N.B. For the ancestors of Charles see p. 250

The Emperors are numbered.

(2) SO-CALLED ITALIAN KINGS AND EMPERORS (888‑962)

The degradation of the imperial and kingly dignity was due to numerous causes. One was the degeneracy of the Carolingian princes; another the fatal family feuds that multiplied like hydra-heads; another the usurpation of civil authority by the Pope and the bishops; another the exhausting and often vain struggles against external foes, such as the Saracens, to whom were soon to be added the Hungarians and the Normans; and, lastly, a very important cause was the rapidly growing independence not only of various city communes, such as Venice and Naples (to say nothing of Rome), but also of the powerful feudatories of the crown, who in many cases had founded hereditary duchies or marquisates and were naturally inclined to aim still higher and to fight among themselves for the crown of Italy, or even to grasp at the elusive phantom of the imperial diadem.

The break-up of the Carolingian Empire was followed by the gradual rise of two great and distinct nations, the French and the German; and for a time it seemed as if also Italy might at length coalesce into a nation under native kings. For this reason Italian writers are apt to linger somewhat fondly over these so‑called 'Italian' dukes and marquesses, and over what they call the regno d'Italia indipendente, whereas by the German historian this period, during which Italy was to a great extent free from Germanic domination, is often regarded as almost too trivial or too degraded to deserved description.9

As I am making some observations in a later chapter on the state of learning, religion, and art in Italy during the ninth and tenth centuries, and as the fightings of rival claimants to the crown of Italy are intrinsically of minimal importance, I shall give a very brief account of what is generally called the history of this period.

In the case of Charles the Fat we noted that the election to the imperial dignity seems to have become, for the time at least, dependent on the Pope, and that the magnates, lay and ecclesiastical, of Northern Italy had assumed the right to choose or sanction their own king; for they caused Charles to be crowned at Pavia with the Lombard crown by the Archbishop of Milan. On his deposition it was therefore but natural that these magnates should again choose their own king. Ignoring the fact that Arnulf of Carinthia, a bastard Carolingian, had been elected in the place of Charles as German king and regarded himself also as ipso facto King of Italy, they chose Berengar, the Marquess of Friuli,10 son of Gisela, a daughter of Louis the Pious.

During the next thirty-seven years (888‑925) Berengar, recognized by a certain number of Italians as their king, had to contend successively against five rival claimants, four of whom succeeded in obtaining papal coronation as 'Emperors' before he himself attained that dignity in 915. The first of these rivals was the Duke of Spoleto. How audaciously independent these Lombard dukes of southern Italy had become we have already seen. While Louis II was still Emperor and Hadrian II was Pope (in 867) the Spoletan duke, Lambert, had suddenly invaded and plundered Rome. This feat he repeated in 878, when he kept Pope John VIII a prisoner for a month, endeavouring vainly to force him to bestow the imperial title on Carlmann and using such threats that the Pontiff, whom we have already admired for his martial courage and his brilliant defeat of the Saracens, fled away on a ship, betaking himself to count (afterwards King) Boson of Provence.

Now this Duke Lambert of Spoleto had a son Guido, whom Charles the Fat deposed on a charge of treason, giving his dukedom to Berengar of Friuli. But Guido had reinstated himself by help of the Saracens,11 and after defeating Berengar on the river Trebia, near Pavia, had the Iron Crown set on his own head as King of Italy, and two years later (891) was crowned with the imperial diadem at St. Peter's in Rome, although the Pope, Stephen V, was in secret collusion with a third competitor, namely Arnulf of Carinthia, who, as the successor of Charles the Fat north of the Alps, had all this time

been asserting his claims to the kingship of Italy and also to the title of Emperor.12

Guido was not content with possessing the imperial title. He wished to found an imperial dynasty by making also his son, Lambert, an Emperor, and the notorious Formosus, who had succeeded to the papal throne, at first showed favour to these ambitious projects and crowned Lambert at Ravenna as co-Emperor, but when after Guido's death Arnulf descended (896) with a strong army into Italy and entered Rome the weak-minded or crafty pontiff transferred his support from the Spoletan to the German claimant, and, although he had already set the imperial crown on Lambert's head, he now repeated the ceremony in favour of his rival.

Arnulf, however, did not gain much from having attained the object of his ambition, for while preparing to attack Lambert at Spoleto, he was suddenly struck down by paralysis, and though he lingered on for three years his political influence in Italy was at an end. The revulsion of feeling at Rome against the coronation of this 'barbarian' and against the Pope who had perpetrated this execrable unctio barbarica was so strong that the corpse of Formosus was actually disinterred in order to be arraigned before a Synod — a scene that will be described in a later chapter. Lambert, on the contrary, strongly supported by his ambitious mother Agiltrud (the daughter of that Beneventan duke who took Emperor Louis prisoner), rose greatly in popular favour, and would probably have succeeded in outvying Berengar, his one remaining rival, but in 898 he was killed by a fall from his horse while hunting — or was, if another account is the true one, assassinated. Thus Berengar was left without competitors.

But his peaceful enjoyment of the title of King of Italy was short-lived. A new and terrible enemy, the Magyars, as they called themselves, or the Hun-ugri, as the Slavs called them, of the same Oriental stock as the Huns and not unlike them in their savagery and pitiless humanity, had advanced in vast numbers from the Ural regions and now, finding but little resistance in the Slav peoples, had already under their chieftain Arpad seized on the country which from them still bears the name of Hungary; and they soon penetrated into Germany, France, and Italy, making themselves for half a century the terror of Europe, until in 955 they were totally routed by the Emperor Otto I at the great battle of Lechfeld.13

It was in 899 that these Magyars came streaming down into Italy. They inflicted such a defeat on Berengar near the river Brenta that once more his adversaries took courage, and, following the policy that brought such woes unnumber'd on Italy, encouraged as claimant of the imperial crown an alien prince, Louis, the son of 'King' Boson of Provence and of Ermengard, the daughter of the Carolingian Louis II. The young pretender, now King of Provence, responded to the invitation; he came to Rome and was actually crowned Emperor by Pope John IX; but Berengar boldly assailed him and made him promise to go home and never again to come to Italy. This promise, however, Louis broke, and in 904 he was captured by Berengar, who blinded him and sent him back to Provence.

Once more Berengar had a period of uncontested kingship, and in 915, having succeeded, together with Pope John X, in forming a league of the Lombard duchies with Naples and other cities for the object of annihilating the Saracen camp on the Garigliano — an object that was attained — he was acclaimed and crowned Emperor at Rome. Things now began again to look as if Italy might ultimately attain peace and unity under her own rulers; but these native-born Kings and Emperors were little to the mind of the Popes, who found themselves confronted with ever-present control, and the ambitious and unprincipled John X, shortly after he had set the imperial diadem on the head of Berengar, began, like many

(3) THE SAXON EMPERORS (962‑1024)

A document called the Privilegium Ottonis is still extant which (except for some later additions) seems to have been drawn up between Otto and Pope John XII. It officially sanctions the revival of the empire and the transmission of the dignity from the Frank to the Saxon monarchs; it also renews all the concessions made by the donations of Pipin and Charles the Great, giving to the Church even Venice and Istria and Naples and Benevento, and Sicily itself — which was still in the hands of the Saracens!

But whatever we may think of renewed Donations and the rehabilitated Empire, the revival of German domination in Italy was a fact the reality of which was substantiated very soon; for when Pope John, incited by the discontented nobility, began to intrigue with Berengar and received Berengar's son, Adalbert, as his guest at Rome, Otto came sweeping back form North Italy. At his approach the Pope and Adalbert took to flight. Otto entered Rome and, having convoked a Council (known as the Council of November), he formally deposed John and gave the Romans his imperial sanction to elect another pontiff, Pope Leo VIII — a precedent of much importance, seeing that during the next hundred years the Popes were selected by the Emperors or nominated with the sanction of their envoys, and did much to restore the good name of the Papacy. But the deposed and exiled pope John was not easily suppressed. He incited a tumult at Rome, and an assault made on Otto, in the Vatican, was repelled with difficulty and considerable slaughter. Indeed, there is no saying how things might have ended, for the Romans were fiercely resentful at Otto's insolent interference with their privileges. But Pope John's hour had sounded; he was caught by an indignant husband and so severely cudgelled that he died. The Romans forthwith elected a Pope, Benedict V, in his stead, ignoring Otto's Pope; but the imperial party finally prevailed and Benedict was deposed.

Meanwhile Otto had captured Berengar in North Italy and had sent him off to Germany, where soon after he died.

In 966, disorders having occurred at Rome, Otto again marched south and suppressed the rebels with great severity. The Prefect of the city, who had resisted the Pope (John XIII, Otto's protégé), was hung up by the hair to the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius,25 then paraded, riding back foremost on a donkey, through the streets, and finally taken off to prison in Germany. After this Otto spent the greater part of his life in Italy — a fact that show how anxious he was, in spite of his vast northern dominions, to establish his title as hereditary Roman Emperor of the West. This anxiety induced him to have his son, a child of twelve, crowned by the Pope with the imperial diadem — a function that took place in St. Peter's on Christmas Day 967. And, not content with this, he tried to secure recognition as Western Emperor from the Emperor of the East, and requested as a bride for the young Otto a Byzantine princess; but the proposal, which included the conquest of Sicily from the Saracens and the cession of the Byzantine possessions in South Italy as dowry, was scornfully rejected by Nicephorus Phocas, the conqueror of Crete, who regarded himself as the only legitimate Roman Emperor and poured contempt on Otto's pretensions. Moreover, although Otto sent his faithful Liudprand26 as envoy to Constantinople, the Byzantine Emperor gathered a fleet to aid Adalbert, Berengar's son, and to recover, if possible, for the Eastern Empire the cities of Capua, Benevento, Ravenna — and Rome! Thus Otto was forced to fight, and with the co-operation of a powerful Lombard duke, Pandulf Iron-head (Testa di ferro), who had combined under his rule the provinces of Spoleto, Benevento, and Capua, he besieged Bari; but Bari had open access to the sea, which was dominated by the Byzantine fleet, and, as ill-luck would have it, Pandulf fell into an ambush and was captured.

At this juncture Phocas was assassinated by his wife, who had already poisoned her father and her first husband, the Emperor Romanus. Her fellow-conspirator, the puny John Zimisces, who ascended the Byzantine throne, released Pandulf and propitiated Otto by sending over to Italy the desired princess Theophano, daughter of the triple murderess. She was wedded to the young co-Emperor and received the title of Empress. A year later, in May 973, Otto the Great, as he is called, died.

His successor, Otto II, was now a youth of seventeen. Without possessing the first Otto's masterful character, he certainly showed courage and vigour, and owed to his mother Adelheid a culture and refinement that was evidently lacking in his father. His reign of ten years was mainly occupied in fighting. First he was assailed by Henry of Bavaria, whom he defeated and deposed. Then he was attacked, and very nearly captured at Aachen, by Lothair of France; whereupon he led an army against Paris, and although he did not succeed in capturing it, he secured his undisturbed possession of Lorraine. Then he marched down into Italy, and after restoring a fugitive Pope and settling affairs at Rome, where violent discords, between the imperial and papal parties had become chronic,27 he opened (982) the campaign against the Saracens, who were still in possession of Sicily and had lately once more crossed over in great numbers into South Italy. Emboldened by success, Otto acted rashly and was surprised and totally defeated not far from Cotrone, the ancient Crotona, and would have been captured had he not sum out to a Byzantine vessel, whose crew luckily did not recognize him,28 so that he was able to reach a friendly shore in safety. The news of this disaster caused great disturbances and dangerous rebellions in Otto's northern dominions, but he determined first to regain prestige in Italy. At Verona he convoked a great assembly of his nobles of both nations and caused his son, a child of three, to be elected King of Germany and Italy. He then made preparations to renew the war against the Saracens, and after vainly trying to persuade the Venetians to lend him a fleet, he marched once more down to Rome. Here he was attacked by a fever and died. He was buried in an ancient sarcophagus which had a porphyry lid stolen from Hadrian's tomb. This sarcophagus stood for five centuries in the Paradiso, the great atrium of the old basilica, but when Paul V reconstructed the cathedral vaults, about 1610, the porphyry lid was taken to serve (as it still does) for a font, the old sarcophagus was given over to the kitchen of the Quirinal for a water-trough, and the body of the youthful Emperor was put into the marble and stucco coffin which now stands in the crypt (Grotte Vecchie) of St. Peter's, not far from the urns of 'King James III,' of England and his sons Charles Edward and Henry. A mosaic, probably first erected by the Empress Theophano, is still to be seen near Otto's tomb, and is a very interesting specimen of the degraded art of this period.

The child Otto III, born in 980, had been lately crowned at Aachen by the German nobles as King of Germany and of the Romans when the news of his father's death at Rome arrived. His mother, the 'Empress' Theophano, was made regent, and she proved herself worthy of the post, having evidently inherited more of the nature of her father, the Eastern Emperor Romanus, than of her mother's infamous character.

During the first six years of her regency we hear of little except that at Rome, as usual, fierce discords prevailed. One Pope (Benedict VI) had been imprisoned and strangled by the leaders of the populace; the next, Boniface VII, had fled from the imperialists of Constantinople; another (Benedict VII), driven out by the people and restored by Otto II, had been succeeded by John XIV, Bishop of Pavia and imperial chancellor. But Boniface returned from the East (985), deposed and poisoned, or starved to death, Pope John, and behaved with such intolerable cruelty that the populace rose, killed him, dragged his body through the streets, and cast it beneath the 'horse of Constantine,' namely the equestrian stature of Marcus Aurelius (see p. 338 n), the great imperial pagan philosopher, whose meditations would have been disturbed could he have foreseen the strange uses to which his monument would be put.

The leader of these tumults was Crescentius, whose father had held a similar position as head of the anti-German party. Crescentius assumed the ancient and princely title of Patrician of the Romans, and for some years was evidently as much the master of Rome as Alberich had been, and not only elected the next Pope (John XV, who reigned eleven years) but also expelled him when he proved recalcitrant. It is therefore somewhat surprising to find Theophano still at Rome in 989, and evidently recognized as 'Empress' both by Crescentius and this Pope; and even when, after her death and after the short regency of the dowager-Queen Adelheid, the young Otto, now sixteen years of age, came to Rome (996) to assume the imperial crown, Crescentius seems to have made no objection and to have received no castigation. But his fate was not to be deferred for long, as we shall see.

Before proceeding with the narrative, however, it will be well to say something about the personality of the young 'Saxon' monarch who reigned nineteen and lived twenty-two years. 'The Germans' we are told by a recent writer on this period of Italian history, 'were big blond men, beer-drinkers, huge eaters, rough, ill-mannered, arrogant, phlegmatic, and brave.' Perhaps this is the picture that one is rather apt to form when one hears of the 'Saxon' Ottos and their ilk. Perhaps too the description is fairly correct in the case of Otto the Great, who possessed, it is said, very little in the way of education, although, like Charles the Great, he was a zealous patron of learning29 and a friend of scholars, such as the polyglot Liudprand. But it certainly is not correct in the case of the second Otto, who was an enthusiast for Southern culture and was in person probably dark and certainly small, as was proved when, as stated above, his body was removed from its sarcophagus. Still less does the description apply to the third Otto, though Gregorovius claims him as 'German from head to foot." His mother, the Byzantine princess Theophano, descended from the Emperors Basil and Leo (the last notable as a philosopher), had imparted to him a temperament almost Oriental in its fantastic proclivities and had fostered his enthusiasm for Byzantine civilization as well as for the ideals of Eastern Christianity.

