History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume 6 Part 34

306) for an extract of this Roman act, which he has taken from the Ecclesiastical Annals of Odericus Raynaldus, A.D. 1281, No. 14, 15.]

In the first moments of rebellion, when Arnold of Brescia had inflamed their minds against the church, the Romans artfully labored to conciliate the favor of the empire, and to recommend their merit and services in the cause of Caesar. The style of their amba.s.sadors to Conrad the Third and Frederic the First is a mixture of flattery and pride, the tradition and the ignorance of their own history. [53] After some complaint of his silence and neglect, they exhort the former of these princes to pa.s.s the Alps, and a.s.sume from their hands the Imperial crown. "We beseech your majesty not to disdain the humility of your sons and va.s.sals, not to listen to the accusations of our common enemies; who calumniate the senate as hostile to your throne, who sow the seeds of discord, that they may reap the harvest of destruction. The pope and the _Sicilian_ are united in an impious league to oppose _our_ liberty and _your_ coronation. With the blessing of G.o.d, our zeal and courage has. .h.i.therto defeated their attempts. Of their powerful and factious adherents, more especially the Frangipani, we have taken by a.s.sault the houses and turrets: some of these are occupied by our troops, and some are levelled with the ground. The Milvian bridge, which they had broken, is restored and fortified for your safe pa.s.sage; and your army may enter the city without being annoyed from the castle of St. Angelo. All that we have done, and all that we design, is for your honor and service, in the loyal hope, that you will speedily appear in person, to vindicate those rights which have been invaded by the clergy, to revive the dignity of the empire, and to surpa.s.s the fame and glory of your predecessors. May you fix your residence in Rome, the capital of the world; give laws to Italy, and the Teutonic kingdom; and imitate the example of Constantine and Justinian, [54] who, by the vigor of the senate and people, obtained the sceptre of the earth." [55] But these splendid and fallacious wishes were not cherished by Conrad the Franconian, whose eyes were fixed on the Holy Land, and who died without visiting Rome soon after his return from the Holy Land.

[Footnote 53: These letters and speeches are preserved by Otho bishop of Frisingen, (Fabric. Bibliot. Lat. Med. et Infim. tom. v. p. 186, 187,) perhaps the n.o.blest of historians: he was son of Leopold marquis of Austria; his mother, Agnes, was daughter of the emperor Henry IV., and he was half-brother and uncle to Conrad III. and Frederic I. He has left, in seven books, a Chronicle of the Times; in two, the Gesta Frederici I., the last of which is inserted in the vith volume of Muratori's historians.]

[Footnote 54: We desire (said the ignorant Romans) to restore the empire in um statum, quo fuit tempore Constantini et Justiniani, qui totum orbem vigore senatus et populi Romani suis tenuere manibus.]

[Footnote 55: Otho Frising. de Gestis Frederici I. l. i. c. 28, p.

662--664.]

