venice, and escorted him into the city, with every possible mark of respect and rejoicing; how the Doge received him the next day standing at the foot of the Giant's staircase; how he had been created "Gentilhuomo di Venezia;" and how the Senate had assembled and proceeded in his presence to transact certain business, in order that he might see their mode of procedure. Notwithstanding all which, adds this traitor Archdeacon, and clever spy, "I am certain that this visit has produced no fruit, which need give umbrage to your Lordship, or our other friends. Nor am I by any means sorry that it has taken place; as I know, that despite all this show of respect, the Count has seen here certain things, which have been discouraging to him rather than otherwise."
And, indeed, the experience of his brother the Cardinal's visit to Venice, and its results, ought to have been sufficient to warn Girolamo, that the grave Senators of the Republic were not unwont to laugh in their sleeves, while fooling vain young courtiers to the top of their bent with all sorts of external honours and gala-making, and sending them away wholly unsped, as regarded the substantial objects of their mission. How far Count Girolamo, and Catherine on whose counsel, we are told, he relied much on occasion of this visit to Venice, having taken her thither for the express purpose of availing himself of it, were contented with the result of their negotiations, we have no means of knowing, though Burriel undertakes to say, that he was highly dissatisfied. But it will be seen in the sequel, that Lorenzo's correspondent, the Archdeacon, had found the means of arriving at a very correct opinion of the real intentions of the Venetian statesmen.
The Count and Countess reached Imola on their return on the 23rd of September, and remained there till the 9th of October. While still busy there, according to the historians, in making various provisions for the amelioration of their territories and the benefit of their subjects, they received news from Forlì of the discovery of a dangerous conspiracy for the purpose of restoring the dynasty of the Ordelaffi. The conspirators proposed to assassinate Girolamo on his journey from Imola to Forlì; and then with the help of the Lord of Faenza, who was an uncle of the banished Ordelaffi, of the Lord of Bologna, and above all of Lorenzo de' Medici, who had by no means forgotten the ill turn he owed the Riarii, to secure the city for its ancient masters.
It is upon the occasion of this conspiracy that we learn, for the first time, from the reluctant admission of the historians, that two others having the same object had already been crushed by the vigilance of Francesco Tolentino, governor of Forlì, in the course of the year 1480, before the new sovereign had yet visited his principality. On both these occasions the clergy implicated in them had been exiled for a while, and the laymen hung in the orthodox manner.[100] And now the turbulent artisans of Forlì are trying again the same desperate game. The only consolation to the feelings of the injured sovereigns, was to be found in the fact, says Burriel, that no noble was engaged in the affair. Happily our vigilant Tolentino has the leaders of the conspiracy safe in the fort of Ravaldino before any mischief is done, beyond the painful effect of so much ingratitude on the feelings of the gracious sovereigns.
The historians are diffuse in indignant moralising on this "ingratitude," and perverseness. It seems true, indeed, that Girolamo and Catherine showed themselves inclined to govern according to the best extant lights of state-craft. But these writers omit to remember, that the Riarii were usurpers; and that the ousted family, and old familiar name, with its three centuries of history clinging round it, now represented by two young men, known to the Forlì artisans only by their unmerited misfortunes, were sure in absence and exile to be remembered with affection, and associated with a thousand "good-old-times" recollections, more potent over the minds of ignorantly patriotic burghers, than modern fiscal reforms. The Ordelaffi pretenders have no biographers except their enemies; and we must trust therefore to our imaginations for their view of these recurring conspiracies.
The Count and Countess hastened to Forlì on hearing these tidings from Tolentino. All danger was however over; and Girolamo with magnanimous clemency—much praised by his biographer—gave orders that no vengeance should be inflicted ... till after he had left Forlì.
This he immediately did, starting for Rome with Catherine on the 14th of October. And ten days afterwards, the good people of Forlì received the necessary lesson from the sight of four corpses dangling from as many windows of the Palazzo Pubblico.
The second residence in Rome, which followed this return in October, 1481, was characterised by events of a very different kind from those which had imparted so festive a character to those first four years. In the early days of his Papacy, the efforts of Sixtus to turn his elevation to account in the only manner in which it was valuable to him, had been crowned with success by the establishment of his son—or nephew—as prince of the third-rate states of Forlì and Imola. The bolder attempt, which followed, to acquire for him the dominion of Florence at the expense of so much black and odious guilt had, as has been seen, not only failed, but had entailed on Italy two years of war. And now the same undying ambition and insatiable avarice was driving him into the still greater misfortunes, which resulted from his endeavours to appropriate the dukedom of Ferrara.