When Otto III, as a youth of sixteen first came to Rome in 996, the Pope (John XV) had just died. He forthwith caused to be consecrated his own second-cousin, Bruno — a young man of twenty-three — who took the name Gregory V and three weeks later placed the imperial diadem on the head of his royal patron. He, the first German Pope, was not only a favourer of the reforms begun at Cluny (p. 334) but, like Otto himself, was strongly influenced by the enthusiasm for the monastic life which, as was natural at an epoch of such civic and religious disturbance, once more swept through Christendom, as it had done in earlier days. Several notable examples had of late excited imitation. St. Nilus, an illiterate Calabrian, who lived as hermit in a cave near Gaeta, was regarded by Otto, as by numberless other devotees, with unbounded veneration. St. Romuald of Ravenna, who somewhat later founded the Reformed (or White) Benedictine Order of Camaldoli, was another who aroused immense enthusiasm, and was believed to have influenced Doge Pietro Orseolo to leave Venice by stealth, in the disguise of a pilgrim, and bury himself in a French monastery. A still deeper impression was made by Adalbert, the saintly and learned Bishop of Prag, who, after having devoted himself to the life of a recluse at Rome, was forced reluctantly to return to his Bohemian diocese, and at last sought and found a martyr's death among the savage heathen of Northern Poland.30

Under the ban of such influences the excitable and fantastic temperament of Otto led him into strange extravagances. At one time we find him as pilgrim visiting Monte Gargano and the relics of St. Bartholomew at Benevento,31 and the tomb of St. Adalbert in the wilds of Poland, or devising a crusade to rescue the holy Sepulchre from the power of the Saracens — a design first realize a century later — and at another time we find him, in an access (Susan note) of fury and fanaticism, committing the most bloodthirsty atrocities. Specimens of such atrocities — the inhuman mutilation and murder of the Antipope John XVI, who had been set up by Crescentius in the place of Otto's cousin Gregory, and the execution of Crescentius himself and all the chief magistrates of Rome — I have reserved as evidence of the barbarity of the tenth century (see Part IV, ch. i). Another act that betokens a fantastic impulse is the opening of the tomb in Aachen Cathedral in which, tradition says, the body of Charles the Great sat enthroned in state. What Otto found, and what he did with what he found, it is impossible to know; we know however that he ordered that his own body should be entombed beside that of Charles at Aachen, and when, in 1003, he died near Rome they carried him thither, fighting their way through Italy, which was now in a state of open rebellion; for the last years of his reign had been spent in ever vainer efforts to realize his dream of a re‑established Roman-Byzantine Empire in what he called the Eternal City and the one true capital of the world. Indeed so contemptuously had the Romans regarded his political designs and his religious enthusiasms that on his last visit to Rome they had treated him with insulting ridicule and had besieged him in his palace on the Aventine, so that it was with difficulty that he had persuaded them to let him depart unscathed. After retiring for a time to St. Romuald's monastery at Ravenna he determined, against the saint's urgent advice, to renounce the religious life and once more to attempt the establishment of his Roman Empire. But Rome itself had first to be regained, and while he hesitated to attack it he himself was attacked by fever and died in the castle of Paterno, near Mount Soracte. At this moment a Byzantine princess was voyaging to Italy in order to become his wife and the Empress of his dreamland realm. If we imagine her bending over his lifeless body we have a picture that strikingly symbolizes the non-fulfilment of his many ambitions.

Henry II, a Bavarian duke of the Saxon house, who succeeded Otto, had personally not much to do with Italy, but, as is the case with others of these German Kings of Italy and Imperatores Romanorum, his reign serves as a useful frame for events of importance. Otto's attempts to reconstruct in Italy an Empire of the Southern type had not only failed, but had excited a very strong anti-German feeling through the whole of the country. He had looked for support to the Church, and had favoured the power of the ecclesiastics by recognizing them as hereditary and immediate beneficiaries of the crown and as independent of other liege-lords. The nobles were by this deeply aggrieved and became ever more and more determined to shake off the foreign supremacy. In Rome, in spite of the imperial policy of the wise Pope Silvester II, formerly Otto's tutor, who had succeeded Otto's cousin Gregory, the son of that Crescentius whom Otto had executed held power as head of the lay aristocracy for ten years, till he was succeeded by the Counts of Tusculum, who dominated the city for a still longer period.32 In North Italy, not only among the lay magnates but also in the numerous cities,33 which were rapidly acquiring wealth and independence, the hostility to the Northern barbarian was so intense that a month after the death of Otto III Marquess Arduin of Ivrea (in Piemont) was crowned at Pavia with the iron crown of Lombardy.

Henry, who had already assumed the title of King of the Romans, answered the challenge by sending a small force, which was routed by Arduin. He then came himself with an army and was likewise crowned at Pavia with the iron crown as King of Italy; but how little his rights were founded on the will of the Italian people is proved by the fact that on the same evening a very serious tumult broke out, during which the Germans (more Teutonico) set fire to Pavia and destroyed a large part of the city.34

In Rome, as elsewhere, the republican movement was gathering force, and, in combination with the patriotism of Arduin's supporters, caused the Counts of Tusculum to ally themselves for a time with the Pope and the imperialists. The result was that Henry was invited to assume the diadem of the Empire, and together with his queen, Kunigund, he was crowned at Rome in 1014. Once more there were violent anti-German demonstrations and serious tumults; but they were suppressed by force, and the presence of the new Emperor and his powerful army so cowed King Arduin that he withdrew to a Benedictine monastery in Piemont, where he soon afterwards died.

During the next ten years events very little connected with Henry and his Germans, but most momentous for the future of Italy, took place in the south. Norman pilgrims,35 returning from Jerusalem (c. 1016), had helped Salerno against the Saracens and had been enlisted by Melo of Bari against his fellow-subjects, the Byzantines. The Byzantines had defeated the rebel Melo and his Norman mercenaries at Canne (on the ancient battlefield of Cannae) and had recaptured their supremacy over most of Apulia and Calabria, and even over the cities of Naples, Capua, and Salerno.

This turn of events caused both Melo and also Pope Benedict VIII to undertake the journey to Germany in order to persuade Henry to come to the rescue; and he responded to their entreaties. With a large army he marched southwards and obtained some successes; but he was forced ere long to return to his northern dominions, where he died in 1024.

Both Otto III and Henry II died childless. The Germans elected as their king Conrad II of Franconia — the country of the Main, Würzberg, and Nürnberg. The reigns of the four Franconian Emperors, which extended over just a century (1024‑1125), belong mainly to German history and need only be related here in so far as the history of Italy was affected by the attitude of the Italian people and of the Papacy towards these foreign monarchs, who regarded themselves, and were regarded, not only by their northern subjects but also by a certain number of their Italian vassals, lay and cleric, as possessing, by virtue of their coronation as German kings, a right to the iron crown of Lombardy and, as Emperors-designate, to the diadem of the Caesars. These rights however were fiercely denied by the great majority of the Italian people — a fact that is rendered luridly evident by the serious p347tumults that almost invariably occurred at these coronations in Pavia, Milan, and Rome, and by the open hostility that not seldom opposed the descent into Italy of a German king.

But in order to thread the labyrinthine political complexities of this period, and to discover the real relations between the Germans and the Italians, it is necessary to secure certain clues, and this may perhaps be facilitated by the following remarks. Firstly, the hold that the German monarchs had on a part of the Italian people was greatly due to the fact that they favoured the lesser landholders (especially the clerical holders of beneficia) against the powerful nobles who claimed them as their private vassals. By declaring such beneficiaries to be direct feudatories of the crown and not sub-vassals of the great nobles they won them over to the imperialistic cause, and at the same time they thus increased very much the independence and power of the clerics and of a large class of the lay population. Secondly, Rome was constantly being visited by German monarchs and their warriors. The imperialist cause thus acquired a very considerable following. This caused constant broils and bloodshed, amidst which the aristocratic, the popular, and the papal partisans in turn appealed to the foreigner in order to get the better of their adversaries. Moreover, the Romans as well as other South Italians were frequently obliged to look to the German princes for aid against the Byzantines, the Saracens, or oppressive Lombard dukes. Lastly, in North Italy numerous cities were rapidly gaining independence as Communes, and attaining very considerable wealth and influence, (36) some of them as sea-powers, and these Communes naturally stood on the patriotic, anti-German side; but their rivalries often allowed or invited the interference of the foreigner who was ever ready to intervene in such quarrels and draw profit therefrom.

In this connexion it will be remembered that it was the p348favour of the Frankish and German Emperors (especially that of the three Ottos) which had lifted the Papacy to a position so formidable that it was finally able, by means of its temporal and its spiritual weapons, to defy and humiliate its patron. Now this defiance of the imperial power by the Church — first in the person of Aribert of Milan and then in that of Pope Hildebrand — is doubtless the fact that makes the reigns of these Franconian monarchs of most importance to us. I shall therefore dwell for a time on this fact, and then pass over the rest of these reigns with very few remarks, reserving such subjects as the coming of the Normans, the rise of the Communes, and the development of Romanesque architecture for fuller treatment on subsequent chapters.

Aribert had made himself master of the civil power in Milan, of which city he was the archbishop. His ambition seems to have aimed at making the Ambrosian Church independent of Rome. In order to forward his designs he invited Conrad II, and crowned him with the iron crown in the cathedral of S. Ambrogio at Milan. After a year's sojourn in North Italy, urged by his ambitious wife Gisela, Conrad proceeded (1027) to Rome, where they both were crowned with the imperial diadem in the presence of many princes, among whom was Canute (Knut), King of Denmark, Norway, and England. (27) For some time the Emperor remained in South Italy endeavouring to re‑establish his authority. The state of disorder in these regions was almost incurable, constant war prevailing between Byzantines, Saracens, Lombards, and numerous cities, such as Naples and Capua, which under various rulers or under republican forms of government had made themselves independent; and the state of things was perhaps made worse by the fact that Norman adventurers, ever more and more in number, sold their services now to

INSERT FIG 31

p349 one combatant and now to another. Conrad seems to have succeeded in reducing parts of the country temporarily to submission, for we find that he gave formal leave to the Normans to settle near Capua, and thus afforded them their first real pied-à-terre in Italy. North of the Alps his exploits in war were remarkable, one of them being the conquest and annexation of Burgundy. This he effected by the aid of a large force of Italian auxiliaries, and these Lombards and Tuscans, who reached Burgundy via the Great St. Bernard, Lake Leman, and Geneva, were led by the warlike and ambitious Archbishop Aribert of Milan and by Boniface, Marquess of Tuscany, father of that famous countess Matilda whose celebrity rests about equally on her momentous 'Legacy' and the part that she perhaps takes in Dante's picture of the Earthly Paradise.(38)

Aribert now becomes almost an independent sovereign at Milan. Conrad, suspecting his loyalty, comes to Milan and arrests him. Great indignation is excited by this, and Aribert, having managed to escape, fortifies himself in the castle of Milan, and a battle is fought with indecisive result. Conrad, leaving his troops to besiege the rebel, goes to Rome and after restoring the iniquitous Benedict IX to the papal throne, (39) persuades him to excommunicate Aribert. But the archbishop held out bravely at Milan — which city, by the way, he continued to rule for the next seven years — and the German troop was finally withdrawn to Parma, where it distinguished itself by sanguinary fights with the Italian populace and by setting fire, more suo, to the city. After another visit to the south, where he and his friend Pope Benedict undertook a somewhat fruitless campaign against the Byzantines and a certain Pandulf of Capua, who was proving troublesome, p349Conrad marched again northwards, with an army decimated by the plague and by fever. Then, leaving the siege of Milan to his Italian feudatories, he returned to Germany, where in 1039 he died, probably of the plague.

Henry III, Conrad's son and successor, reigned about seventeen years as King and ten as Emperor. At first he was much occupied by troubles in Hungary and Carinthia, and when at last, in 1046, he determined to visit Italy it was apparently not so much with the object of receiving the imperial diadem as for the purpose of putting an end to the scandalous state of things then prevailing at the papal court. He was of a religious temperament, ascetically inclined, (40) and earnestly in favour of Church reform such as was advocated by the monks of Cluny — even in favour of the bold proposal to introduce a 'truce of God' (treuga Dei) whereby all civil strife should be forbidden during four days of every week. What the state of things at Rome was like may be to some extent inferred from the facts given on p. 380. Probably never was it worse, not even in the days of the Borgias. Henry on his arrival in Italy held three Councils, at Pavia, at the old Etruscan town of Sutri, and at Rome. By these Councils the sale of the papal dignity by Benedict to Gregory was condemned as most heinous simony and all the three rival Popes were deposed. Silvester retired into a convent, Gregory was taken to Germany (and was accompanied by the monk Hildebrand, of whom we shall hear much later), and Benedict took refuge with his relatives at Tusculum. Henry then caused the German Bishop of Bamberg to be elected Pope, and by him was crowned Emperor on Christmas Day 1046.

But before a year had passed the German Pope, Clement II, was poisoned by agents of Benedict, who with the help of the Tuscan marquess, Boniface, for the third time ascended the papal throne. Henry deposed him again and nominated the German Bishop of Brixen; but after a reign of twenty-three days also this Pope (Damasus II) died suddenly, probably p351poisoned by Benedict's agents. Again Henry caused a German to be elected, the Bishop of Lothringian Toul. Benedict now seems to have at last renounced his claims. His end is unknown. A charitable chronicler hints that he turned recluse and died in the odour of sanctity. Others state that he 'continued to live as a beast.' It was popularly believed that he held secret conferences with Satan in the depths of a dark wood.

The Lothringian bishop, who had entered Rome with bare feet (accompanied by monk Hildebrand as his counsellor), proved as Pope Leo IX an earnest reformer, and undertook zealously the labour of cleansing the Augean mews of Rome. He also visited some of the chief European cities in order to forward reform and denounce abuses, such as simony and the marriage of the clergy. (41)

Here it will be well to turn our attention to the fact that to the north of Rome, and also to the south, influences had arisen which, still more than the isolated city Communes, seemed likely to endanger the German supremacy. In the north the powerful Boniface, Marquess of Tuscany, who has been already mentioned as the father of Countess Matilda, was showing an evident desire to dispute the claims of the foreign overlord. His grandfather, Azzo, had owned Canossa Castle — soon to become so famous — and here had hospitably received the fugitive princess Adelheid, whom Otto the Great married. (42) Azzo and his son Ugo were consequently much favoured, and soon received very extensive beneficia, including the cities of Mantua, Brescia, Modena, and Reggio. From Conrad II Boniface received the Marquisate of Tuscany and, as we have seen, aided him in his conquest of Burgundy; but latterly he had developed ambitious schemes and had allied himself p352with opponents of the Empire, even with that iniquitous wretch Benedict IX.

The other hostile power was that of the Normans. Their story is told in another place. Here a few facts will suffice.

After they had been allowed by Conrad II to settle in the province of Capua, the town of Aversa became their chief stronghold. About ten years later (c. 1040) arrived, among many other Norman adventurers, some of the numerous sons of Tancred d'Hauteville, and the power of the Norman warriors, who constantly seized new territory and frequently changed sides among the various combatants (Byzantines, Lombards, Dukes of Naples, etc.), became so formidable that the people of Benevento applied to Pope Leo IX and gave over their city to him (43) on condition that he should procure aid for them against these troublesome foes. Leo accepted. He at once started for Germany, and was able to procure a few soldiers of fortune from Henry. With these and his own troops he was marching southwards down the Adriatic coast when near the promontory of Gargano he was met by the Normans, among whose leaders was now the famous Robert Guiscard, and was totally defeated and taken prisoner. But the victors, says Villari, vanquished by reverence, cast themselves on their knees before him, supplicating his forgiveness; then they took him to Benevento, where for six months they retained him as hostage ! He probably bought his release by promising to invest them with the sovranty of Apulia, Calabria, and even Sicily — which still belonged to the Moslems.

Leo IX died shortly after this disaster. Henry straightway nominated once more a German — the Bishop of Eichstadt (Victor II). It will be noted that this was the fourth Pope nominated by the Emperor and elected without any open opposition by the people and clerics of Rome. No wonder if these German monarchs began to regard the investiture of Popes and bishops as a right inherent in the imperial, or even the kingly, dignity.

Henry accompanied his Pope-designate to Italy. He had p353begun to be very anxious about the machinations of Marquess Boniface, and the death of Boniface (1052) had not relieved his anxiety, for the widow married another of his adversaries, namely Godfrey of Lothringen. After the wedding Godfrey had returned to his northern domains, and in order to nip rebellion in the bud the Emperor seized the persons of Beatrice and her daughter Matilda and carried them both off to Germany. Shortly afterwards, in October 1056, he died.

His son, Henry II, a child of six years, was proclaimed king under the regency of his mother Agnes. In order to use his long reign of fifty years as a kind of framework wherein to insert sketches of some of the very numerous and varied scenes that make up the history of Italy of these days it will be well to divide it into four periods.

(1) For six years (from 1056 to 1062) the dowager-empress Agnes holds the regency with ever-increasing difficulty against many rebellions. Then Anno, Archbishop of Cöln, kidnaps his youthful king and makes himself regent. (Agnes retires to a convent and dies later at Rome.) Then the Bremen archbishop obtains the regency. In 1066 Henry, being now of age, assumes the government and rules vigorously and despotically, making many enemies. In 1073 there is a great revolt of the Saxons, and Henry is abandoned by nearly all the German nobles. The cities however (especially the Rhine cities, such as Worms) support him, and after much bloodshed he at last gains some footing, and might have consolidated his power had he not, perhaps unwisely, taken up the challenge of the Papacy.