His nephew and successor, Frederic Barbarossa, was more ambitious of the Imperial crown; nor had any of the successors of Otho acquired such absolute sway over the kingdom of Italy. Surrounded by his ecclesiastical and secular princes, he gave audience in his camp at Sutri to the amba.s.sadors of Rome, who thus addressed him in a free and florid oration: "Incline your ear to the queen of cities; approach with a peaceful and friendly mind the precincts of Rome, which has cast away the yoke of the clergy, and is impatient to crown her legitimate emperor. Under your auspicious influence, may the primitive times be restored. a.s.sert the prerogatives of the eternal city, and reduce under her monarchy the insolence of the world. You are not ignorant, that, in former ages, by the wisdom of the senate, by the valor and discipline of the equestrian order, she extended her victorious arms to the East and West, beyond the Alps, and over the islands of the ocean. By our sins, in the absence of our princes, the n.o.ble inst.i.tution of the senate has sunk in oblivion; and with our prudence, our strength has likewise decreased. We have revived the senate, and the equestrian order: the counsels of the one, the arms of the other, will be devoted to your person and the service of the empire. Do you not hear the language of the Roman matron? You were a guest, I have adopted you as a citizen; a Transalpine stranger, I have elected you for my sovereign; [56] and given you myself, and all that is mine. Your first and most sacred duty is to swear and subscribe, that you will shed your blood for the republic; that you will maintain in peace and justice the laws of the city and the charters of your predecessors; and that you will reward with five thousand pounds of silver the faithful senators who shall proclaim your t.i.tles in the Capitol. With the name, a.s.sume the character, of Augustus." The flowers of Latin rhetoric were not yet exhausted; but Frederic, impatient of their vanity, interrupted the orators in the high tone of royalty and conquest. "Famous indeed have been the fort.i.tude and wisdom of the ancient Romans; but your speech is not seasoned with wisdom, and I could wish that fort.i.tude were conspicuous in your actions. Like all sublunary things, Rome has felt the vicissitudes of time and fortune. Your n.o.blest families were translated to the East, to the royal city of Constantine; and the remains of your strength and freedom have long since been exhausted by the Greeks and Franks. Are you desirous of beholding the ancient glory of Rome, the gravity of the senate, the spirit of the knights, the discipline of the camp, the valor of the legions? you will find them in the German republic. It is not empire, naked and alone, the ornaments and virtues of empire have likewise migrated beyond the Alps to a more deserving people: [57] they will be employed in your defence, but they claim your obedience. You pretend that myself or my predecessors have been invited by the Romans: you mistake the word; they were not invited, they were implored. From its foreign and domestic tyrants, the city was rescued by Charlemagne and Otho, whose ashes repose in our country; and their dominion was the price of your deliverance. Under that dominion your ancestors lived and died. I claim by the right of inheritance and possession, and who shall dare to extort you from my hands? Is the hand of the Franks [58] and Germans enfeebled by age? Am I vanquished? Am I a captive? Am I not encompa.s.sed with the banners of a potent and invincible army? You impose conditions on your master; you require oaths: if the conditions are just, an oath is superfluous; if unjust, it is criminal. Can you doubt my equity? It is extended to the meanest of my subjects. Will not my sword be unsheathed in the defence of the Capitol? By that sword the northern kingdom of Denmark has been restored to the Roman empire. You prescribe the measure and the objects of my bounty, which flows in a copious but a voluntary stream. All will be given to patient merit; all will be denied to rude importunity." [59] Neither the emperor nor the senate could maintain these lofty pretensions of dominion and liberty.

United with the pope, and suspicious of the Romans, Frederic continued his march to the Vatican; his coronation was disturbed by a sally from the Capitol; and if the numbers and valor of the Germans prevailed in the b.l.o.o.d.y conflict, he could not safely encamp in the presence of a city of which he styled himself the sovereign. About twelve years afterwards, he besieged Rome, to seat an antipope in the chair of St.

Peter; and twelve Pisan galleys were introduced into the Tyber: but the senate and people were saved by the arts of negotiation and the progress of disease; nor did Frederic or his successors reiterate the hostile attempt. Their laborious reigns were exercised by the popes, the crusades, and the independence of Lombardy and Germany: they courted the alliance of the Romans; and Frederic the Second offered in the Capitol the great standard, the _Caroccio_ of Milan. [60] After the extinction of the house of Swabia, they were banished beyond the Alps: and their last coronations betrayed the impotence and poverty of the Teutonic Caesars.

[61]

[Footnote 56: Hospes eras, civem feci. Advena fuisti ex Transalpinis partibus principem const.i.tui.]

[Footnote 57: Non cessit n.o.bis nudum imperium, virtute sua amictum venit, ornamenta sua sec.u.m traxit. Penes nos sunt consules tui, &c.

Cicero or Livy would not have rejected these images, the eloquence of a Barbarian born and educated in the Hercynian forest.]

[Footnote 58: Otho of Frisingen, who surely understood the language of the court and diet of Germany, speaks of the Franks in the xiith century as the reigning nation, (Proceres Franci, equites Franci, ma.n.u.s Francorum:) he adds, however, the epithet of _Teutonici_.]