Though much discontented with Girolamo's failure in the object of his visit to Venice, in as much as the Signory, while giving him abundance of fair words, had steadily evaded any engagement as to relinquishing their pretentions to Ferrara, when its Duke should be driven out by their joint forces, Sixtus, nevertheless, determined on continuing his alliance with them, in the hope that, when the prey was hunted down, he might find the means of appropriating it to himself. The Venetian Senators were doubtless guided in their secret counsels by similar considerations.
Every effort was at first made at Rome to conceal the existence of such an understanding; and the Pope was in public loud in his abuse of the Republic. But Ferdinand, the crafty and cautious old King of Naples, was not to be taken in by any such means. And the first consequence of the Pope's policy was the necessity of sending troops with Girolamo at their head to the Neapolitan frontier to oppose the hostile movements of the Neapolitans, who, under the command of Alfonzo, the King's son, threatened to force their way through the Roman states, for the purpose of going to the assistance of the Duke of Ferrara. Most of the other states of Italy, as usual, joined in the quarrel; the greater potentates for the protection of their own, or the hope of acquiring new dominions; and the lesser, as usual, in the capacity of mercenaries and "condottieri" captains. Thus all Italy was in a state of war and confusion.
In order to meet Alfonzo with as powerful a force as possible, Girolamo sent to his trusty governor, Tolentino, to come from Forlì, and bring with him as strong a band of Forlivesi as he could raise. The Bishop Magnani was appointed governor in his absence.[101] But his reverence, frightened at the remembrance of former conspiracies, and seeing ground of suspicion in everything, so used his authority, imprisoning, confiscating, and racking the lieges, even to death, right and left, that the commander of the fortress, after fruitlessly remonstrating with the bishop, wrote to Girolamo, that if he wished to preserve his position in Forlì, he must lose no time in putting a stop to the proceedings of his churchman governor. So Tolentino had to be sent back in a hurry.
At length, on the 21st of August, 1482, Girolamo at the head of the Papal troops, and the celebrated "condottiere," Robert Malatesta, at the head of the Venetians, gave battle to the Neapolitans near Velletri, and won a victory over them. The success, such as it was, produced no very important or decisive consequences; but of course the utmost was made of it at Rome. Girolamo marched into the city in triumph, and prisoners and standards were paraded and presented to his lady Countess, who must have felt, thinks Burriel, that this was the happiest day in her life. It may well be doubted, however, whether Catherine felt much happiness on the occasion, though she no doubt played her sovereign part before the public eye as well on that day as on so many others. She had little cause for happiness. Things were not looking well for her and hers in those days. News had recently been received of the siege of Forlì by some of the allies of the Duke of Ferrara; and though the attack had been beaten off, mischief had been done: there was expense to be incurred, and future danger to be feared.
Rome itself, moreover, was by no means a place to be happy in during these latter years of Sixtus IV.'s Papacy. The scarcity of all necessaries was extreme, the distress very great, and the discontent threatening. A large portion of the Papal force, however much needed in the field, was obliged to be retained in Rome for fear of a rising of the people. Wine was hardly to be procured. Many taverns were shut up, from absolute impossibility of obtaining food and drink to offer their customers.[102] Grain was at an unprecedented price; and the bakers were compelled, under pain of fine and imprisonment, to purchase their supplies at granaries established by the Pope, for the storing of inferior corn imported by him at a low price from Naples, and sold at an enormous profit. And the bread made from this grain, says Infessura,[103] "was black, stinking, and abominable, eaten only from necessity, and the cause of much disease."
Another misfortune was the death of the great soldier Robert Malatesta, who survived his Velletri victory only fifteen days. He died in Rome, in all probability of fever caused by his exertions in the battle. But public rumour, as usual, spoke of poison, and attributed his death to Girolamo's jealousy of his share in the command of the forces. Such accusations are of interest only as indicative of the motives which the public mind of the time deemed with probability attributable to its great men, and of the deeds which were considered likely to have been perpetrated.