(2) From 1073 to 1084 rages the long and dramatic 'War of the Investitures' between Henry and Hildebrand. The chief events of this period are the humiliation of the excommunicated king — now a young man of twenty-seven — at Canossa in 1077, his victory over his rival, Rudolf of Suabia, and his final triumph and coronation at Rome (1084), followed by the rescue of the Pope and the sack of Rome by Robert Guiscard and his Normans and Saracens.

(3) From 1085 to 1095 Henry rules his northern dominions p354with some success and, except for a short campaign against Matilda of Tuscany in 1090, when he captures Mantua and other cities, has scarcely anything to do with Italy.

(4) From 1095 to his death in 1106 Henry's existence is embittered by the rebellion of his sons. First the elder, Conrad, is won over by the papal party and the Tuscan court and is crowned at Monza and afterwards in S. Ambrogio at Milan as King of Italy. Then his younger and well-loved son, Henry — a cold-blooded, calculating wretch — is also seduced by the priests and Countess Matilda, and after deposing his brother Conrad (who dies in 1101) is joined by most of the South German nobles. Once more the Rhineland cities prove loyal to the king and the young rebel is induced to crave forgiveness. His father meets him at Coblenz, embraces him with tears, and trustfully follows him to one of his castles (Böckelheim, in the Nahe valley), where he is caught, as in a trap, and is forced to promise abdication. He, however, manages to escape, and again collects forces to oppose his unnatural son; but ere long he dies. The body of the still excommunicated king was buried at Lüttich (Liège), but was ejected thence by the priests and, after resting for a time on an island of the river Maas, was brought to Speyer, the immense Romanesque cathedral at which place he had lately finished building. For five years (till 1111) the corpse remained 'above the earth,' probably in an upright position, in the side-chapel of St. Afra, but finally the ban was removed and it was entombed. (44)

Now during the first two of these four periods some very important occurrences took place in various parts of Italy. But these will be related when we turn our attention to the rise of the Communes and to the story of the coming of the Normans. Here I shall limit myself to some of the causes and events of the great 'War of the Investitures.'

The German Pope, Victor II, whom Henry III had nominated u355 (1054) had been charitable or politic enough to attempt a reconciliation between the German and the Tuscan courts. The dowager-Empress Agnes was persuaded to release Countess Beatrice and her daughter Matilda, whom Henry had taken as hostages to Germany, and to allow Duke Godfrey of Lorraine to return to his wife and stepdaughter at Florence. On Victor's death Godfrey's brother, abbot of Monte Cassino, was made Pope (Stephen IX), and all seemed to promise well. But the Pope suddenly died at Florence, probably poisoned by agents of the Roman nobility, and these nobles at once elected one of the Counts of Tusculum (Benedict X). Thereupon Godfrey and Beatrice, with the consent of the Empress and the counsel of monk Hildebrand and of another zealous reformer and ascetic, Pietro Damiano of Ravenna, (45) chose the Bishop of Florence, who as Pope Nicholas II established himself successfully at Rome, causing his rival Benedict to take to flight.

Thus the new party of reform led by the untiring energy and zeal of Hildebrand, was now in the ascendant. Nominally the motive of this party was — as had been the case with the first Cluny reformers, and as it was thirty years later with St. Romuald and his reformed Benedictines of Camaldoli, and also with the Vallombrosans and Carthusians (46) — indignation against the gross immorality and simony of the clerics; but in the case of men such as Hildebrand the primary motive was without any doubt chiefly political. By insisting on celibacy (the worst of all methods for combating immorality) such supporters of the Papacy hoped to secure the loyalty of a large class that had no other ties and had given no hostages to fortune — staccata, as Balzani says, da ogni cura d'affetti mondani; and they revolted against lay investiture not merely for such reasons as have led men to found Free p356Churches, but because the act of investiture was accompanied by the bestowal of benefices (fiefs) which bound the cleric as feudatory to his imperial overlord. Henry, for instance, in his contest with the Papacy and the higher nobility was able to look for support to a large number of his bishops and abbots whom he claimed as his direct vassals.

Both Nicholas II and his successor, Alexander II (Bishop Anselm of Lucca), had been elected by the Cardinals without the sanction of Agnes or Henry. They were nominees of Hildebrand, and by his instigation they passed decrees forbidding the marriage of clergy and giving the Cardinals, in concert with the clergy and the people of Rome, the sole right to elect Popes. And when in 1073 Hildebrand himself ascended the papal throne as Gregory VII he did not long hesitate before issuing what was practically a declaration of war against Henry; for by his council of 1075 he caused to be passed a decree vehemently condemning as simony investiture by laymen, declaring null the bestowal by King or Emperor of ring and staff, deposing those bishops who Henry had instituted and excommunicating several of them, as well as certain of Henry's officials to whom these prelates had, he alleged, paid money for favouring their appointment.

In great indignation Henry assembled a council of his ecclesiastics at Worms, and, doubtless keenly mindful of the prerogative claimed and exercised by his own father, sent word to inform Gregory that he was deposed. "Henry, King, not by usurpation, but by the holy will of God, to Hildebrand, no longer Pope, but a false monk.' So the letter was addressed; and it ended thus: 'I, Henry, King by God's grace, and all my bishops say to thee: Down, down, thou damned for all eternity !'

Hildebrand's answer was excommunication. In his writings he has asserted (47) that the Pope has authority over all princes of the earth and that he has the power of deposing even p357Emperors: illi licet imperatores deponere. But to display the courage of his opinion in this hitherto unheard-of fashion was an audacious act. Nevertheless it was astoundingly successful, for the German nobles, glad of the excuse, held an assembly at Tribur, near Mainz, and informed Henry that unless he obtained remission of the ban within the year (viz. by February 2 1077) they would renounce their fealty. There remained but one course open to him. Accompanied by his wife and by the excommunicated bishops and officials, he crossed the Alps in the depth of winter in order to make his peace with the pontiff. In Lombardy, it is said, many offered their services, inciting him to resistance; but he was determined to carry out his resolution, and as a barefoot suppliant clad in sackcloth he arrived at Matilda's ancestral castle of Canossa (p. 351), whither Gregory had withdrawn when he had heard of the proffer of help made to the king by the Lombard cities. For three days Henry and his companions, it is said, were kept waiting amidst the snow outside the portal of the inner court. When at last he was admitted he threw himself on his knees, and finally received forgiveness and was allowed once more to taste the sacramental wafer, promising to regard himself as dethroned until re‑elected by the nobles and people of the realm. The contempt of the German nobles at this self-abasement excited again a widespread rebellion, and Rudolf of Suabia, Henry's brother-in‑law, was proclaimed king. But Henry acted with vigour and courage, and was aided by Frederick of Staufen, the first notability of that illustrious house, afterwards son-in‑law of Henry and duke of Suabia. A battle was fought (October 1080) at Merseburg, the town near Leipzig already famous for the struggle of Henry I against the Hungarians. Here Rudolf was killed, it is said, by Godfrey of Bouillon, who was made Duke of Suabia in Rudolf's stead, and in later days won world-wide renown as the Crusader che'l gran sepolcro liberò di Christo and refused to wear a kingly crown in the city where the King of Kings had worn a crown of thorns.

These acts had revived Henry's feud with the Pope, who p357again deposed and excommunicated him, recognizing Rudolf as king. Henry at once responded by holding another council of his bishops, this time at Mainz, and again deposing Gregory, in whose stead he causes Wibert, Archbishop of Ravenna, to be elected. After the victory at Merseburg he descended into Italy, assumed the iron crown of Pavia, besieged Rome thrice (his army suffering much from malaria), and towards the end of 1082 forced his way into the Leonine quarter. Gregory took refuge in the mighty stronghold of the Castle of S. Angelo. In 1083 Henry crossed the Tiber, seized the Lateran, and summoned all the nobles and clerics of Rome (including Gregory, who did not appear) to a council, which confirmed the elections of Wibert as Pope; and at Easter of the year 1084 in St. Peter's basilica this new Pope, known generally as the Antipope Clement, crowned Henry and his queen Bertha as Emperor and Empress.

All this time Pope Gregory was safely ensconced in the huge fortress of S. Angelo and was waiting for succour. This succour he expected, and not vainly, from the Normans, who had by this time under various leaders, and especially under Robert Guiscard, established themselves permanently in South Italy and had become a formidable power. They had, as will be remembered, totally defeated Leo IX and had made him prisoner. But a few years later (1060) Pope Nicholas II seems to have sanctioned the usurpations and conquests of the Northmen and to have made promises of investing them with the sovranty of Calabria and even of Sicily — as soon as they could conquer it from the Saracens — and in 1080 Robert Guiscard, invested as Duke of Apulia and Calabria by Hildebrand, had sworn fealty to him as his feudatory and had confirmed the claims of the Papacy to Benevento.

This clever stroke of papal policy had made the Normans a mainstay of the Papacy. It might well be asked by what right the Popes claimed to be overlords of the Apulian and Calabrian duchies — to say nothing of Sicily, which was still in the power of the Saracens. But, even if their right was founded on nothing more solid than the fictitious Donation p359of Constantine, the result of their diplomacy was real enough: for in response to Gregory's despairing appeal Robert Guiscard marched on Rome with about 40,000 men, among whom were many Saracen mercenaries. Three days before his arrival Henry had prudently withdrawn northwards, promising to return with a large army. The Normans forced their way into the city and it was given over to pillage (May 1084). On no former occasion, it is said, did Rome suffer so terribly from its captors. The destruction of innumerable monuments and of many fine churches (S. Clemente among them) is attributed to Robert Guiscard's Saracens. As for Pope Gregory, he was released from his long confinement in the Mole of Hadrian, but found it advisable to leave Rome with his rescuers, and died during the next year at Salerno. His last words are often quoted by his admirers: dilexi justitiam, odi iniquitatem; propterea morior in exilio. The assertion does not seem remarkably original or remarkably true.

During the third period of Henry's reign (1085‑95) only a few events took place that need here be chronicled. At Rome there were, as so often, constantly recurring disorders caused by the never-ending broils between the various clerical and lay factions. The facts given in the List of Popes will perhaps suffice as an index to these disturbances. The election of Urban II, a French monk of Cluny and Bishop of Ostia, who vigorously forwarded the policy of Hildebrand, is noticeable both on account of his impious instigation of Conrad against his father and because of the fame that he has acquired by his advocacy of the first Crusade. Three years after his election he was for a time forced to flee from Rome because, when Henry undertook a successful raid on Tuscany, the Romans, fearing his vengeance, made themselves masters of S. Angelo and invited the Antipope Clement to return. But Clement's triumph was brief, and in 1093 Urban resumed his seat on the throne of the Lateran. Other and perhaps more important occurrences, which will be related in a subsequent chapter, were the brilliant exploits of Robert Guiscard and his Normans in Dalmatia, his death in 1085, and the final overthrow of the p360Saracens and the conquest of Sicily by his brother, Count Roger, in 1091.

Of the fourth period (1095‑1106) the most momentous event — one of almost world-wide influence — was doubtless the first Crusade. It affected Italy more than Germany, where, says Müller, 'one gazed astounded at the savage hordes of hermits streaming past,' and where the deplorable feud between Henry and his sons prevented any large participation in the wild enthusiasm aroused by the preaching of Peter of Amiens; but Italy itself was not swept by the tornado that half-depopulated France. (48) Although several Popes, among them the German Leo IX, had expressed the longing to liberate Christ's sepulchre, the proposal to realize the design, being evidently due to the French reformers of Cluny, had perhaps failed to inspire the Italians when at Piacenza and afterwards at Clermont Urban the Frenchman proclaimed the Crusade. Possibly too in the Communes, such as Genoa, Pisa, and Venice, the anxiety for their vastly extended trade chilled the ardour of fanaticism. Perhaps also the near presence of the Moslems in Sicily and the hostility of the Normans against the Eastern Emperor (who sent envoys to the Council of Piacenza to beg help against the Turks) checked the movement in South Italy. But not a few Italian Normans did join in the Crusade, among whom Bohemund, Guiscard's eldest son, was conspicuous, and Italy gave valuable aid in transporting immense numbers of Crusaders, who passed through Rome and took ship at Bari, and were consternated at the state of heathen savagery that they found in the metropolis of Christianity.

We now pass to the reign of Henry V. His relations with the Papacy were at first apparently friendly, but ere long he too found that the right of investiture, which secured him the fealty of his bishops, was indispensable, and as Pope Paschal obstinately refused to concede this right, the king crossed the Alps (1110) with his army. The Lombard towns, except p361Milan and Pavia, acknowledged him, and even at Florence he was received by the Countess Matilda, who some twenty years before, at the age of forty-three, had taken as second husband a young man of eighteen — the heir of the Bavarian ducal family of the Welfs, or Guelfs, who were resolute allies of the Popes and adversaries of the Franconian Emperors. (49)

Pope Paschal was in difficulties. He could look for help neither to Matilda and her Tuscans nor to the Normans of South Italy, who were just then under the rule of the weak and sickly William, grandson of Robert Guiscard. He therefore agreed to sign a compact by which the Church should renounce the temporal while retaining the ecclesiastical rights of investiture, and consented to crown Henry as Emperor. But when the document was read to the clerics and nobles assembled to view the coronation in St. Peter's a violent tumult arose, and Henry found it advisable to make prisoners of the Pope and sixteen cardinals and take them off to Tivoli. Finally Pope Paschal yielded. He signed a Privilegium by which he conceded to the king the right of investiture 'with ring and staff,' and in April 1111 the coronation that had been so roughly interrupted was consummated.

Henry V was now at the acme of his good fortune, and he strengthened his influence by marrying (1113) an English princess — Maud, or Matilda, daughter of Henry I, who afterwards became the wife of Geoffrey Plantagenet and the mother of Henry II of England.

In 1115 Countess Matilda died, at the age of sixty-nine. Her juvenile husband had left her long ago, and she had no legal heir. She left almost all her possessions to the Roman Church. But, whatever right she may have had to bequeath her freehold (allodial) property, she certainly had none to p362bequeath to any but a legal heir the hereditary fiefs that he held (illegally, it was affirmed, being a woman and a rebel) as a feudatory of the crown. And even if we assume that her title as independent ruler was confirmed by the Tuscan people, she assuredly had not the power to hand over the country, with or without sovran rights, to the Popes, or to anybody else. The Legacy however brought good as well as evil in its train, for, although Tuscany was hereafter much worried and mauled by Popes and Emperors, several of the Tuscan cities used the opportunity to throw off their vassalage and to declare themselves independent. The history of the Florentine republic begins with the death of Countess Matilda.

In 1117, as these Tuscan cities refused to receive Henry's Vicars and as Pope Paschal had recanted his Privilegium, the king again crossed the Alps with an army. He seems to have feared to attack the allied Communes, and made straight for Rome, determined to exact not only a confirmation of his privileges but also a repetition of the ceremony of coronation. Pope Paschal however had taken flight. Henry therefore induced a cardinal to crown him, and departed. But on the death of Paschal he came hurrying back and caused this cardinal (Burdino) to be elected Pope — or rather Antipope, for the Roman people had already elected Gelasius II. Great tumults ensued. Finally, Gelasius having died in exile at Cluny, an able and resolute anti-imperialist was consecrated by the cardinals assembled at Vienne, in France. This Pope, who was Archbishop of Vienne and related to the French king and to Henry, took the name of Calixtus II. He forthwith excommunicated Henry's Antipope and also Henry himself, and this bold move was successful, for the Antipope came to a pitiable end (50) and Henry, wearied out by opposition at home and abroad, at last accepted the agreement (Concordat) drawn up by a Council held at Worms in 1122.