[Footnote 59: Otho Frising. de Gestis Frederici I., l. ii. c. 22, p. 720--733. These original and authentic acts I have translated and abridged with freedom, yet with fidelity.]

[Footnote 60: From the Chronicles of Ricobaldo and Francis Pipin, Muratori (dissert. xxvi. tom. ii. p. 492) has translated this curious fact with the doggerel verses that accompanied the gift:-- Ave decus...o...b..s, ave! victus tibi destinor, ave!

Currus ab Augusto Frederico Caesare justo.

Vae Mediolanum! jam sentis spernere vanum Imperii vires, proprias tibi tollere vires.

Ergo triumphorum urbs potes memor esse priorum Quos tibi mittebant reges qui bella gerebant.

Ne si dee tacere (I now use the Italian Dissertations, tom. i. p. 444) che nell' anno 1727, una copia desso Caroccio in marmo dianzi ignoto si scopri, nel campidoglio, presso alle carcere di quel luogo, dove Sisto V. l'avea falto rinchiudere. Stava esso posto sopra quatro colonne di marmo fino colla sequente inscrizione, &c.; to the same purpose as the old inscription.]

[Footnote 61: The decline of the Imperial arms and authority in Italy is related with impartial learning in the Annals of Muratori, (tom. x. xi.

xii.;) and the reader may compare his narrative with the Histoires des Allemands (tom. iii. iv.) by Schmidt, who has deserved the esteem of his countrymen.]

Under the reign of Adrian, when the empire extended from the Euphrates to the ocean, from Mount Atlas to the Grampian hills, a fanciful historian [62] amused the Romans with the picture of their ancient wars.

"There was a time," says Florus, "when Tibur and Praeneste, our summer retreats, were the objects of hostile vows in the Capitol, when we dreaded the shades of the Arician groves, when we could triumph without a blush over the nameless villages of the Sabines and Latins, and even Corioli could afford a t.i.tle not unworthy of a victorious general." The pride of his contemporaries was gratified by the contrast of the past and the present: they would have been humbled by the prospect of futurity; by the prediction, that after a thousand years, Rome, despoiled of empire, and contracted to her primaeval limits, would renew the same hostilities, on the same ground which was then decorated with her villas and gardens. The adjacent territory on either side of the Tyber was always claimed, and sometimes possessed, as the patrimony of St. Peter; but the barons a.s.sumed a lawless independence, and the cities too faithfully copied the revolt and discord of the metropolis. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Romans incessantly labored to reduce or destroy the contumacious va.s.sals of the church and senate; and if their headstrong and selfish ambition was moderated by the pope, he often encouraged their zeal by the alliance of his spiritual arms. Their warfare was that of the first consuls and dictators, who were taken from the plough. The a.s.sembled in arms at the foot of the Capitol; sallied from the gates, plundered or burnt the harvests of their neighbors, engaged in tumultuary conflict, and returned home after an expedition of fifteen or twenty days. Their sieges were tedious and unskilful: in the use of victory, they indulged the meaner pa.s.sions of jealousy and revenge; and instead of adopting the valor, they trampled on the misfortunes, of their adversaries. The captives, in their s.h.i.+rts, with a rope round their necks, solicited their pardon: the fortifications, and even the buildings, of the rival cities, were demolished, and the inhabitants were scattered in the adjacent villages. It was thus that the seats of the cardinal bishops, Porto, Ostia, Albanum, Tusculum, Praeneste, and Tibur or Tivoli, were successively overthrown by the ferocious hostility of the Romans. [63] Of these, [64] Porto and Ostia, the two keys of the Tyber, are still vacant and desolate: the marshy and unwholesome banks are peopled with herds of buffaloes, and the river is lost to every purpose of navigation and trade. The hills, which afford a shady retirement from the autumnal heats, have again smiled with the blessings of peace; Frescati has arisen near the ruins of Tusculum; Tibur or Tivoli has resumed the honors of a city, [65] and the meaner towns of Albano and Palestrina are decorated with the villas of the cardinals and princes of Rome. In the work of destruction, the ambition of the Romans was often checked and repulsed by the neighboring cities and their allies: in the first siege of Tibur, they were driven from their camp; and the battles of Tusculum [66] and Viterbo [67] might be compared in their relative state to the memorable fields of Thrasymene and Cannae. In the first of these petty wars, thirty thousand Romans were overthrown by a thousand German horse, whom Frederic Barbarossa had detached to the relief of Tusculum: and if we number the slain at three, the prisoners at two, thousand, we shall embrace the most authentic and moderate account. Sixty-eight years afterwards they marched against Viterbo in the ecclesiastical state with the whole force of the city; by a rare coalition the Teutonic eagle was blended, in the adverse banners, with the keys of St. Peter; and the pope's auxiliaries were commanded by a count of Thoulouse and a bishop of Winchester. The Romans were discomfited with shame and slaughter: but the English prelate must have indulged the vanity of a pilgrim, if he multiplied their numbers to one hundred, and their loss in the field to thirty, thousand men. Had the policy of the senate and the discipline of the legions been restored with the Capitol, the divided condition of Italy would have offered the fairest opportunity of a second conquest. But in arms, the modern Romans were not _above_, and in arts, they were far _below_, the common level of the neighboring republics. Nor was their warlike spirit of any long continuance; after some irregular sallies, they subsided in the national apathy, in the neglect of military inst.i.tutions, and in the disgraceful and dangerous use of foreign mercenaries.