He was buried in the church of St. Peter with all honour, "with sixty-four torches and many banners and many standards, of which one bore his arms and this motto: 'Veni, vidi, vici; victoriam Sixto dedi; Mors invidit gloriæ;' and a catafalque as if he had been a pope."[104] The more mordant contemporary diarist, Infessura, in recording these funeral honours, writes that once upon a time Siena having been liberated from the Florentines by some great captain, the Sienese were at a great loss what honours and recompense to award him. Whereupon a citizen rose and said, "Let us put him to death, and then worship him as a saint, and so make him our perpetual protector;" which was accordingly done. "Now, it is said—not that I altogether believe it," honestly adds Infessura, who bitterly hated Sixtus—"that the Pope imitated these Sienese in the matter of Malatesta's death and the honours shown to his dead body."
Many curious indications of the strange disorder and wretched state of Rome during these years may be gleaned from the prolix daily notices of these laborious old diarists.
On the 23rd of January, 1483, died "the poor old Cardinal de Rohan, who was robbed in life and robbed in death. For just before his death, Messer Bernardo de' Massimi" (a scion of a princely house!) "broke into his dwelling through the church of St. Apollinare, and robbed it of thirty thousand ducats' worth of richly wrought plate, with which he got clear off to Venice. And when the body was being carried to his burial, the friars of St. Augustin fought with the friars of Santa Maria Maggiore for certain gold brocade with which the corpse was covered, and belaboured each other with the torches. And then there was such a row that swords were drawn, and the rings that the corpse had on its fingers and the mitre on its head were stolen."
Here is another queer little picture furnished by the same anonymous "Notary of Nantiporto:"
One of the great Savelli family, the Signor Mariano, is a prisoner in St. Angelo. One night, the 25th of July, 1483, the cardinal-governor of the castle, the constable and other authorities are supping in the garden behind the fortress; and after supper sit playing cards till three in the morning. While they are thus engaged, Signor Mariano contrives to escape from the prison. At four A. M., armed men are searching all Rome for him, in vain; for he is safe out of the city. A bad business for the convives of that pleasant supper and card party; for that same day, Pope Sixtus, who does not like his prisoners to escape him, goes in person and in a great passion to St. Angelo, "and stayed there almost the whole day, and drove out the governor and the constable and the whole of the rest of the party."
Shortly afterwards we have the following anecdote preserved for us by Stefano Infessura:
A certain youth, one Messer Gianantonio di Parma, a deformed hunchback, and "monster of a man," grossly ignorant besides, and of infamous character, had paid down two hundred and fifty ducats to Count Girolamo, and promised a thousand to the Pope for a place. So Sixtus sends this promising youth to the Auditors of the Rota, the highest, most learned, and most respected legal body in Rome, with orders to admit him at once as one of their number! The members of that court demurred; humbly pointing out that it was contrary to all law and custom to appoint as Auditor of the Rota one not qualified by the usual preparatory degrees and examinations. The Pope, in reply, ordered a body of guards to march down to the court, and take all the members prisoners. But that grave and learned body, having received notice of what was coming, quickly broke up their sitting, and "stole off secretly, every man to his own house, not by the direct way, but by Trastevere, for fear of being caught and taken to prison." Hereupon Messer Gianantonio, baulked of his place, demanded his two hundred and fifty ducats back again from the Count. But it by no means suited that magnanimous Prince to refund. So he angrily answered that the money had been an unconditional gift! In which characteristic story, it is doubtful whether the Pope's audacious attempt, in despite of all law, decency, and reason, or the apparent ease with which the Papal vengeance was escaped, is the more strange.
But nothing is more curiously indicative of the disjointed state of society, and general disorder prevailing in these times, than the frequent apparent powerlessness of rulers wielding despotic authority to do as they would with things immediately, as it should seem, beneath their hand. Nothing works regularly. Appointed forces abdicate their functions; and the position of the baulked autocrat puts one in mind of that of the old woman of the nursery rhyme: "Fire won't burn rope,—rope won't hang man;" and the despot can't get over the small stile that impedes the path of his wishes. The immediate instruments of the tyrant's will, act as if he were a bad child or dangerous madman. If his orders can be evaded, or escaped from for the day, it is probable that the morrow may find him busy with some new freak of power. As there is no inviolable law, there is no certain line of demarcation between the criminal and the correct citizen. And all the mass of society is prepared to oppose at least such inert resistance as it can with safety, to the unreasonable will of an unrespected master.