By the terms of the Concordat Henry V renounced the right p363of electing prelates and investing them 'with ring and staff.' His envoy was allowed to be present at the investiture; but this was an empty form. He was also allowed to bestow by a touch of his sceptre, the temporalities — that is, to give over the lands and revenues of the office to the newly elected dignitary — often no very valuable kingly privilege. Altogether kingship was a considerable loser by this Concordat. The demesnes of the great nobles were originally conquered or confiscated lands for which, as being a loan (Lehen), they owed fealty to the crown; but by letting out estates to tenants (subinfeudation) or promising protection in return for vassalage (a process called recommandation) these great nobles had secured a very large class of private vassals, who professed to owe no fealty to the king. This state of things was energetically opposed by the German kings (as also by our Norman kings), but with small success. They therefore relied to a great extent on the bishops and other Church dignitaries whom they elected, and who were their feudatories in virtue of the vast ecclesiastical benefices which composed a great deal of the landed property in the realm. But by the Worms Concordat the king lost the power of electing men devoted to his interests, and the kingly power suffered greatly from this extension of papal prerogative. (51)

(5) THE HOHENSTAUFEN EMPERORS

Both Calixtus and Henry V died not long after the Concordat of Worms. Henry was childless, and once more the nobles (most of whom were glad enough to exercise their powers as electors and thus protest against a hereditary kingship) assembled at Tribur. Frederick of Staufen, son of the Frederick who had been made Duke of Suabia by Henry IV p364and had married his daughter, was the foremost claimant; but the Concordat was already bearing its fruit, and the archbishops together with the anti-imperial nobles succeeded in rejecting both Frederick and his brother Conrad as being 'too full of the Waibling spirit.' A devoted son of the Church, the former leader of the Saxon and Welf rebels, was chosen, Lothair (Lothar) by name. Frederick at first refused to give up certain royal demesnes which he claimed through his mother, but finally the Staufen family agreed to recognize the new king — not however until Conrad had been recognized as King of Italy and Emperor-designate by the people of Milan (1130) and had been crowned with the iron crown at Monza. In 1133 Lothair went to Rome. Here there had been, as so often, serious disturbances caused by the elections of rival Popes. One was Innocent II, the nominee of the powerful family of the Frangipani; the other was Anacletus, of the old Jewish-Roman family of the Pierleoni, monk of Cluny and disciple of the famous Abelard of Paris. Anacletus had gained the mastery at Rome and Innocent had fled to France, where he was strongly supported by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who was a vehement opponent of Abelard and his teachings. St. Bernard was commissioned by Louis of France to decide between the rival Popes, and naturally enough decided against Anacletus. But force was needed in order to restore Innocent, and the orthodox Lothair undertook the task, and incidentally had himself crowned Emperor at Rome by Pope Innocent (1133). His pious gratitude for this favour induced him to accept investiture from the Pope for his sovran rights over the quondam territories of Matilda — thus acknowledging the validity of Matilda's Legacy and degrading himself to a vassal of the Papacy.

Roger the Norman of Sicily, who had proclaimed himself king in 1130, had been recognized by Anacletus, but not by Innocent. He now began to make himself master of the south of Italy, and Innocent appealed to Lothair, who came with his army and with Genoese and Pisan ships, and, being aided by the revolted cities of Naples and Capua, was able to chase p366Roger back to Sicily. But ere long Lothair and his army disappeared northwards, and when news came of his death (he died in December 1137, soon after crossing the Alps) Roger returned and not only reconquered all that he had lost, but defeated and captured Innocent and by generous treatment gained at last the confirmation of his kingly title.

The Welf Duke of Bavaria and Saxony, Henry the Proud, to whom Lothair had given over in mesne-tenure the territories of Matilda, and who was thus master of a vast realm, expected to be elected king and had already possessed himself of the royal insignia. But once more the German people shrank from choosing a too powerful candidate and from perpetuating the claims of either rival house. Even before the diet met at Tribur the Waiblinger, Conrad of Staufen, was proclaimed and crowned, and Duke Henry found it advisable to surrender the insignia; and ere long he had to surrender also his Saxon duchy, for the fierce outbursts of the Welf and Waibling feud that distracted the nation during these years ended at last in favour of Conrad.

Amid such disturbances it was not likely that Conrad III should have much to do with Italy; but it will be remembered that while competing with Lothair for the German crown he had succeeded, although he was excommunicated, in persuading the Archbishop of Milan to crown him with the iron crown, as King of Italy and Emperor-designate. It was therefore naturally his ambition to realize his claims to these titles, and later we shall find him attempting to do so. Meanwhile however Rome again claims our attention.

The republican movement, which was already effecting great results in the north of Italy, had been seriously counteracted in the south by the conquests of the Normans. In Rome itself, although fiercely suppressed by powerful families, such as those of the Tusculan counts, the Crescenzi and the Frangipani, and by such Popes as were the tools of the aristocratic and the imperialistic factions, the spirit of liberty had asserted itself so far that the civil government of the city was already to a great extent that of a Commune, p366the army, divided into twelve scholae corresponding to the twelve divisions of Rome, being together with its twelve commanders (banderisi) under popular control. But a sudden and violent outburst of feeling was now to develop Rome for a time into a full-blown republic. The little town of Tibur (Tivoli), whose love of freedom had deeply annoyed the freedom-lovers in Rome, had been mastered, but obstinately refused to submit to the Roman people, on the ground that the Pope was the one supreme Roman authority; and when Pope Innocent publicly supported this theory a revolution took place: the Republic was proclaimed, the Prefecture abolished, and the senate, reconstructed mainly of burghers instead of the patricians, was installed on the Capitol. (52) In the same year (1143) Innocent died, and also his successor, Celestin II. The next Pope, Lucius II, received a fatal blow from a stone while attempting to storm the Capitol at the head of a band of nobles; his successor, Eugenius III, elected during the very same day, had to flee from Rome. (53) As Consul or chief senator of the new republic was chosen Giordano, apparently a renegade member of the aristocratic family of the Pierleoni, for he was, it is said, a brother of the Antipope Anacletus. Under his presidency the resuscitated Roman Republic seems to have established itself on a fairly firm basis, from which even the combined efforts of Barbarossa and Breakspear failed to dislodge it. To judge from its coinage, in its earlier days it recognized the Emperor as its overlord, but allowed p367the Pope no part in the government, insisting that he should renounce all temporal power and content himself with tithes and oblations.

This revolution was formerly believed to have been incited and led by Arnold of Brescia; but it seems certain that, although his doctrines had already spread through the whole of Italy (54) and doubtless exercised very great influence on the Roman republicans, he himself was not present in 1143, since he first came to Rome in 1145.

Arnold, a native of Brescia, had studied under Abelard at Paris and had imbibed intense enthusiasm for ancient Rome and for republican liberty. On his return to Italy he became friar and preached fervidly against all forms of tyranny, and especially against the temporal power of the Popes, his favourite text being apostolic poverty, such as St. Benedict praised when Dante met him in heaven:

Pier comincio senz' oro e senz' argento, Ed io con orazione e con digiuno.

But Arnold's eloquence was received coldly, even in Brescia, and he returned to France, where his master Abelard was succumbing under the attacks of St. Bernard; and the angry saint, having crushed the heresiarch, turned on the disciple. Arnold was expelled, and seems to have spent some years, perhaps as a teacher, in Zurich — afterwards the home of a more successful theologian, Zwingli. In 1145 we find him in Rome, where his political theories were being largely put into practice. For ten years his zeal and learning inspired and guided the young republic, and, had his highest ideal been realized — the ideal of a truly apostolic Papacy, enthroned far above all greed of worldly wealth and power — how many centuries of misery would Italy, and humanity, have been spared ! But the cowardly vacillation of Conrad and the blind policy of Barbarossa in his earlier days, exploited by the overweening ambition of an English Pope, frustrated what might p368have proved a more salutary and radical reformation than that of Luther's age.

In 1147 the second Crusade, due greatly to the preaching of St. Bernard, attracted a million fighters from Western Europe. It created more enthusiasm in Germany than the first Crusade had done, and Conrad III finally determined to join it. For two years he was in the East, and it is interesting to note that in his retinue were two warriors whose names awake in our minds two very vivid but very different trains of reminiscence. One of these was his nephew, the young Frederick of Staufen (Barbarossa), who many years afterwards returned, as a Crusader, to these Eastern lands and died there. The other was an ancestor of Dante — his great-grandfather, Cacciaguida — who when he met the poet in the heaven of Mars (Par. xv) told him that on earth he had 'followed the Emperor Conrad,' who 'begirt him of his chivalry,' i.e. knighted him.

But this 'imperador Currado' was never crowned Emperor. When, in 1149, he returned from the East the Roman senators, possibly on the advice of Arnold, sent him several grandiloquent epistles. The last of these, which is interlarded with barbarous hexameters, addressed him as 'Lord of the City and the whole World'; and as 'King of the Romans' and 'Augustus,' and besought him to come and re‑establish the glories of the Roman Empire as it was under Constantine and Justinian, before it was ruined by the Popes and the nobles. It intimated also, rightly enough, that the Roman people, and not the Pope, was the true donor of the imperial dignity.

But Conrad hesitated. He had neither the wisdom nor the courage to accept the offer. At length he wrote that he would come 'to re‑establish order, to strengthen the loyalty of his friends and to punish rebels' — a somewhat ambiguous reply, which filled the republican party with apprehensions. And these apprehensions were greatly increased when it was heard that Conrad had made overtures to pope Eugenius, who had come back from France and had been for the last three years wandering about from place to place in Latium. p369Finally Conrad, having overmastered certain troublesome Welf insurgents in Germany, wrote — not to the Senate, which he ignored, but to the newly reinstituted Prefect and other magistrates — and made known his intention of visiting Rome and being crowned, not by senatorial delegates, but by the Pope. This intention was, however, not carried out, for he died in February of 1152, before the preparations for his journey were complete.

Conrad left a son only eight years old. He therefore recommended the electors to choose his nephew and fellow-Crusader, Frederick of Staufen, now thirty-one years of age. Frederick's policy as regards Italy was soon revealed. When the Roman Senate sent him, as they had sent Conrad, a turgid epistle intimating that the S.P.Q.R. would be proud to invest him with the title of Emperor, he answered that his forefathers had won that title by arms and 'let him who dares try to wrest the club from Hercules.' He was determined to slay the hydra of republican liberty. He then wrote to Pope Eugenius, who answered inflaming his wrath still more against these insolent senators and undertook to crown him if he came and subjected Rome, as he had promised, to the Empire and to the Holy Church. Nor did Frederick delay his coming long. As soon as he had established his authority firmly in his northern dominions — had bestowed the crowns of Denmark and Bohemia and had annexed Burgundy — he crossed the Alps and in November 1154 held a great diet of all his Italian feudatories, lay and cleric, on the plain of Roncaglia, not far from Piacenza. True to his policy, he took severe measures against the growing independence of the Lombard cities; and 'envy, the bane of republics,' stood him in good stead, for grievous jealousies and strife had already arisen between them, and some eagerly seized the opportunity of accusing their rivals. Milan especially was bitterly assailed by less flourishing and more imperialistic cities, such as its neighbour Pavia, and incurred Frederick's fiercest displeasure by refusing him his regalian rights (e.g. custom-dues, coinage, food for his soldiers, and so on) and inciting resistance when p370he attempted to abolish the consul and other republican magistrates and to impose German governors (Podestà) with dictatorial powers. He deemed it inadvisable to attack Milan itself, but vented his wrath by demolishing two of its allies — little Tortona, which stood a siege heroically for two months (and was soon rebuilt by the Milanese), and Asti, famous in a later age for its wine and for Alfieri.

Meantime Pope Eugenius and also his successor had died, and the Englishman Breakspear (Hadrian IV) had ascended the papal throne. His pride and impetuosity (which ere he died made him confess that the most miserable mortal on earth was a Pope) were soon in evidence. A cardinal had been attacked in the street — perhaps by anti-clerical republicans. Hadrian, who knew that Frederick would soon be there to aid him, forthwith does what no Pope had ever ventured to do — he lays the whole city under interdict. No religious functions are permitted save baptism and last sacrament. So terrified are the Romans that even the senators finally entreat pardon; and they gain it by the expulsion of Arnold of Brescia, who wanders as a fugitive from place to place, dreading the vengeance of the English pontiff, while Hadrian enthrones himself triumphantly in the Lateran. And now Frederick, 'smoking with the blood of the Lombard Communes,' appears before the gates of Rome. Arnold is betrayed and handed over by the Emperor to the Pope, and by the Pope to the Prefect, who has him hanged and burnt. The Senate, imagining that by this dastardly act the grace of the German monarch has been secured, sends to his camp a message of fulsome flattery and proposes once more to bestow on him the title of Emperor. But the envoys are disdainfully dismissed and Frederick marches his soldiery into the Leonine quarter and occupies St. Peter's basilica' and here Pope Hadrian, a few days after he has handed over Arnold to the gallows and the pyre, lays the imperial diadem on the head of his benefactor (June 1155).

But this unnatural alliance — this puttaneggiar co' regi — was bound to prove short-lived. A very serious fight had taken place, on and near the S. Angelo bridge, after the corona-

p371 tion. About a thousand Roman citizens had been killed or drowned. Intense indignation prevailed, and Frederick found it advisable to escape from Rome and hurry northwards, leaving the Pope and his cardinals safely deposited in Tivoli. It was with difficulty that he forced his way through his disaffected Italian dominions, and when once more at home he began to revise his policy. He had already been angered by the papal claims to Tuscany (Matilda's territories), and by the fact that Hadrian, like several of his predecessors, had sought to strengthen himself by alliance with the Norman depredators and usurpers, and had even presumed to act as overlord of South Italy and Sicily and to invest Roger's son, William the Bad, with kingship. But worse was to follow. Ignoring the Concordat of Worms, Frederick had begun to appoint his own German bishops. Hadrian protested, and in his letter alluded to the late coronation as the bestowal by himself of the beneficium (fief) of the Empire, implying that Frederick was his feudatory. Hereupon took place a great outburst of indignation. The papal friendship was flung to the winds, and with a powerful army and a number of lay and clerical jurists Frederick again (July 1158) crossed the Alps, in order to chastise the insubordinate Communes (55) and to decide once for all his rights as Emperor in regard to Popes and republics. Milan was forced to surrender, and its citizens, together with their archbishop and their consuls, had to present themselves as barefoot and ash-strewn suppliants with cords round their necks, and when the ensigns on their Carroccio were lowered in obeisance the whole multitude sank on their knees and begged for mercy.

The conclusions arrived at by Frederick's lawyers assembled at Roncaglia were drawn mainly from antiquated Justinian definitions and gave the Emperor an authority incompatible with constitutional government. Moreover, very unjust distinctions were made, some cities receiving much liberty and

p372 others being enslaved. But the humiliation of Milan had cowed resistance. One brave little town, Crema, alone defied the German despot, and after a siege (56) of six months was taken and demolished.

The break with Frederick now induced the Papacy to form another unnatural alliance. Though in Rome it was a deadly foe to republican freedom, it was keen-witted enough to sue the friendship of the northern Communes and to support them against the common enemy. On Hadrian's decease in 1150 a Pope not less strong-willed and ambitious had been elected by the clerical party. But great tumults had ensued, and Alexander III was so successfully opposed by the Antipope Victor, elected by Roman imperialists, that he had to flee to France, and to console himself by futile excommunication of both the Antipope and the Emperor. Thus for the present the cause of the Communes was not aided by the papal alliance, and when Frederick in 1161, irritated by the reviving impudence of Milan, laid siege to that city no succour arrived. After a long and heroic resistance it was taken (1162), and, as was to be expected, it was almost totally destroyed and depopulated (57) — a fated that it had suffered more than once in days long past.

But freedom's banner streams like the thunder-storm against the wind. Driven to despair, the North Italian cities, led by the now powerful and independent Venice, began to combine, and when towards the end of 1163 Frederick for the third time made a descent upon Italy he found it advisable to beat a retreat. Three years later he returned with a larger army; but meanwhile the League, (58) newly constituted by Venice, Verona, Padua, and Vicenza, had extended itself through

INSERT FIG 32

p373 Lombardy and was being joined even by cities, such as Cremona, that hitherto had been imperialistic. Moreover, at Rome the imperial cause was waning. Victor, Frederick's Antipope, had died, and although the imperial faction had forthwith elected another (Paschal), the fugitive Pope Alexander III had returned from France and had expelled the rival pontiff.