[Footnote 62: Tibur nunc suburbanum, et aestivae Praeneste deliciae, nuncupatis in Capitolio votis petebantur. The whole pa.s.sage of Florus (l. i. c. 11) may be read with pleasure, and has deserved the praise of a man of genius, (uvres de Montesquieu, tom. iii. p. 634, 635, quarto edition.)]

[Footnote 63: Ne a feritate Romanorum, sicut fuerant Hostienses, Portuenses, Tusculanenses, Albanenses, Labicenses, et nuper Tiburtini destruerentur, (Matthew Paris, p. 757.) These events are marked in the Annals and Index (the xviiith volume) of Muratori.]

[Footnote 64: For the state or ruin of these suburban cities, the banks of the Tyber, &c., see the lively picture of the P. Labat, (Voyage en Espagne et en Italiae,) who had long resided in the neighborhood of Rome, and the more accurate description of which P. Eschinard (Roma, 1750, in octavo) has added to the topographical map of Cingolani.]

[Footnote 65: Labat (tom. iii. p. 233) mentions a recent decree of the Roman government, which has severely mortified the pride and poverty of Tivoli: in civitate Tiburtina non vivitur civiliter.]

[Footnote 66: I depart from my usual method, of quoting only by the date the Annals of Muratori, in consideration of the critical balance in which he has weighed nine contemporary writers who mention the battle of Tusculum, (tom. x. p. 42--44.)]

[Footnote 67: Matthew Paris, p. 345. This bishop of Winchester was Peter de Rupibus, who occupied the see thirty-two years, (A.D. 1206--1238.) and is described, by the English historian, as a soldier and a statesman. (p. 178, 399.)]