Another curious trait of manners has been preserved by two of the diarists so frequently cited.[105] Girolamo had besieged and driven out the Colonnas from one of their castles in the neighbourhood of Rome. This achievement was of course made much of in the city; and a young painter, one Antonio, son of Giuliano, made the bombardment the subject of a picture. All the fight was, we are told, painted to the life with its various incidents and episodes. But in one corner of the picture, the painter, in one of those whimsical moods so often indulged in by the artists of that day, had represented[106] a lady in closer conversation with a Franciscan friar than was consistent with strict propriety. The painting was talked of; and to the poor painter's great delight, the Pope desired to see it. Sixtus was at first much pleased; but then observing the two figures above mentioned, he took it into his head that the lady was intended to represent the Countess Catherine. Whereupon, without further ado, he ordered the painter to be put on the rack, and then hung,—his house to be sacked, and all his and his father's substance confiscated. All of which was done, except the hanging, for which exile was substituted, on the pretext that the offender was little better than crazy.
The constant cause, however, of the worst and most frequent of the disorders that then rendered Rome little better than a den of outlaws and anarchy, was the great feud between the Colonnas and the Orsini, in which the Pope and Girolamo warmly espoused the side of the latter. No pretext was too flimsy, no injustice too flagrant, no violence too lawless, for these rulers to commit, in pursuit of the utter ruin of the hated family.
At length, on the 29th of March, 1484, there was "such work in Rome, as I never saw the like in my day,"[107] says the Notary of Nantiporto. All the Orsini and Girolamo Riario with them, armed themselves for a night attack on the palaces of the Colonnas, with the especial purpose of destroying the Protonotary Colonna, the head of that family. They, well knowing of the intended attack, which was in no wise kept secret, made the best preparations for defence that they could, barricading the streets with loads of hay and beams, &c. Thus, during that whole day, "Rome was in great trouble, and every one was in arms." Every body made their own dwelling as secure as possible; and "I," says the Notary, "put two carts full of stones before my door, and shored it up well with beams, and did the same to the windows; and all night long I heard them crying on the bridge, 'Orso! Orso! Chiesa! Chiesa!' with much sounding of trumpets, and continual discharges of fire-arms."
The magistrates of Rome, the "Conservatori," the Senators, the "Caporioni," and many notable citizens, went to the Pope in the midst of the tumult, to endeavour to bring about a pacification. But the fierce and vindictive old man would hear of no terms of submission or reconciliation till the Protonotary should give himself up into his hands. There was little doubt what would be the result of such a step. But the Colonna, seeing that it was the only chance of appeasing the storm that threatened to destroy his whole race, at length declared that he would go to the Pope. The other members of his family, however, would not permit him to do so; but determined that he should pass the night in the house of the Cardinal Colonna, his kinsman.
That night, after a regular bombardment, in the course of which many lives were lost on both sides, the houses both of the Cardinal and the Protonotary were taken by assault, and given up to pillage. The dwellings of many private citizens were also sacked in the tumult and confusion. At last, the Protonotary surrendered to Virgilio Orsini, who, together with the Count Girolamo, dragged him off to the Pope. As for the Cardinal, "all that he possessed was given up to plunder; his gold and silver, his robes, rich tapestry, and household goods, even to his hat."[108] As Virgilio Orsini and Girolamo Riario took the Protonotary through the streets, the Count made several attempts to put an end to their prisoner with his arquebuss, but was prevented by Orsini. "Ah! ah! traitor," screamed the Count to his enemy, "when I get you into my hands I will hang you by the neck."
The Pope ordered him to be taken to St. Angelo; and there Girolamo did get him into his hands. The torments to which he was subjected in those secret thick-walled torture chambers, are described as horrible. "At last," writes Infessura,[109] goaded by his feelings into the unwonted eloquence of irony, "the most holy Father in Christ, our Lord and Master, together with his accomplice, the Count Girolamo, according to their innate and wonted clemency, mercy, and justice, which they have ever shown, and still show, towards the faithful sons of holy Mother Church, have given us a crowning proof of their admirable qualities and hearts. For the medical men summoned by themselves to the prison of the Protonotary Colonna, have declared, that the varied and most excruciating tortures to which he has been subjected, have made it impossible that he should live." He then proceeds to give a detailed account, according to the report of the surgeons, of the injuries inflicted on every part of the unfortunate man's body, which, curious as it is in its indications of the scientific ingenuity of the torturers, is too painful for reproduction.