Frederick thought it best to strike first at Rome. He therefore left the northern cities unmolested, and having reduced Ancona (a strategical position necessary to cover his advance) he pushed southwards, and in the height of an exceedingly hot and pestilential summer (1167) he entered the Leonine quarter. But the Romans showed fight, and the Germans were unable to force their way across the Tiber into the city or even to capture S. Angelo. It was as much as they could do to occupy St. Peter's with troops while Antipope Paschal went through the ceremony of crowning Frederick's consort as Empress. And they had been hardly a fortnight in Rome when a virulent malarial epidemic, or perhaps the plague, broke out, and Frederick hastily led his army northwards. Many of his retinue, nobles and generals and prelates, fell victims to the pestilence, and about 2000 of his fighting men; nor did the mortality cease for some time after Germany was reached. (59)

Pavia was almost the only large Lombard town that had not joined the League. It proved a constant annoyance to Milan, which had been rebuilt and refortified in an incredibly short time by the enthusiasm of the allies (60). In order to check Pavia also from the south the town of Alessandria was now built, and in a short time could furnish 15,000 fighters. Its name signalized the friendship of Pope Alexander, but it received from its enemies the contemptuous sobriquet of the 'city of straw' — in allusion to its supposed frailty or to its hastily p374erected straw-roofed houses. Frail it certainly proved itself not to be, for when, after a pause of six years, Frederick made his fifth descent on Italy and attempted to capture this city of straw he was compelled to withdraw his troops after five months of ineffectual siege, and shortly afterwards he was totally defeated by the allies at Legnano, some twelve miles north-east of Milan. So overwhelming was the catastrophe that Frederick himself disappeared in the general rout, and is said to have reached Pavia with great difficulty three days after the battle.

This disaster made Frederick realize the impotence of fury and inhumanity in a contest with those who were ready to die for liberty. His nature, too, was not so wholly cruel and ignoble that he could not feel some admiration for heroism. He agreed on the proposal of Doge Ziani to meet at Venice not only Pope Alexander and envoys from William the Good of Sicily, but even delegates from the allied cities. This was the first time that republican envoys had ever met a Pope or an Emperor on equal terms. It was therefore an event that promised great things. Perhaps it was the most momentous crisis that ever occurred in Italian history. Alas that so fair a promise should have been frustrated by those intestine feuds which caused Italy to 'cast away the pearl of great price, and sacrifice even the recollections of that liberty which had stalked as a majestic spirit among the ruins of Milan.' (61)

The meeting of Frederick Barbarossa and Pope Alexander at Venice in the summer of 1777 has been described so often (sometimes without any reference to Legnano and the delegates of the Lombard republics !) that it may here be passed over lightly. In the Atrio of St. Mark's three porphyry slabs in the pavement are believed to commemorate the splendid and dramatic function; but it doubtless took place as described by an eye-witness, (62) outside or under the great portal. The results of the Venetian conference were the deposition of Calixtus (the third of Frederick's Antipopes), a peace of fifteen p376years with William of Sicily, and a truce of six years with the Lombard republics. Moreover an agreement, of no very satisfactory and permanent nature, was patched up in regard to the vexed question of the Matilda Legacy. Pope Alexander re‑entered Rome in triumph, greeted by the homage and enthusiasm of all parties. (63) Frederick returned to Germany and for the next seven years enjoyed peace and the loyal reverence of his northern subjects, while by a generous compact with the Lombard cities, which he signed at Constanz in 1183 and by which he granted them many privileges, he so won their affection that Alessandria even offered to change its name to Caesarea ! Striking evidence of his prosperity too is afforded by the descriptions that chroniclers have given of a magnificent festivity held in 1184 at Mainz — a veritable Field of Cloth of Gold. His last visit to Italy was a character very different from his former expeditions. Without an army he journeyed from city to city, welcomed and honoured everywhere. For Milan he showed special affection, and he undertook to rebuild heroic little Crema. Adsit omen !

In 1186 there was celebrated at Milan a very momentous wedding. William II, the King of Sicily, was childless, so he agreed that his elderly aunt and heiress Constance (Costanza), daughter of the late King Roger, should marry Frederick's son Henry, a young man of twenty-one. Thus the long enmity of the Normans and Germans was ended, and the Hohenstaufen monarchs added Sicily and South Italy to their Empire.

In 1187 Jerusalem was recaptured by the Turks, and in 1189 Frederick, now sixty-eight years of age, joined Richard of England (64) and Philippe Auguste of France in the third Crusade. Before reaching the Holy Land he was drowned in attempting to swim across the river Salef, not far from the Cydnus, in which Alexander the Great nearly lost his life. For p376centuries the belief prevailed in Germany that the great Kaiser had never really died, but that he was sleeping beneath his castle on the Kyffhäuser mount and would some day awake and restore the Empire — a tradition that Rückert has versified in a fine ballad. The character of Frederick as displayed in what we know of his life, is difficult for us to appraise, and perhaps the verdict of Dante, which was probably the verdict of his age, only increases our difficulty; for, though in his Inferno he assigns the second Frederick the fiery sepulchre of a heretic, he speaks of il buon Barbarossa. But his expression, it should be added, some commentators regard as ironical.

As a framework, reigns and dynasties are often useful, and the history of medieval Italy has so little inner consistency that it needs the framework afforded by the reigns and dynasties of its invaders and its alien, especially its German, masters. But in some cases the periods into which German history falls do not correspond with those which are convenient in the case of Italy. The Hohenstaufen dynasty continued to rule in Italy for more than half a century, but such events as the recognition of the republics by the treaty of Constanz and the merging of the Norman kingship in that of the German monarchs by the marriage of Constance with Henry VI initiated a new period in Italian history and render it advisable to make a break here, at the death of Barbarossa in 1190.

1 His epitaph is to be seen in S. Ambrogio.

2 This was done solely with consent of the nobles of the realm and without any reference to Pope Leo III, whose shameless insistence on Constantine's Donation and whose extravagant interpretation of that of Pipin had evidently annoyed Charles. The Emperor himself set the crown on his son's head, or he perhaps bade him take it from the altar and set it on his own head — 'a significant hint,' says Gregorovius, 'for all his successors.'

4 That there were among the Popes some vigorous and wise rulers, and a few really good men, will become evident as we proceed; but no words can state too forcibly that the ideals of the Roman pontiffs were not those of the Founder of Christianity. History has to regard the medieval papacy, not as a Christian influence, but as a purely temporal power, and one that possessed unfair advantages by its hold on the superstitions of humanity.

5 A few years later (871) the 'Emperor' Louis II, after capturing Bari from the Saracens, was himself captured, together with his queen and retinue, by the Duke of Benevento, who held him a prisoner for a month and made him swear never again to enter the duchy. This 'unheard-of profanation' of the sanctity of the imperial dignity, as Gregorovius from his Teutonic standpoint regards it, seems to have excited much ridicule and not a little malicious jubilation among the many Italian enemies of the Frankish-Roman Empire. For a popular ballad composed on this occasion see Part V, ch. iv. It is worthy of remark that just before this 'profanation' took place Louis had answered a sneering letter from the Eastern 'Emperor' (who refused to acknowledge his titles) by a slashing attack on the claims of the Byzantine 'Roman Emperors' and a vehement assertion of his own rights. 'Know thou,' he writes, 'that if We were not Imperator Romanorum We could not be Imperator Francorum; for from the Romans We received this name and this dignity.'

6 Portus, on the north outlet of the Tiber, had for centuries outrivalled the old Ostia on the south arm, but its access to the sea had got choked and Ostia was again used. Gregory's New Ostia lies behind the ruins of the ancient town. The Portus arm was reopened in 1612 and Ostia was again deserted; but Porto is now a mile and a half from the seashore, where there is the fashionable bathing-place Fiumicino.

7 A year or so after this Saracen scare the general consternation was increased by an earthquake and then by the great Incendio del Borgo, which annihilated the wooden dwellings of the Saxons and Lombards and destroyed the portico of St. Peter's. It was stayed by Leo — whom, in Raffael's fresco one sees making the sign of the Cross. By the way, Ethelwulf and his little son Alfred (later King Alfred) spent a year in Rome about 853‑54, and contributed liberally to the rebuilding of the Saxon quarters.

8 Pope John VIII tried to rival Leo IV by building walls to include S. Paolo fuori le mura and by calling the new quarter Johannipolis — but walls and name soon disappeared.

9 A rival still existed in the person of Boson, Duke of Vienne, who, favoured by Pope John VIII, had founded a new kingship in Provence and South Burgundy, with the city of Arles as capital. He married a granddaughter of Lothair I, and his son, Louis II, afterwards became 'Emperor' for a brief space.

10 Friuli (i.e. Forum Julii), in the north-east corner of Italy, was made by Alboin into a Lombard duchy with Cividale as its capital. It was made into a mark (marquisate) by Charles the Great, and extended to the Adige. What claims Berengar had to be regarded as 'Italian' it is difficult to say. According to Villari (but not Gregorovius and others), Berengar was not elected king till Arnulf's death in 899.

11. It was an ill return that he made by annihilating their camp on the Garigliano a few years later (see p. 319).

12 It is noticeable that at first Berengar himself did homage to Arnulf for the Italian crown.

13 For these Magyars or Hungarians see Index. The modern Hungarians are descended from them and not, as some assert, from the Huns.

14 He had risen early to attend Mass at a church near to his palace — doubtless the little church of SS. Siro e Libera, still existing near the remains of Theoderic's palace.

15 The Papacy, regarded as a temporal power possessing often an enormous advantage in the recognition of its spiritual pretensions, cannot, of course, be ignored even by those who find it impossible to accept transmission of spiritual prerogatives in the face of such facts as the most atrocious crimes and the most shameful vice — the throne of Christ's vicar seized on by murderers — the pazza bestialità (as Villari calls it) of many of the Popes who made the Lateran a den of assassins and fornicators — a state of things that lasted intermittently for centuries and was such that no wonder all heaven blushed fiery red at St. Peter's passionate invective, reported by Dante.

16 Ermengard is said to have fascinated and befooled Rudolf himself, who, according to Gregorovius, was 'transformed into a whining adorer, while the new Circe with a contemptuous laugh took the Lombard crown from his head and gave it over to her stepbrother.'

17 Stephen VI and John X are known to have been strangled. Leo V and Christopher were deposed and probably murdered. The fates of Anastasius III and Lando were, says Gregorovius, 'probably tragic and terrible' nor can we feel certain that it was not so with Theodorus II, Boniface VI, Benedict IV, Leo VI, Stephen VII, and with the bastard of Pope Sergius and Marozia, John XI, who — a mere youth — reigned only about four years. Of the other half-dozen nonentities who were made Popes by Alberich, certainly Stephen VIII came to a tragic and shameful end, and not much later Alberich's son, Pope John XII, was found under disgraceful circumstances in company with a married woman, and was so cudgelled that he soon after died (p. 338).

18 Of unknown parentage. Some have believed that, like Ermengard, she was related to the wild strain of Waldrada.

19 He purposely spilt a cup of wine, or water, over the king.

20 We hear no more of her, nor of any demand by Hugo for her release.

21 The Tribunal often held its sittings in the Aula ad lupam in the Lateran, so called from the Capitoline She-wolf, which in this age was preserved there.

22 Most of the Benedictine monasteries had not become 'dens of vice,' and to copy out the old Rule was mere 'waste of paper,' as St. Benedict said to Dante when they met in Paradise. The Cluny reformers did something, but no general reform took place till the founding of the Camaldoli Order of White Benedictines by Romuald about 1010. It was the immense wealth and the territorial authority of these princely abbots that Alberich wished to reform quite as much as their morals.

23 A noble named Attus (Azzo) seems to have helped her to escape. He was owner of Canossa Castle, of later fame.

24 See especially in Count Balzani's Cronache italiane the account given by Luidprand, Bishop of Cremona, who was present and acted as Otto's interpreter at the Council at which Pope John was deposed. Luidprand (c. 920‑70) is the great authority for this epoch. He wrote a Historia Ottonis besides other works on the period 888‑962. For the dark and perplexing period of the Carolingians and the 'Italian' monarchs we have very little but the Liber Pontificalis and untrustworthy monastic chroniclers.

25 Then near the Lateran, now on the capitol. Called in the Middle Ages the 'horse of Constantine' (see p. 341).

26 He remained there 120 days and was very disdainfully treated, if we may believe all that he says in his Account of the Embassy to Constantinople. Phocas was especially indignant because the Pope had addressed him as Imperator Graecorum.

27 Some of these interminable disorders are briefly noted in the List of Popes, p. 379. To recount them here at all fully is impossible.

28 Except, it is said, a Slavonian, who did not betray him.

29 Otto the Great is regarded, still more than his father Henry, as the establisher of the German Empire and of all the is essentially deutsch, including literature. The Germans were first in his reign officially called Deutsche, i.e. 'the [elect] people.' See p. 159 n. Southern culture was at this time being rapidly introduced into Germany. Even school-girls, we are told, were taught to read Virgil and Terence.

30 He was killed at Gnesen, which is now in Prussia. His tomb is in the cathedral, founded about 1000.

31 St. Bartholomew is said to have voyaged in his marble sarcophagus from India to the Lipari Islands, where Saracens cast forth his body: but it found its way safely to Benevento, whence Otto tried to bring it to Rome. The Beneventans however deceived him and gave him the relics of St. Paulinus instead. Nevertheless the Romans insist on calling the church on the Isola Tiberina after St. Bartholomew and assert that his relics are there. This church was built, on the site of the ancient temple of Aesculapius, by Otto III, and at first was dedicated to St. Adalbert.

32 This family had the disgrace of producing that most iniquitous, perhaps, of all the Popes, Benedict IX.

33 Such as Venice, Florence, Pisa, Genoa, etc. The last two were powerful at sea and had successfully combated the Saracens of Sardinia and Spain. Milan and Pavia were much dominated by the Germans and had a long struggle for independence. In the south the republican spirit was extinguished by the Byzantines, Saracens, and Normans.

34 Serious tumults, proving the same feeling and punished in the same barbarous fashion, took place at almost every future coronation of a German Roman Emperor.

35 More about the Normans will be found in ch. ii of this Part.

 

36 The appearance of a splendid architecture during this period in the northern cities, and a little later in the Norman dominions, is, as we shall see, a very remarkable evidence of the progress of civilization and art where party strife did not ruin all such development — as it did at Rome.

37 For details of this coronation, including the usual tumults, see explanation of the picture of the imperial diadem, Fig. 19. Knut had come as pilgrim. He wrote an enthusiastic description of Rome to his English subjects. I may notice here that some years later (1050) another famous person from the British Isles visited Rome as penitent, according to the chroniclers — namely, Macbeth ! (He reigned eight years after murdering Duncan.)

38 Purg. xxviii‑xxxiii. Dante's 'Matelda' is a mystery. I cannot believe that she is Countess Matilda. For lineage see Azzo, Ugo, Boniface, Beatrice.

39 The chief facts connected with this 'demon of hell,' as Gregorovius calls him, are given in the List of Popes (p. 379) and need not be repeated. When he fled from Rome to Cremona on this occasion (1037) he owed his life to a solar eclipse, which deterred the nobles who had vowed to kill him at the altar. At this time he was only sixteen, having ascended the papal throne when twelve years of age.

40 He is said never to have put on the diadem without having made confession and done penance — frequently under the lash.

41 Doubtless, being under a ban, the marriage of the clergy, even when legalized, led to abuses which would not have existed if it had been recognized as a Christian institution. But celibacy was, of course, insisted upon by Popes such as Hildebrand, not for moral, but for political reasons: to secure a clergy devoted solely to papal interests.

42 See p. 335 n. The ruins of Canossa still exist, on a height some fifteen miles south-west of Reggio, and rather farther from Parma.

43 Benevento remained under the overlordship of the Popes until 1860.

44 Here are buried (since 1900 mostly in new sarcophagi in the restored vault) Conrad II, Henry III, Henry IV, Henry V, Philip, Rudolf von Habsburg, Adolf, and Albrecht; also Gisela (see p. 348.)

45 Met by Dante in Paradise (xxi, 121), where he utters fierce Miltonic invectives against the moderni pastori. His copious writings in prose and in verse are a strange medley of mysticism, asceticism, and polemics.

46 Less with the Cistercians and St. Bernard; and I do not add either Domenic or St. Francis, for Domenic's fiery fanaticism was directed against intellectual heresy and St. Francis, 'all seraphical in ardour,' influenced hearts rather than systems.

47 The eight books of his Registers are praised by Balzani as worthy of comparison with the writings of Gregory the Great. Words fail the Count in his enthusiastic admiration for Hildebrand's character.

48 Six millions are said to have taken the red cross. A vast multitude followed Peter and almost wholly perished before the real host of the Crusaders left Europe.

49 The Guelfs and Ghibellines derived their names from these Bavarian 'Welfen' and from the 'Waiblinger,' i.e. the anti-papal and afterwards imperial family of the Hohenstaufer, whose founder had been made Duke of Suabia by Henry IV (p. 357), and who took their name from their castle on the 'High Staufen' (2000 feet), some twelve miles east of Stuttgart. They were also called 'Waiblinger' from the village of Waiblingen in the same district.