Ambition is a weed of quick and early vegetation in the vineyard of Christ. Under the first Christian princes, the chair of St. Peter was disputed by the votes, the venality, the violence, of a popular election: the sanctuaries of Rome were polluted with blood; and, from the third to the twelfth century, the church was distracted by the mischief of frequent schisms. As long as the final appeal was determined by the civil magistrate, these mischiefs were transient and local: the merits were tried by equity or favor; nor could the unsuccessful compet.i.tor long disturb the triumph of his rival. But after the emperors had been divested of their prerogatives, after a maxim had been established that the vicar of Christ is amenable to no earthly tribunal, each vacancy of the holy see might involve Christendom in controversy and war. The claims of the cardinals and inferior clergy, of the n.o.bles and people, were vague and litigious: the freedom of choice was overruled by the tumults of a city that no longer owned or obeyed a superior. On the decease of a pope, two factions proceeded in different churches to a double election: the number and weight of votes, the priority of time, the merit of the candidates, might balance each other: the most respectable of the clergy were divided; and the distant princes, who bowed before the spiritual throne, could not distinguish the spurious, from the legitimate, idol. The emperors were often the authors of the schism, from the political motive of opposing a friendly to a hostile pontiff; and each of the compet.i.tors was reduced to suffer the insults of his enemies, who were not awed by conscience, and to purchase the support of his adherents, who were instigated by avarice or ambition a peaceful and perpetual succession was ascertained by Alexander the Third, [68] who finally abolished the tumultuary votes of the clergy and people, and defined the right of election in the sole college of cardinals. [69] The three orders of bishops, priests, and deacons, were a.s.similated to each other by this important privilege; the parochial clergy of Rome obtained the first rank in the hierarchy: they were indifferently chosen among the nations of Christendom; and the possession of the richest benefices, of the most important bishoprics, was not incompatible with their t.i.tle and office. The senators of the Catholic church, the coadjutors and legates of the supreme pontiff, were robed in purple, the symbol of martyrdom or royalty; they claimed a proud equality with kings; and their dignity was enhanced by the smallness of their number, which, till the reign of Leo the Tenth, seldom exceeded twenty or twenty-five persons. By this wise regulation, all doubt and scandal were removed, and the root of schism was so effectually destroyed, that in a period of six hundred years a double choice has only once divided the unity of the sacred college. But as the concurrence of two thirds of the votes had been made necessary, the election was often delayed by the private interest and pa.s.sions of the cardinals; and while they prolonged their independent reign, the Christian world was left dest.i.tute of a head. A vacancy of almost three years had preceded the elevation of George the Tenth, who resolved to prevent the future abuse; and his bull, after some opposition, has been consecrated in the code of the canon law. [70] Nine days are allowed for the obsequies of the deceased pope, and the arrival of the absent cardinals; on the tenth, they are imprisoned, each with one domestic, in a common apartment or _conclave_, without any separation of walls or curtains: a small window is reserved for the introduction of necessaries; but the door is locked on both sides and guarded by the magistrates of the city, to seclude them from all correspondence with the world. If the election be not consummated in three days, the luxury of their table is contracted to a single dish at dinner and supper; and after the eighth day, they are reduced to a scanty allowance of bread, water, and wine. During the vacancy of the holy see, the cardinals are prohibited from touching the revenues, or a.s.suming, unless in some rare emergency, the government of the church: all agreements and promises among the electors are formally annulled; and their integrity is fortified by their solemn oath and the prayers of the Catholics. Some articles of inconvenient or superfluous rigor have been gradually relaxed, but the principle of confinement is vigorous and entire: they are still urged, by the personal motives of health and freedom, to accelerate the moment of their deliverance; and the improvement of ballot or secret votes has wrapped the struggles of the conclave [71] in the silky veil of charity and politeness. [72] By these inst.i.tutions the Romans were excluded from the election of their prince and bishop; and in the fever of wild and precarious liberty, they seemed insensible of the loss of this inestimable privilege. The emperor Lewis of Bavaria revived the example of the great Otho. After some negotiation with the magistrates, the Roman people were a.s.sembled [73] in the square before St. Peter's: the pope of Avignon, John the Twenty-second, was deposed: the choice of his successor was ratified by their consent and applause.

They freely voted for a new law, that their bishop should never be absent more than three months in the year, and two days' journey from the city; and that if he neglected to return on the third summons, the public servant should be degraded and dismissed. [74] But Lewis forgot his own debility and the prejudices of the times: beyond the precincts of a German camp, his useless phantom was rejected; the Romans despised their own workmans.h.i.+p; the antipope implored the mercy of his lawful sovereign; [75] and the exclusive right of the cardinals was more firmly established by this unseasonable attack.