But though the Colonna was dying, he did not die fast enough. On the 30th of June, therefore, the anniversary, as Infessura remarks, of the decapitation of St. Paul by Nero, "His Holiness, our Lord and Master, inflicted a similar fate on the Protonotary." The mutilated body was then dressed in vile and grotesque rags in mockery of his late rank and state, and so sent to his mother. "And I, Stefano Infessura, the writer of this history, saw it with these eyes, and buried his body with these hands! For no other citizen of the Colonna faction would meddle in the matter, as I suppose, from fear."
It is to be observed therefore that our chronicler was evidently a warm partizan of the persecuted family. But his narrative has all the characteristics of truthfulness as to its facts. Whenever any ill-deed of the opposite faction rests only on common report, or suspicion, he records the accusation, but always marks it as only a report. Besides that he is in the main perfectly corroborated by the apparently impartial Notary of Nantiporto.
After the death of the Protonotary the Colonnas attempted by submission to make peace with Sixtus, so as to preserve some remnant of the family possessions. But Sixtus, though trembling on the verge of the grave himself, would hear of no peace or reconciliation as long as there remained anything belonging to a Colonna, which might be wrenched from them for the enriching of a Riario.
Yet the horizon was daily growing darker around the fortunes and long-cherished hope and aims of the rapidly declining Pontiff. Some months previously to the events just related, he had found himself forced to change suddenly and scandalously his policy with regard to the Venetians. As soon as their success against the Duke of Ferrara seemed imminent, almost all the other states of Italy became seriously alarmed at the prospect of so great an accession of territory and power to the great Republic already so formidable to its neighbours. They united in urging these views on the Pope, who seems to have become aware about the same time, that if the Venetians conquered, they would conquer for themselves, and that in such case he would have no chance of obtaining the coveted dukedom. He therefore suddenly united himself with the other states in a "santissima lega," against Venice, still intending to direct its forces also against Ferrara, and hoping thus to win the prize he could not bring himself to relinquish.
Rarely has been seen a more striking instance of that strangely interesting but painful spectacle of an unworthy ruling passion strong in death, than that offered by the dying Sixtus. For what had he prostituted to mean aims the awful powers and solemn position intrusted to him? for what wholly disregarded every most dread responsibility; brought scandal, disgrace, and scoffing on his great office; and made the title of Heaven's Vicegerent a blasphemy? for what had he plunged Italy into war, and made Rome a bandit's lair? For a name!—a name that a few years before had been borne from father to son by unknown fishermen, happy in their obscurity! That his "family" might be great among the great ones of the earth!—the family of a mendicant friar and sworn Romish priest!
This was the one passion for which Sixtus IV. lived, and sinned, and died. Yes! died for it. For the misery of failure in his hope was the malady that crushed him into the grave. The game was going all against him. For as all Italy was united in the determination that Venice should not possess Ferrara, and the Republic saw clearly that she could never succeed in taking it in defiance of them all, there was little obstacle to the peace Italy so much needed. But the Holy Father (!) would hear of no peace. Each courier that brought news from the camp, which indicated the probability of such a solution, inflicted a blow that prostrated him. He was seen by the few who had access to him, plunged in deep melancholy, and totally unable to rally his failing strength.
At length came envoys with the news that peace was made;—made without consent, intervention, or stipulation of his! The messengers with decorously malicious hypocrisy, pretended to think that they were the bearers of acceptable tidings,—enlarged on the blessings thus secured to Italy, which must be so consolatory to the paternal heart of the father of the faithful, and congratulated him on the prospect of durable repose opened to the bleeding country. Every word was a rankling stab to the heart of the despairing but still implacable Pontiff. Willingly would he have clutched with those shaking hands, which he was compelled to raise in hypocritical benediction, the throats of these babblers of peace and reconciliation. But the blow was fatal to the sinking old man. Ferrara and its fair dukedom would never now belong to kith or kin of his. So Sixtus turned his face to the wall and died.[110]