50 Betrayed and captured, this ex-cardinal was exhibited in the streets of Rome seated backwards on a camel and clothed in a shaggy goatskin. He was then expelled, and died in misery in some convent.

51 In this connexion the following passage is full of interest: 'William [the Conqueror] enforced his supremacy over the Church. Homage was exacted from bishop as from baron. No synod could legislate without his assent. . . . He was the one ruler of his time who dared firmly to repudiate the claims . . . of the court of Rome. When Gregory VII called on him to do fealty for his real, the king sternly refused to admit the claim. Fealty, he said, I have never willed to do, nor will I do it now.' (Green's Short History, ii, 5).

52 It was a few years later that Arnold of Brescia persuaded the Romans to rebuild the Capitol. Amidst the desolation of its mighty ruins the 'Novum Palatium' (Palazzo del Senatore) arose on the mass of the ancient Tabularium. In documents of 1150 this New Palace is mentioned as the assembly-place of the republican Senate. It was here that Petrarch was crowned (1341). The fine flight of steps from the Piazza del Campidoglio was designed by Michelangelo, who rebuilt much of this part of the Capitol and removed hither the famous equestrian statue of M. Aurelius (see p. 338).

53 He was consecrated in the Abbey of Farfa. This powerful monastic centre in the Sabine country, rivalling Monte Cassino, had been destroyed by the Saracens, but was rebuilt and became so notorious for immorality that Alberich had tried to reform it forcibly. Eugenius, after various attempts to establish himself in Rome, withdrew to France, preached the Crusade, and vented his wrath by excommunicating Arnold.

54 They had been formally condemned in 1139 by the same Lateran Council which accepted St. Bernard's condemnation of Anacletus.

55 The original champions of liberty were Milan, Brescia, Piacenza, Parma, and Modena. On the other side were Pavia, Como, Lodi, and Cremona (for a time). Genoa and Pisa were favoured by Frederick, who hoped to use their fleets.

56 It is asserted that the Germans bound a number of captive children to a movable siege-tower; but the besieged repelled it, slaying their own children rather than surrender.

57 Both in the siege and in the barbarous destruction of Milan several Lombard cities, among them Como, took a large and shameful part. Few of the churches were spared. S. Ambrogio was one of these.

58 The League as constituted in December 1167 included sixteen large cities. In 1168 even Como joined. I refer here, once for all, to the very full account of the League and of the rise and nature of the North Italian Communes given by Sismondi in his huge Histoire des républiques italiennes. I touch slightly on these subjects in my chapter on the Communes.

59 Thomas à Becket wrote congratulating Pope Alexander on the 'fate of Sennacherib.'

60 The great circular moat (the inner Naviglio of to‑day), made in 1157 and destroyed in 1162, was now restore. This would take less time than building walls, and Milan, since the removal of the old Roman walls of the inner city, relied mainly on its moat.

61 Hallam's Middle Ages, I, iii.

62 The Archbishop of Salerno. The bronze horses over the portal were brought from Constantinople twenty-seven years later. Most of the present external mosaics are modern productions of no artistic value.

63 But at his death in 1181 the old feuds broke out again, and the next three Popes passed most of their time in exile.

64 It is interesting to note that on his outward voyage Richard touched at Ostia, but refused to visit the papal court because it was 'full of greed and corruption.'

u377

INSERT TABLE

EMPERORS, KINGS, AND POPES

800-962

 

 

378

 

 

INSERT

 

EMPERORS, KINGS, AND POPES (800‑962)--continued

 

 

379

 

 

INSERT

 

EMPERORS, KINGS, AND POPES (800‑962)--continued

 

 

INSERT TABLE

 

EMPERORS (SAXON AND FRANCONIAN) AND POPES

(962-1125)

 

 

380

 

 

EMPERORS (SAXON AND FRANCONIAN) AND POPES (962‑1125)

(continued)

 

 

381

 

 

EMPERORS (SAXON AND FRANCONIAN) AND POPES (962‑1125)

(continued)

 

 

382

 

 

INSERT

 

EMPERORS AND POPES TO THE DEATH OF

BARBAROSSA

1125-1190

 

 

383

 

 

INSERT FAMILY TREE

 

THE HOHENSTAUFER

 

 

384

 

(BLANK PAGE IN COTTERILL)

 

 

385

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER I

THE DARK AGE

When we speak of the Dark Age, or the Dark Ages, of European history we generally use the expression rather vaguely to denote the not easily determinable midnight watch of the Middle Ages — the limits of which are themselves somewhat difficult to determine. It is not easy, perhaps not possible, to discover any one century, or period, when the darkness brooded with equal obscurity over the whole of Western Europe; and we cannot fail to observe that in various countries the quality of the darkness was very different; for although ignorance, superstition, vice and ferocity usually go hand in hand, there have been cases where moral and religious enlightenment has prevailed amidst gross ignorance of arts and letters, and also cases where the most hideous vice, inhumanity and irreligion have existed in a Golden Age of learning and aesthetic refinement — covered up, so to speak, with Raffaelesque tapestries. Indeed, we should not be misusing words very seriously if we called the age of the Borgias, which was also the age of the High Renaissance, the darkest period of the Roman Church — perhaps even darker than the pontificate of John the Twelfth itself.

But as regards Italy — or perhaps we should say Rome — we may, I think, consider the ninth and tenth centuries and half the eleventh (say 830‑1050) as the darkest of its Dark Ages. In earlier times there had been long periods when the whole country, ravaged by sword, fire, famine, and pestilence, was in a state of indescribable misery, but the ulcerous horror of internal corruption during what we may call the darkest age of the history of Christian Rome was far more terrible than all that was suffered from barbarian or Byzantine foes.

p386 Any fairly full account of this Dark Age of Italian history would occupy more pages than this volume contains. I must therefore be content to make some general remarks and to give a few pictures illustrative of the manners and customs of those days. Sometimes the brief description of a single scene impresses on one's mind the character of an age more permanently than is done by many words.

We may consider the original living stock of classical art and literature to have died down gradually during the three centuries that followed the age of the Antonines, and, except for such literary survivals as Boëthius, Cassiodorus, and Amalasuntha, and except a few scholae that may have kept up traditions of classical art, it can scarcely be said to have existed as a national influence in the days of Theoderic and during the Lombard domination.

It is true that a certain kind of culture, founded on classical writings but used almost wholly for purposes theological and devotional, was fostered in monasteries. This culture spread, even before the time of Benedict and Monte Cassino, to the wilds of Gaul and Britain, so that by the age of Gregory the Great and Theodelinda there was probably more erudition of this kind in Tours, Bangor-Iscoed and Caerleon, or in Ireland and the Irish St. Gallen, than in Rome; and nigh a century ere the day of Charles the Great, at an epoch when the darkness was beginning to gather ever denser over the mother-city of Western Christianity the homeland of Bede could claim to be an important centre of European learning, and St. Boniface of England had won the title of the Apostle of Germany.

Charles the Great was a patron of learning — such learning as had been preserved by the monks — a learning, be it noticed, that was inspired with but little enthusiasm for what is great in ancient literature and art, (1) but which at least kept alive the elements of literary civilization. At his court we find p387a number of learned men, such as his biographer Einhart (Eginard) and Paul the Deacon, and the Englishman Alcwin, the monarch's favourite counsellor, by whose advice schools were founded in many quarters. It is also said, though not easily proved, that Charles built many churches and patronized art. Anyhow, we know that his rather unscrupulous love for things of beauty caused him to rob Ravenna of many of its splendid marbles in order to decorate his palace and cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle. During the Carolingian (2) period Rome, and with it most of Italy except those cities which were under Byzantine supremacy or had connexions with the East, such as Venice, or which, such as Palermo and Messina, came under Saracen civilization, sank ever deeper into darkness, and during the social and political degradation caused by the regno d'Italia indipendente and the rule of Marozia and Alberich and John XII at Rome the gloom was perhaps deepest. There are those who endeavour to show that we are misled by the lack during these centuries of really able authors, and that we should not draw inferences as to the general state of things from the miserable literary productions that have survived (3) We are told that 'in no age perhaps did Germany possess more learned and virtuous bishops than towards the end of the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh centuries' (Meiners, quoted by Hallam). That may be perfectly true. As I have already remarked, the Darkest Age did not extend over all Western and Central Europe at the same time. In the tenth century there were centres of learning such as Reims and Cluny. Germany, too, was at this epoch probably blessed with a great deal more light than Rome, and these learned and virtuous bishops were doubtless the wise selections of German kings and not papal satellites. But p388how about Italy and how about Rome itself?

Of the social and intellectual state of the rest of Italy during the period which we may call the Darkest Age (about 830 to 1050) we know little, but it is evident that, in spite of incessant civil wars that raged until the coming of Otto the Great, in some of the northern cities, which were already acquiring a good deal of self-respect and independence, morals and education were on a considerable higher level than they were in what professed to be the mother-city of the religion of Western Europe. Artistic feeling and skill, anyhow, stood decidedly higher in the northern towns, as can be seen by comparing the first sign of that splendid Romanesque architecture which was soon to unfold all its beauty in those regions (4) with the utter deadness of all original art in Rome during the whole of this age. While Pisa was planning and beginning the building of its Duomo and Venice was rebuilding St. Mark's and adorning it with wondrous mosaics, in Rome nothing was attempted but reconstructions, for which ancient monuments were mercilessly pillaged; and the art of mosaics was extinct. (5)

Under the domination of the Saxon and Franconian Emperors, say during the eleventh century, began the first glimmering of the new day that was to dawn on Italy. We hear of the fame of the Italian universities of Bologna and of Salerno. (The latter, however, probably won from the Saracens its skill in medicine and mathematics.) We hear of learned Italians in distant lands — such as Lanfranc and Anselm, both priors of the celebrated Abbey of Bec and both Archbishops of Canterbury, the one a native of Pavia, the other of Aosta. p389Before long (about 1130‑40) we hear of Abelard lecturing to immense audiences in Paris, and of his disciple, Arnold of Brescia, whose fiery enthusiasm lit for a season in Rome a beacon for the lovers of learning and of liberty — soon, alas, to be extinguished. And now the new spirit has already grown so strong in the Communes of Lombardy that they dare to stake their all in the hope of winning that political freedom under which, in spite of much that was tragic and deplorable, they fought their way valiantly and steadily onwards to the light.

It is sometimes asserted, as already remarked, that the state of learning in Italy, even in Rome, during the so‑called Dark Age was not really so bad as has been made out (6) It is affirmed that there were more schools in Italy than in any Northern country, and that in Rome there was very considerable erudition, especially among the laity — such laymen as the courtiers of Marozia or the Counts of Tusculum? — and that if the Popes and the clergy of Rome took but little interest in such matters it was because they were so much engrossed by matters of serious importance — such matters, I suppose, as the extension of the temporal power of the Church and the expulsion or poisoning of political enemies and Antipopes.

Even if we granted this affirmation and also allow the presence in Rome of learned Greeks, and of libraries, and of many ancient manuscripts that perished later, we should be compelled to add that the existence of schools and of erudition in the central city of Christendom made the immorality, the superstition, and the ferocity that prevailed there all the more shameful. And that such things did prevail there is not difficult to prove. As Gregorovius justly says, Popes, clergy, nobles, and people lived in a state of savagery scarce conceivable, and Rome stood deeply humiliated not only before the Christianity and the learning of Gaul and Britain and Germany and Byzantium, but also before the art and erudition of those Arab Moslems who indeed ravaged her Campagna and p389desecrated and plundered the sanctuaries of her saints, but who spread the light of science — of mathematics and medicine and astronomy and philosophy — from Bagdad to Alexandria and from Alexandria to Seville. (7) And though Rome herself may not have felt conscious of this humiliation, it was evident enough to the outside world. The contempt with which the Romans were regarded by the Byzantines is summed up in the scornful words of the emperor Michael, who when writing to Pope Nicholas I (c. 860) calls their language (8) a language of Barbarians and Scythians; and the disdainful invective with which (c. 900) the bishops of the Gallic church, assembled at Reims, assailed the illiterate clergy of Rome and the Pope himself doubtless expresses the general feeling of Northern Christendom. Nor does it raise Rome and the Papacy in our estimation when we hear that this invective was answered by the papal legate with the assertion that from the beginning God had chosen the simple and unlearned to confound the wisdom of the world and that the Vicars of St. Peter and their disciples 'needed not to be fattened at the trough of Plato or Virgil or Terence or any other such philosophic swine.' But a few sketches of what actually occurred at Rome in this Dark Age will help us to realize the condition in which religion and morality and humanity found themselves.

THE RELIC-MANIA AND BODY-SNATCHING

In a former chapter I described the mania that developed itself in early days for acquiring the corpses, or the bones, of saints and martyrs, and the superstitions connected with wonder-working bones and brandea; and on various occasions mention has been made of the supposed discovery and the strange fortunes of some celebrated relics (such as those of St. Mark, St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Bartholomew, and St. Augustine) p391and of the pride that was felt by cities and by founders of churches when they could purchase a sacred corpse, or, in case that proved impossible (a whole genuine corpse being an exceedingly expensive article), when they were able to procure even the half or the quarter of some dead body which they had been especially eager to possess.

As the number of churches increased throughout Christendom the demand for bodies and bones became ever greater, and the institution of pilgrimages (9) caused an enormous increase in the supply, for every roméo (pilgrim to Rome) was anxious to acquire relics, as the modern tourist is generally anxious to acquire curiosities; and relics, like modern antiquities, had to be forthcoming. Catacombs and graves were plundered by night, and the tombs in churches had to be watched by armed men. Rome, says Gregorovius, was like a mouldering cemetery in which hyenas howled and fought as they dug greedily after corpses. And these corpses and skeletons were labelled with the names of popular saints and sold piecemeal to pilgrims. Or courageous foreigners would sometimes succeed in stealing precious relics from a church. (10) Thus in 827 Frankish pilgrims carried off to Soissons the bones of SS. Peter and Marcellinus, and a presbyter of Reims in 849 had the audacity and luck to steal what was supposed to be the body of St. Helena, Constantine's mother. Sometimes too a Pope would, as a very special favour, present some foreign church or potentate with a valuable corpse. 'These dead bodies,' says Gregorovius, 'were transported on richly decorated vehicles and escorted for some distance by the Roman populace in solemn procession with lighted torches and pious psalmody; and from every town, at the approach of the car, streamed forth the citizens, imploring and expecting p391miracles of healing. When it arrived at its destination — a city or a monastery of Germany, France, or England — the sacred body was welcomed with hymns of triumph and festivities that lasted many days.' Wars were even waged for the possession of some coveted relic. For instance, Dukes of Benevento after reducing Naples and Amalfi to submission extorted from their consternated victims, as the price of peace, the mummies of St. Januarius and St. Triphomena. It was one of these dukes, Sicard by name, who was lucky enough to secure the corpse of St. Bartholomew, the wondrous journeys of which have already been related (p.343 n.) This prince, says Gregorovius, 'sent his agents out to search all the coasts and islands of Italy for bones and skulls and other relics, and transformed the cathedral of Benevento into a charnel-house.'

This horrid craving for corpses and bones has never been quite cured in Christendom, and that it was still intense towards the end of what I have called the Dark Age may be inferred from the fact — for such it is said to be — that when St. Romuald, the founder of the Camaldolenses, was intending to leave Italy assassins were sent after him in order, if possible to secure at least his dead body rather than let him be lost entirely to his native country. Unluckily, he escaped. (11)

'POPE JOAN'

The curious story of 'Pope Joan' (la Papessa Giovanna) lies outside the realm of certified fact but does not lie outside the realm of history, for history should not reject possibilities nor ignore beliefs that have influenced the course of events; and this story, although it may have first originated in the thirteenth century and was perhaps invented by some of the many fierce enemies of the Papacy and in particular of Pope Boniface VIII, was for many centuries, we are told by Gregorovius, believed by chroniclers and by bishops — nay, by Popes them-

p393 selves and by everybody else. How unquestioning this belief was is proved by the fact that for two centuries (1400‑1600) the bust of 'Johannes VIII, femina ex Anglia,' stood among the busts of the Popes in Siena Cathedral. (12)

According to the tale 'Pope Joan' was the daughter of an Anglo-Saxon; but she was born in the Rhineland, at Ingelheim, where Charles the Great had a castle, between Mainz and Bingen. She won great distinction at Mainz for her learning, and, disguised as a man, entered the celebrated monastery of Fulda (between Frankfurt and Bebra) that had been founded some eighty years previously by the English Apostle of Germany, St. Boniface, Archbishop of Mainz. Later, it is said, she studied in England and also at Athens, and then received the post of a teacher in the Schola Graecorum at Rome, an ancient training college for deacons, where she gained so much influence that on the death of Leo IV she was made Pope (about 855 apparently). After a pontificate which is calculated to a nicety by chroniclers as having lasted two years, one month, and four days, her sex was discovered — so runs the tale — by her giving birth to an infant and dying while taking part in a procession. The horrified ecclesiastics buried her where she had expired, between the Colosseum and S. Clemente, and on this spot (which was ever afterwards avoided by Popes) her statue was erected, with her child in her arms and the papal mitre on her head. How such a well-connected narrative could have been fabricated it is not easy to divine, but although some of the story of her adventurous life may be true, the assertion that she was elected Pope seems to be conclusively disproved by a coin of Pope Benedict III which is stamped with the name of the Emperor Lothair. Now it is pretty certain that Leo IV died on July 17 855, and Lothair died, in a Benedictine monastery, on September 28 of the same year; so it seems as if Benedict must have succeeded Leo; and this is stated by the Liber Pontificalis, p394which tells us that his consecration took place on the day after Leo's death.