[Footnote 68: See Mosheim, Inst.i.tut. Histor. Ecclesiast. p. 401, 403.

Alexander himself had nearly been the victim of a contested election; and the doubtful merits of Innocent had only preponderated by the weight of genius and learning which St. Bernard cast into the scale, (see his life and writings.)]

[Footnote 69: The origin, t.i.tles, importance, dress, precedency, &c., of the Roman cardinals, are very ably discussed by Thoma.s.sin, (Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 1262--1287;) but their purple is now much faded.

The sacred college was raised to the definite number of seventy-two, to represent, under his vicar, the disciples of Christ.]

[Footnote 70: See the bull of Gregory X. approbante sacro concilio, in the _s.e.xts_ of the Canon Law, (l. i. t.i.t. 6, c. 3,) a supplement to the Decretals, which Boniface VIII. promulgated at Rome in 1298, and addressed in all the universities of Europe.]

[Footnote 71: The genius of Cardinal de Retz had a right to paint a conclave, (of 1665,) in which he was a spectator and an actor, (Memoires, tom. iv. p. 15--57;) but I am at a loss to appreciate the knowledge or authority of an anonymous Italian, whose history (Conclavi de' Pontifici Romani, in 4to. 1667) has been continued since the reign of Alexander VII. The accidental form of the work furnishes a lesson, though not an antidote, to ambition. From a labyrinth of intrigues, we emerge to the adoration of the successful candidate; but the next page opens with his funeral.]

[Footnote 72: The expressions of Cardinal de Retz are positive and picturesque: On y vecut toujours ensemble avec le meme respect, et la meme civilite que l'on observe dans le cabinet des rois, avec la meme politesse qu'on avoit dans la cour de Henri III., avec la meme familiarite que l'on voit dans les colleges; avec la meme modestie, qui se remarque dans les noviciats; et avec la meme charite, du moins en apparence, qui pourroit etre entre des freres parfaitement unis.]

[Footnote 73: Richiesti per bando (says John Villani) sanatori di Roma, e 52 del popolo, et capitani de' 25, e consoli, (_consoli?_) et 13 buone huomini, uno per rione. Our knowledge is too imperfect to p.r.o.nounce how much of this const.i.tution was temporary, and how much ordinary and permanent. Yet it is faintly ill.u.s.trated by the ancient statutes of Rome.]

[Footnote 74: Villani (l. x. c. 68--71, in Muratori, Script. tom. xiii.

p. 641--645) relates this law, and the whole transaction, with much less abhorrence than the prudent Muratori. Any one conversant with the darker ages must have observed how much the sense (I mean the nonsense) of superst.i.tion is fluctuating and inconsistent.]

[Footnote 75: In the first volume of the Popes of Avignon, see the second original Life of John XXII. p. 142--145, the confession of the antipope p. 145--152, and the laborious notes of Baluze, p. 714, 715.]