A CORPSE SUMMONED BEFORE A SYNOD (14)

It may be remembered that during the turbulent period which the Italians call il regno d'Italia indipendente a Duke of Spoleto named Guido succeeded in persuading, or forcing, Pope Stephen V to crown him in St. Peter's as Emperor, and the next year (892) brought similar pressure to bear on Stephen's successor, Pope Formosus, who at Ravenna (so at least chroniclers say whom Villari follows) crowned Guido's son, Lambert, as the coadjutor of his father on the imperial throne. This Pope Formosus was evidently a weak and untrustworthy individual, for even while he was crowning the young Lambert at Ravenna he was, one may feel sure, thinking — as Stephen had thought — how much rather he would see the imperial diadem on the head of the German Arnulf; and soon after the Ravenna coronation he began to correspond with the Carinthian duke and to incite him to come and try his luck. After an unsuccessful attempt in 894, Arnulf forced his way at last to Rome and was forthwith crowned by Formosus, who ignored the fact that two other so‑called Emperors existed, and that he himself had acknowledged one of them and with his own hands had crowned the other.

The coronation of the foreign usurper — the unctio barbarica, as it was disdainfully called — inflamed the fury of the patriotic anti-German party in Rome, and when Arnulf was suddenly struck down by paralysis and Lambert with his mother Agiltrud (15) had entered Rome in triumph this resentful woman induced the Pope, Stephen VI, who was nothing loth, to perpetrate an act which for ghoulish hideousness has perhaps never been equalled in the history of humanity. It was resolved that a solemn Synod should be called to judge Pope Formosus, and that he should be summoned to appear in propria persona. His corpse, which had lain for eight months p395in the crypt of St. Peter's, was dragged from its tomb and, clothed in pontifical robes, was set on a throne in the council-hall before the assembled priests and prelates of the Church of Christ. While all gazed shuddering at the ghastly thing, the sight and stench of which seemed to fill the whole assembly-hall with pestilential gloom, the advocate of Pope Stephen arose and addressed the corpse, near which stood the trembling deacon who had to act as counsel for the dead man. When the accusations (16) had been read Pope Stephen himself challenged the corpse to answer the charges. What the dead Pope's counsel, that trembling deacon, dared to say we do not know, but sentence of deposition was passed, all the acts and ordinances of Formosus were annulled, the three fingers of the right hand with which papal blessing had been dispensed were hacked off, the pontifical robes were torn from the poor dead body, and it was dragged by the feet through the council-hall and through the streets and finally, amid the howls and laughter of the mob, was cast into the Tiber. (17)

Stephen did not long enjoy his triumph. Chance, says Gregorovius, which sometimes undertakes the duties of Providence and does signs and wonders when saints are powerless, determined that soon after the Synod of Horror, while the corpse of Formosus was still weltering in the waves of Tiber, the ancient basilica of the Lateran, shaken by an earthquake, should suddenly collapse. At the crash of the falling temple Pope Stephen, who lived close by in the Patriarchium, was doubtless startled amidst his gloomy thoughts of the past, and to him the thunder of the downfall of the ancient church of Roman Christianity must have seemed a foreboding of the fate of the Papacy and of the doom that he himself was soon to encounter. In the same year the Roman mob rose against Emperor Lambert and his papal ally. Stephen was captured, despoiled of his pontifical robes, clothed in a monkish cowl, p396and sent to a monastery, where not long afterwards he was strangled. (18) One of his successors, Theodorus, though he reigned only twenty days, gave honourable burial to the poor insulted body of Formosus, which had been found by Roman fishers, and Liudprand assures us that he 'often heard it said by the most religious men in Rome' that when the corpse was carried into S. Peter's 'certain images of saints saluted it with reverence' — perhaps the figures of saints in paintings or mosaics with which Formosus himself had decorated the church, or the crypt.

However repulsive the scene may be, the descriptions that chroniclers give of Pope Stephen's Synod help one to form a just conception of the state of religion, morals, and humanity at Rome in the ninth century. And we must remember that this was nothing exceptional — nothing that excited general denunciation or protest. Occurrences no less horrifying were constantly taking place. During the eight years that followed this horrible Synod seven Popes died, several probably by poison or strangulation, and the brief notes given in the List of Popes (p. 378 sq.) intimate the fate of many others. The scene about to be described is only a specimen of the indescribable ferocity of the age, and one of thousands of proofs of the truth of such assertions as that of Gregorovius, to which I have already alluded, that 'the Popes, the clergy, the nobles and people of Rome in this age lived in a state of barbarism than which nothing more horrible can be conceived.'

THE FATE OF ANTIPOPE JOHN XVI (19)

 

 

In the year 996 Otto III, being then only sixteen years old, caused to be elected as Pope the chaplain Bruno, his second-cousin, twenty-three years of age, son of the Marquess p397of Verona. Bruno, who was the first German Pope, took the name Gregory V. About three weeks after his consecration he set the imperial diadem on the head of his royal relative in St. Peter's basilica at Rome. But in September of the same year a revolution, headed by the powerful noble Crescentius, caused Pope Gregory to flee to Pavia, whence he launched a futile bolt of excommunication against the Roman rebel. Crescentius answered the challenge by causing an Antipope to be elected. His choice fell on Philagathus, the Bishop of Piacenza, a Greek of Calabria, formerly (as also Silvester II) the tutor of Otto. This prelate had lately returned from Constantinople, whither Otto, his former pupil, had sent him to negotiate for the hand of a Byzantine princess. Doubtless he had cherished hopes of election to the pontifical chair, and probably felt resentment when the young Otto nominated his cousin Bruno. However that may be, he accepted the offer made by Crescentius and was consecrated (May 997), taking the name John XVI. Otto then decided to restore his cousin. He crossed the Alps and spent the Christmas of that year (997) at Pavia. Early in the following spring he entered Rome. Crescentius withdrew into the well-provisioned and almost impregnable fortress of S. Angelo, while the Antipope fled from the city and took refuge in a tower somewhere in the Campagna, hoping to escape thence by land or by sea to Byzantine territory. For a description of what then occurred I shall take the liberty of borrowing and freely translating a passage from Villari.

"While hiding in this tower the Antipope was discovered and captured by some of the Emperor's soldiers, who gouged his eyes out, cut out his tongue, and sliced off his nose, and his ears. Thus mutilated, he was brought before a Synod, excommunicated, and stripped of his episcopal robes. Then he was set facing backwards on a donkey and paraded through the streets of Rome, accompanied by a public herald, who proclaimed aloud his crimes and the punishments that he had been awarded. Then he was cast into a dungeon; and there he died. . . . Otto, after presiding at several councils and p398having commanded the erection of various new churches and convents (a matter in which he never shrank from lavish expense), began once more to besiege the Castle of S. Angelo, and ere long he obtained its surrender. This he managed, it is said, by promising to spare the life of Crescentius; but he did not keep his promise. Crescentius was beheaded, and his dead body, after being hurled down from the rampart of the fortress, was suspended by the feet to a gallows on Monte Mario. Capital punishment was also inflicted on the chief magistrate of each of the twelve quarters of the city. Thus this fantastic restorer of the Roman Empire, this devout founder of churches and convents, this pious adorer of hermits showed that, when occasion offered, he knew how to act the part of a cruel German Imperator.'

1 The ancient manuscripts destroyed by the monks for the purpose of using the parchment for theological or devotional writings were probably more numerous by far than all those destroyed by barbarian invaders or by the Turks.

2 In their northern dominions the Carolingians favoured learning, and Lothair is said to have founded schools in many towns of North Italy.

3 Paul the Deacon (725‑799), who was long at the court of Charles the Great and spent his last twelve years at Monte Cassino, wrote a very able History of the Lombards, and he speaks of 'illustrious and admirable poets' at Monte Cassino; but to judge from what remains of them they wrote only very bad doggerel in dog-Latin. During two centuries and more the only writer worth mentioning, besides monastic chroniclers, is Liudprand (see Index.)

4 In the south the Normans introduced about the same time an architecture scarcely less splendid — whence, it is difficult to say, as we shall see later.

5 A grotesque mosaic near the tomb of Otto II (d. 983) in the crypt of St. Peter's is one of the earliest specimens of a faint revival of the art after a blank of about 150 years. In 896 the Lateran church, destroyed by earthquake, was rebuilt, but for the whole of this period little was attempted, and almost all perished when Robert Guiscard sacked Rome in 1084. The fine Roman campanili (with one or two exceptions) did not begin till about 1100.

6 How far the general demoralization was due to the belief that the world would come to an end in A.D. 1000 is much disputed.

7 Avicenna lived from 980 to 1037; Averroës, che 'l gran comento feo, from c. 1126 to 1198.

8 The lingua vulgaris was already corrupting classical Latin very rapidly. See Part V, ch. iv. But Emperor Michael perhaps meant that Latin itself was a barbarian jargon, for the Pope in answer ridiculed the idea of a so‑called 'Roman' Emperor being ignorant of Latin.

9 These pilgrimages, with their throngs of malefactors and unprotected, often weak-minded, females, were the source of very great evil. It is said that cities were largely supplied with fallen women by means of pilgrimages, and so many of these were Englishwomen that, as Milman says, it became a 'scandal for the Anglican Church.'

10 A marble slab in S. Prassede (Rome) states that the bodies of 2300 martyrs were transferred from the cemeteries to this church by Pope Paschal in 817.

11 Even if not true, the story shows what was believed to be possible. It is asserted that he lived to the age of 120 and that nearly four hundred years after his death (i.e. in 1446) his body was found still undecayed; but it was stolen, and forthwith crumbled into dust.

12 It was transformed by Clement VIII into a portrait of Pope Zacharias.

13 For writers on the subject see Gregorovius, Book V, ch. iii. It is alleged that until the end of the fifteenth century the Pope-designate had to undergo examination so as to avoid the possibility of another Papessa !

14 See pp. 325, 330, and list, p. 378.

15 See p. 326

16 The real motive of the act was, of course, political and personal, but ecclesiastical charges had to be invented. The chief of these was the infringement by Formosus (who had been Bishop of Porto) of an old and practically obsolete rule that no bishop should be translated to the papal dignity.

17 Accounts vary a little. I have drawn from Gregorovius.

18 The 'monster' Pope Sergius III, who was of the faction of Stephen VI and had been chosen Pope in 897 by this party, but had been expelled by the faction of Formosus, when he ascended the papal throne later (904) gave Stephen a tomb in St. Peter's and furnished it with an epitaph describing his death by strangulation and abusing Formosus. (Professor Villari, in writing to me, courteously allows that he was wrong in asserting that it was the tomb of Formosus on which the abusive epitaph was placed.)

19 See pp. 343, 380. u399 CHAPTER II THE NORMANS

The brilliant episode of the Norman supremacy in Sicily and South Italy is so interesting — especially to those who make any claim to Norman descent — and influenced so greatly Italian history, that, although the main facts were necessarily mentioned in my sketch of this period, I shall devote a few pages to the subject.

The Normans whose forefathers, like most inhabitants of Northern and Central Europe, probably came from the far East and belonged to the so‑called Indo-Germanic stock, seem to have been a race of exceptionally fine, bold and hardy Norsemen, closely related to the Danes, and like them fond of a sea-life. Impelled by a love of adventure and called by that voice of the South which in these Aryan invaders of dreary and barren Northern lands seems often to have awakened some long-slumbering memories of sunnier climes, they began to cross the stormy deep in their swift black ships, following the flight of the swan' and ere long these audacious Vikinger ('creek-men,' 'fjord-men') spread terror along the coasts of Germany and France, and with their light vessels they would even penetrate far inland up estuaries and navigable streams, and sometimes transport their ships from one river to another.

Seeing a fleet of these piratical Vikings sweeping past the coast of France, Charles the Great, it is said, was much disturbed with gloomy forebodings. And ere long his fears began to be realized. In 845 the Normans burnt Hamburg, and a few years later sacked Cöln and Trier and Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) and turned Charles the Great's splendid cathedral into a stable p400for their horses. For nearly half a century they infested these regions, but in 891 Arnulf of Carinthia (before he came to Italy and was made Emperor) attacked their strong camp in the marshes of the Dyle and inflicted such a crushing defeat on them that they withdrew from North Germany and left it for the future in peace, (1) passing westward to the northern coast of France. Here they ascended the Seine, took Rouen, and occupied the surrounding country. In 911 the French king, Charles the Simple, ceded this country to the Norman duke Rollon, and before very long the heathen 'Pirates,' as they were commonly called, adopted the language (the langue d'oïl) and religion and manners, and even the popular legends, of their new home. (2)

When the Normans had adopted Christianity and had become a nation recognized by other Christian nations their warlike and restless spirit and perhaps also political troubles induced not a few of the nobles to lead bands of adventurers to southern countries. Among these — half knights-errant and half pilgrims — were some Normans who got as far as the Holy Land about fifty years before the Norman conquest of England and the Turkish conquest of Jerusalem. On their homeward journey they landed in Italy. Here they found the Saracens of Sicily, no less hostile than the Fatimite caliphs in Palestine, beleaguering the city of Salerno in order to enforce payment of tribute. Although only forty in number, the Normans, it is said, compelled the infidels to raise the siege; and so impressed was the prince of Salerno, Guaimar, that he begged the strangers to enter his service, and on their refusal — since they 'fought only for their religion and not for pay' — he sent messages or messengers, with them to Normandy in the hope of enlisting soldiers of fortune. It was

 

INSERT FIG 33

p401 perhaps this same band of pilgrims returning from Palestine which (as related on a former occasion) was encountered near Monte Gargano by a certain soldier of fortune named Melus or Melo. This man is said to have been a fugitive from the (then) Byzantine town of Bari and to have made arrangements with the Northmen like those attributed to Guaimar for the purpose of wreaking vengeance on the Byzantines. (3)

Such are the stories that account, perhaps truly, for the appearance, about 1018, of various bands of Norman warriors in South Italy. Melo's attempt at revenge proved a failure, in spite of the valour of his Norman mercenaries, and the Byzantines for a time extended their power very considerably (see p. 346). But the service of Northmen was eagerly sought by the Duke of Benevento and other princes, as well as by the Byzantines themselves, and the number of these formidable fighters increased so rapidly that ere long they were able to lay claim to territory that they had helped to conquer; and thus they began to form independent communities. The right to do so was conceded them, about 1028, by Conrad II, who allowed them to settle in the territory of Capua in order to counteract Pandulf, the rebellious despot of that city; and Pandulf's enemy, the duke of Naples (Sergius), rewarded the Normans for their assistance by giving their leader, Rainulf, the town of Aversa. This town of Aversa, which is twelve miles north of Naples, was the first fixed abode of the Normans in Italy, and formed, as it were, the nucleus of their future kingdom.

Besides the Normans at Aversa there were many groups that had no settled abode but took service wherever fighting was going on, and their numbers were constantly being increased by new arrivals from the north. Now Guaimar of p402Salerno, whom the Saracens with their powerful fleets were for ever annoying, joined forces (1038) with the Byzantines of South Italy in an invasion of Sicily, which for two centuries (ever since the fall of Palermo in 831) had been in possession of the infidels. This invasion, though a fiasco — for the leaders quarrelled and the Christian forces soon returned to Italy — is memorable because one of the chief warriors in the Norman contingent was an elder brother of the celebrated Robert Guiscard — one of the twelve sons of Tancred of Hauteville. His name was William of the Iron Arm, and he called himself Count of Apulia, and according to his biographer (4) he was 'a lion in war, a lamb in society, and an angel in council.' With his 'iron arm' he is said to have 'unhorsed and transpierced the emir of Syracuse,' and the small band of his fighters discomfited a host of 60,000 Saracens. But in spite of such exploits all was in vain, and not till fifty years later was the Norman conquest of Sicily complete.