Had the election been always held in the Vatican, the rights of the senate and people would not have been violated with impunity. But the Romans forgot, and were forgotten. in the absence of the successors of Gregory the Seventh, who did not keep as a divine precept their ordinary residence in the city and diocese. The care of that diocese was less important than the government of the universal church; nor could the popes delight in a city in which their authority was always opposed, and their person was often endangered. From the persecution of the emperors, and the wars of Italy, they escaped beyond the Alps into the hospitable bosom of France; from the tumults of Rome they prudently withdrew to live and die in the more tranquil stations of Anagni, Perugia, Viterbo, and the adjacent cities. When the flock was offended or impoverished by the absence of the shepherd, they were recalled by a stern admonition, that St. Peter had fixed his chair, not in an obscure village, but in the capital of the world; by a ferocious menace, that the Romans would march in arms to destroy the place and people that should dare to afford them a retreat. They returned with timorous obedience; and were saluted with the account of a heavy debt, of all the losses which their desertion had occasioned, the hire of lodgings, the sale of provisions, and the various expenses of servants and strangers who attended the court. [76] After a short interval of peace, and perhaps of authority, they were again banished by new tumults, and again summoned by the imperious or respectful invitation of the senate. In these occasional retreats, the exiles and fugitives of the Vatican were seldom long, or far, distant from the metropolis; but in the beginning of the fourteenth century, the apostolic throne was transported, as it might seem forever, from the Tyber to the Rhone; and the cause of the transmigration may be deduced from the furious contest between Boniface the Eighth and the king of France. [77] The spiritual arms of excommunication and interdict were repulsed by the union of the three estates, and the privileges of the Gallican church; but the pope was not prepared against the carnal weapons which Philip the Fair had courage to employ. As the pope resided at Anagni, without the suspicion of danger, his palace and person were a.s.saulted by three hundred horse, who had been secretly levied by William of Nogaret, a French minister, and Sciarra Colonna, of a n.o.ble but hostile family of Rome. The cardinals fled; the inhabitants of Anagni were seduced from their allegiance and grat.i.tude; but the dauntless Boniface, unarmed and alone, seated himself in his chair, and awaited, like the conscript fathers of old, the swords of the Gauls.

Nogaret, a foreign adversary, was content to execute the orders of his master: by the domestic enmity of Colonna, he was insulted with words and blows; and during a confinement of three days his life was threatened by the hards.h.i.+ps which they inflicted on the obstinacy which they provoked. Their strange delay gave time and courage to the adherents of the church, who rescued him from sacrilegious violence; but his imperious soul was wounded in the vital part; and Boniface expired at Rome in a frenzy of rage and revenge. His memory is stained with the glaring vices of avarice and pride; nor has the courage of a martyr promoted this ecclesiastical champion to the honors of a saint; a magnanimous sinner, (say the chronicles of the times,) who entered like a fox, reigned like a lion, and died like a dog. He was succeeded by Benedict the Eleventh, the mildest of mankind. Yet he excommunicated the impious emissaries of Philip, and devoted the city and people of Anagni by a tremendous curse, whose effects are still visible to the eyes of superst.i.tion. [78]

[Footnote 76: Romani autem non valentes nec volentes ultra suam celare cupiditatem gravissimam, contra papam movere cperunt questionem, exigentes ab eo urgentissime omnia quae subierant per ejus absentiam d.a.m.na et jacturas, videlicet in hispitiis locandis, in mercimoniis, in usuris, in redditibus, in provisionibus, et in aliis modis innumerabilibus. Qud c.u.m audisset papa, praecordialiter ingemuit, et se comperiens _muscipulatum_, &c., Matt. Paris, p. 757. For the ordinary history of the popes, their life and death, their residence and absence, it is enough to refer to the ecclesiastical annalists, Sponda.n.u.s and Fleury.]

[Footnote 77: Besides the general historians of the church of Italy and of France, we possess a valuable treatise composed by a learned friend of Thua.n.u.s, which his last and best editors have published in the appendix (Histoire particuliere du grand Differend entre Boniface VIII et Philippe le Bel, par Pierre du Puis, tom. vii. P. xi. p. 61--82.)]

[Footnote 78: It is difficult to know whether Labat (tom. iv. p. 53--57) be in jest or in earnest, when he supposes that Anagni still feels the weight of this curse, and that the cornfields, or vineyards, or olive-trees, are annually blasted by Nature, the obsequious handmaid of the popes.]

Chapter LXIX: State Of Rome From The Twelfth Century.--Part IV.

After his decease, the tedious and equal suspense of the conclave was fixed by the dexterity of the French faction. A specious offer was made and accepted, that, in the term of forty days, they would elect one of the three candidates who should be named by their opponents. The archbishop of Bourdeaux, a furious enemy of his king and country, was the first on the list; but his ambition was known; and his conscience obeyed the calls of fortune and the commands of a benefactor, who had been informed by a swift messenger that the choice of a pope was now in his hands. The terms were regulated in a private interview; and with such speed and secrecy was the business transacted, that the unanimous conclave applauded the elevation of Clement the Fifth. [79] The cardinals of both parties were soon astonished by a summons to attend him beyond the Alps; from whence, as they soon discovered, they must never hope to return. He was engaged, by promise and affection, to prefer the residence of France; and, after dragging his court through Poitou and Gascony, and devouring, by his expense, the cities and convents on the road, he finally reposed at Avignon, [80] which flourished above seventy years [81] the seat of the Roman pontiff and the metropolis of Christendom. By land, by sea, by the Rhone, the position of Avignon was on all sides accessible; the southern provinces of France do not yield to Italy itself; new palaces arose for the accommodation of the pope and cardinals; and the arts of luxury were soon attracted by the treasures of the church. They were already possessed of the adjacent territory, the Venaissin county, [82] a populous and fertile spot; and the sovereignty of Avignon was afterwards purchased from the youth and distress of Jane, the first queen of Naples and countess of Provence, for the inadequate price of fourscore thousand florins. [83] Under the shadow of a French monarchy, amidst an obedient people, the popes enjoyed an honorable and tranquil state, to which they long had been strangers: but Italy deplored their absence; and Rome, in solitude and poverty, might repent of the ungovernable freedom which had driven from the Vatican the successor of St. Peter. Her repentance was tardy and fruitless: after the death of the old members, the sacred college was filled with French cardinals, [84] who beheld Rome and Italy with abhorrence and contempt, and perpetuated a series of national, and even provincial, popes, attached by the most indissoluble ties to their native country.

[Footnote 79: See, in the Chronicle of Giovanni Villani, (l. viii.

c. 63, 64, 80, in Muratori, tom. xiii.,) the imprisonment of Boniface VIII., and the election of Clement V., the last of which, like most anecdotes, is embarra.s.sed with some difficulties.]

[Footnote 80: The original lives of the eight popes of Avignon, Clement V., John XXII., Benedict XI., Clement VI., Innocent VI., Urban V., Gregory XI., and Clement VII., are published by Stephen Baluze, (Vitae Paparum Avenionensium; Paris, 1693, 2 vols. in 4to.,) with copious and elaborate notes, and a second volume of acts and doc.u.ments. With the true zeal of an editor and a patriot, he devoutly justifies or excuses the characters of his countrymen.]

[Footnote 81: The exile of Avignon is compared by the Italians with Babylon, and the Babylonish captivity. Such furious metaphors, more suitable to the ardor of Petrarch than to the judgment of Muratori, are gravely refuted in Baluze's preface. The abbe de Sade is distracted between the love of Petrarch and of his country. Yet he modestly pleads, that many of the local inconveniences of Avignon are now removed; and many of the vices against which the poet declaims, had been imported with the Roman court by the strangers of Italy, (tom. i. p. 23--28.)]

[Footnote 82: The comtat Venaissin was ceded to the popes in 1273 by Philip III. king of France, after he had inherited the dominions of the count of Thoulouse. Forty years before, the heresy of Count Raymond had given them a pretence of seizure, and they derived some obscure claim from the xith century to some lands citra Rhodanum, (Valesii Not.i.tia Galliarum, p. 495, 610. Longuerue, Description de la France, tom. i. p.

376--381.)]

[Footnote 83: If a possession of four centuries were not itself a t.i.tle, such objections might annul the bargain; but the purchase money must be refunded, for indeed it was paid. Civitatem Avenionem emit.... per ejusmodi venditionem pecunia redundates, &c., (iida Vita Clement. VI. in Baluz. tom. i. p. 272. Muratori, Script. tom. iii. P. ii. p. 565.) The only temptation for Jane and her second husband was ready money, and without it they could not have returned to the throne of Naples.]

[Footnote 84: Clement V immediately promoted ten cardinals, nine French and one English, (Vita ivta, p. 63, et Baluz. p. 625, &c.) In 1331, the pope refused two candidates recommended by the king of France, quod xx.