During these fifty years (c. 1040‑90) the Norman power in South Italy increased greatly. William of the Iron Arm died, but other valiant sons of Tancred of Hauteville arrived from their northern home. Drogo took the place of William, and when Drogo fell by the hand of an assassin his brother Humphry succeeded to the title of Count and to the leadership of the combined forces of Northmen in Apulia and Calabria. In 1053 took place the fight (see p. 352) in which Humphry's Normans, aided by their countrymen of Aversa under Count Richard, totally defeated, not far from Gargano on the Adriatic coast, the German and Italian troops of Leo IX, and took the Pope himself prisoner; and it may be remembered that the victors prostrated themselves in reverence before their prisoner, begging his pardon — but kept him as a hostage for six months. Finally, when released, or to obtain his release, the pontiff recognized as a fait accompli the conquests of the Normans, and if he did not formally invest Humphry with the title of Count or Duke of Apulia and Calabria, this was certainly done six years later by Pope Nicholas II in the p403case of Robert Guiscard, the brother and successor of Humphry. Nicholas had apparently no such cause of gratitude as Leo had, but there were, as we shall see, political reasons to account for his apparently impulsive generosity; for he not only liberated Robert from excommunication (5) and granted him investiture as Duke of Apulia and Calabria, but even promised to recognize him as Duke of Sicily as soon as ever he succeeded in wresting the island from the Saracens.

Robert Guiscard (or Wiscard, 'the Clever'), the sixth son of Tancred of Hauteville, was at this time forty-four years of age. He reigned as duke, after his recognition by Nicholas, for twenty-five years and developed the power of the Normans in Italy very greatly. At first he, as also Richard of Aversa (or rather Capua, of which city he had been made prince), was friendly to the Popes, but when Hildebrand was elected troubles broke out; for the growing power of Robert did not at all suit the ambitious plans of the new Pope. However, this state of things was finally changed entirely by the clever policy of Hildebrand. It will be remembered that long before he was Pope the monk Hildebrand had guided the counsels of the papal court, indeed, Nicholas II and Alexander II were merely his tools. It was his acute policy that had caused Nicholas to recognize Robert as duke, and he himself had made such friends with the other Norman chief, Richard of Aversa and Capua, that this prince had helped him to give the coup de grâce to Antipope Benedict. Now when he, Hildebrand, became Pope and the Investiture trouble began he was far-sighted enough to foresee that an alliance with the Normans would be a necessity in his conflict with the Emperor; and when, after the humiliation of Henry IV at Canossa, the conflict seemed likely to be renewed with still greater bitterness he was determined to secure the friendship of Robert Guiscard, p404who had quite lately increased his power by making himself master of Salerno, and thus extinguishing the last Lombard principality in the south of Italy. Hildebrand's statecraft had in this case a surprising success. Duke Robert, for what reasons it is not easy to see, not only accepted the Pope's overtures, but actually did homage to him for his dukedom (a homage paid by kings of the Sicilies for 600 years) and confirmed the papal claim to Benevento — a claim which remained recognized till the year 1860. From this time onward the Normans of South Italy were a pillar of strength to the Church of Rome.

For some ten years before this occurrence Robert Guiscard had been helping his youngest brother, Roger, whom he had sent against the Saracens in Sicily. In 1072 he had been present at the capture of Palermo, which, after having been 240 years in the power of Arabian and African Moslems, was now to become the capital of Christian monarchs whose near ancestry had been Scandinavian Vikings. Roger proclaimed himself Count of Sicily, but it was nearly twenty years before he had completely subjugated the whole of the island and had enrolled the Saracens as his soldiers and subjects.

Meanwhile Robert Guiscard, having assimilated the last of the Lombard states and having subjugated Saracens and Byzantines, had formed the design of following up his conquests on the other side of the Adriatic and possessing himself of Constantinople itself. His campaigns in Sicily had necessitated the formation of a fleet, and the blood of the old Vikings stirred in his veins as his new ambition (6) urged him to collect or build more than a hundred warships and to set forth across the sea with a force, it is said, of 30,000 men — not a few being Saracens who had accepted service in his army. He occupied Corfu and laid siege to Durazzo (Dyrrachium). The Eastern Emperor, Alexius Comnenus, then appealed to Venice, and Venice, jealous of the new sea-power, responded. With a swarm of galleys Doge Selvo attacked and seemed on the point p405of overpowering the besieging fleet, but Robert and his Normans turned the fortune of battle and soon afterwards entered Durazzo (1082). It seemed now almost likely that he might make a dash for Constantinople — whither from Durazzo led the fine Roman military road, the Via Egnatia. But matters at Rome had become very serious. The Emperor Henry IV had, as we know, seized the Leonine quarter, and Pope Gregory was closely invested in S. Angelo and was sending pitiful appeals to Robert. He thereupon left the charge of the war in Dalmatia to his son Bohemund and hastened back to Italy, put Henry to flight, released Hildebrand, and brought everlasting shame on his good fame by allowing his troops to plunder Rome.

This happened in the early summer of 1084. In the autumn he again reached Dalmatia, in time to repel another violent attack by the Venetians and Byzantines, whose losses this time, it is said, amounted to 13,000 men. Doge Selvo fled back to the lagunes with the remnant of his ships and was deposed. (7) His successor, Vitale Falieri, made great efforts to avenge the disgrace, and he met with some success; but what put an end to the Norman attempt on the Eastern Empire was the death of Robert Guiscard. He was struck down, (8) perhaps by the plague or by poison, when endeavouring to capture the island of Cephalonia (July 1085).

The younger of Robert's two sons, Roger Borsa, was the favourite of his father and managed to secure succession to the dukedom. The elder, Bohemund, had to content himself with Taranto. In 1097 he joined in the first Crusade with several thousand Norman fighters. Stories connected with his exploits in the East — the capture of Antioch by the help of the Genoese and Pisans and by a cunning worthy of the son of Guiscard and of the title (given him by Gibbon) of the Latin Odysseus; the discovery of the 'holy lance' and the rout of a mighty host of infidels; the foundation of a Christian p406principality of Antioch — may be found mentioned in Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata and picturesquely described by the historian of the Decline and Fall. Chroniclers also related how he languished four years in a Turkish prison and finally escaped by the aid of a Moslem princess — a story reminding one of Young Beichan (9) and Susie Pye [Susan note] of our English ballad. After his escape he seems to have raised forces in Italy for the recovery of Antioch, but to have made a futile attack on Durazzo and to have returned to Taranto, where about 1112 he died. Roger Borsa had died shortly before this, and the dukedom of Apulia had passed into the hands of his son, William, who, although feeble in body and mind, managed to uphold his authority for the next sixteen years (1111‑27).

Now in the meantime Robert Guiscard's youngest brother, Count Roger, had completely conquered the Saracens in Sicily. Like Robert, he attained seventy years. At his death in 1101, his only sons were two children of eight and of six years. The mother, Count Roger's third wife, Adelaïda of Monteferrato, was regent for the elder, Simon, until he died in 1105, and for the younger, Roger, until he came of age in 1112. She then went off to Palestine, where she married Baldwin (Godfrey's brother), the King of Jerusalem

We hear little of Count Roger the Second of Sicily until the Apulian-Calabrian dukedom becomes vacant by the death of his heirless second-cousin William. He now acts vigorously — lands at Salerno, claims the succession, receives the homage of his adherents, sends envoys to Rome to announce that he would be pleased to receive investiture, and, when Pope Honorius II seems unwilling to move, makes a display of force which soon brings about compliance. Then, after confirming his authority by similar measures throughout the whole of the Norman provinces, he summons a great Council, or Parliament, at Palermo in the year 1130 and assumed the royal crown and title as King of Sicily, or perhaps the Two Sicilies. (10)

 

INSERT FIG 34

p407 It will be remembered that at this time Pope Innocent II had fled to France and the Antipope Anacletus was in power. Anacletus sent a legate to Palermo to perform the act of coronation; but his coronation was regarded as null by the orthodox, and the matter was made still worse when St. Bernard of Clairvaux and the Lateran Council of 1133 declared Innocent sole Pope and annulled the acts of Anacletus (see. p. 364). In Fig. 34 is given a mosaic set up by Roger in S. Maria dell' Ammiraglio (now la Martorana) at Palermo. It represents the king receiving from Christ the crown refused him by the Pope. But not long after the Lateran Council Pope Innocent had the misfortune to be taken prisoner by Roger, and, just as had happened in the case of Leo IX and Robert Guiscard, the victor treated his prisoner reverently and was rewarded by recognition as King of Sicily, Duke of Apulia, and Prince of Capua. (11)

The hundred years (1087‑1189) during which Sicily was under Norman rule form one of the most attractive periods in the long and wonderfully varied history of the island, which ever since the age of the early Sicels and Sicanians (or maybe the Cyclopes and the Laestrygonians) down to that of the Bourbons and Garibaldi has been the battlefield and the home of many races. These Northern princes, descendants of the pirate-kings of Scandinavia, who conquered not only Sicily but much of South Italy (the ancient Magna Graecia) and for a time considerable portions of Dalmatia and Greece, and whose fleets swept the Adriatic and the Aegean and the Levant and even threatened Constantinople, seem to have ruled the polyglot multitude of their Sicilian subjects with wisdom and liberality. They not only allowed the Moslems religious liberty, but employed them as soldiers and also as officials, and were themselves much influenced by Saracen learning and art. Greek and Latin and Arabic were used indifferently in public documents, (12) and in religions there was p408evidently a strange tolerance, considering that it was the age of Crusades and fanaticism. 'The king,' says Villari, 'as apostolic legate was present at Catholic functions clad in a dalmatic embroidered with golden Cufic characters and bearing the date of the Hegira. In close vicinity were to be seen feudal castles, Greek cities, Mohammedan villages, Lombard colonies, streets occupied by Pisans, Genoese, and Amalfitans. The sound of bells and the chanting of monks mingled with the voice of the muezzin from his minaret, and in the crowd were seen side by side the Arab cloak, the Moslem turban, the Norman coat of mail, the long Greek tunic, and the short doublet of the Italian.' As we shall see, their architecture bears witness to this picturesque diversity. Although doubtless in reality absolute monarchs they delegated military and civil power to their 'Admirals' (Commanders or Ministers — the word Ammiraglio being the Arabic al Emir), and appear to have instituted some sort of Parliament, in which the people were represented by lay and ecclesiastical peers, so that we may perhaps regard these Norman kings of Sicily as the first constitutional rulers. At their courts we find many learned and able men, among whom the Englishman Gualtiero Offamilio (Walter Of a Mill) is for us of special interest.

King Roger's successes in war were brilliant, but not permanent. He made some conquests in North Africa, and, following the example of Robert Guiscard, he assailed the Eastern Empire, took Corfu, captured Thebes and Corinth, and even had the satisfaction of learning that Norman arrows had rattled on the windows of the imperial palace at Byzantium.

The reign (1154‑66) of Roger's son and successor, William I, was much disturbed by rebellion. He had many powerful enemies. Against the Eastern Emperor, Manuel Comnenus, he held his own vigorously, scouring the Ionian and Aegean with his fleets, as his Viking ancestors had scoured the Northern seas; but a more dangerous foe was Barbarossa, who, in collu-

 

INSERT FIG 35

p409 sion with the English Pope Hadrian and depending on the Pisans for a fleet, seriously designed the conquest of the Two Sicilies and incited a widespread insurrection of the nobles of Apulia against their Norman ruler. William succeeded however in conciliating Pope Hadrian, who graciously vouchsafed him investiture. (13) Then he turned furiously on the Apulian barons and inflicted on them condign chastisement — earning by his revengeful cruelty the name of William the Bad. In Sicily too the feudal nobles repelled, massacred many of the Saracen adherents of the king and succeeded in capturing and imprisoning him; but the people rose in his favour and set him free, and his last years seem to have been stained by further atrocities perpetrated against the recalcitrant barons. Doubtless he was of a violent, revengeful, and sanguinary nature; but his biographers belonged to the feudal and ecclesiastical parties, and perhaps from the people's view he deserved scarcely more than his son to be handed down to fame as William the Bad.

However that may be, we need not doubt that his son was deservedly called William the Good, for during his reign of twenty-two years (or seventeen, if we subtract the regency of his mother, Margherita) there was no sign of rebellion or discontent. When his father died in 1166 he was a youth of thirteen. His education had been entrusted to tutors sent from Normandy by his princely relatives — to Stephen of Rouen, Pete of Blois, and the Englishmen Walter Of a Mill, who as his special adviser and his chancellor exercised great influence on him, and through him on the weal of the state, and has handed his own name down to later ages by the splendid churches which, as Archbishop of Palermo, he helped to found. It was also doubtless through his influence that William married an English princess Joan, daughter of Henry II and sister to Richard Coeur-de-Lion. The wisdom and liberality of William II are evidenced not only by the

p410  

INSERT TABLE

NORMAN DUKES AND KINGS OF SICILY AND SOUTH ITALY.

p411 peaceful and prosperous state of his own dominions but by his foreign policy. He made an alliance of twenty years with Venice, and probably saved that city from destruction by the resentful Byzantines. He also warmly supported the North Italian republics in their desperate struggle for liberty, and took part through his envoys in the celebrated conference at Venice in 1177, when Barbarossa made peace with the Pope and with the Lombard cities.

As a great and good ruler William II of Sicily has been immortalized by Dante, who places his soul, in the form of a bright star, in the constellation of the mighty Eagle in the heaven of Jupiter — the symbol not only of the Roman Empire, but of all just government. (14)

It was however also on account of his wars against the Moslems and anti-papal Byzantines that William won from monkish chroniclers the name of 'Good' — not that these wars were very glorious or very justifiable. About 1180 a great fleet, carrying, it is said, 80,000 men, was sent across the Adriatic and captured Durazzo. It then sailed round to Thessalonica, which was also taken. But a furious tempest, such as wrecked the fleet of Darius off Athos [Susan note], is said to have caused the loss of 10,000 lives; and this disaster was scarcely counterbalanced by a great naval victory won afterwards over the Greek fleet near Cyprus. William also sent ships to the East, though he did not himself join in the third Crusade, when, as we have seen, the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187, incited so many princes — among them the young Richard Coeur-de-Lion and the aged Barbarossa — to undertake in person the recovery of the Holy City.

Not long before Frederick Barbarossa started for the East — whence he never returned — the marriage of his son Henry with the heiress of the Norman kingdom of the Two Sicilies took place at Milan. William had no children. Some three years before his death, on the urgent advice of his English

 

412

counsellor, Of a Mill, he took the disastrous decision — disastrous for the future of Italian patriotism — to favour this marriage of his aunt Constance with the Hohenstaufen prince. It is asserted by some old writers that the princess Constance, now middle-aged, was taken out of a convent in order to be married. Dante, who accepts this story and places her soul in the sphere of the inconstant moon, speaks (through the mouth of Beatrice) of her 'affection for the veil' and gives us a sermon of vows broken voluntarily or through compulsion. Machiavelli asserts that Pope Celestine III (an evident error, for Celestine was not Pope till 1192) trasse di monastero Gostanza, già vecchia figliuola di Guglielmo, in order to give her as wife to Henry. Anyhow, willingly or unwillingly, she was married to the German — and a hundred and fifty horses bore to Milan their loads of gold and silver and precious stuffs, the dowry of the bride who was destined to become the mother (15) of the 'Wonder of the World.'

With the death of William the Good the dynasty of the Norman kings of Sicily came to an end. Illegitimate claimants appeared on the scene, but as we shall see later, the Hohenstaufen cause prevailed. (16)

 

INSERT FIG 36

1 It was in 897 that Alfred succeeded in expelling the Danish Northmen from England — for a time.

2 Their native language, the lingua Danica, as it is called by chroniclers, is said to have been no longer understood at Rouen by about the year 970. It lingered longest at Bayeux. William the Conqueror was fond of using it. Relics are found in a few names, such as Bec (= beck, Bach, a brook), Caudebec, etc.

3 Gibbon, who does not mention the siege of Salerno, but gives a picturesque account of this other episode, speaks of Melus as 'a stranger in the Greek habit, who soon revealed himself as a rebel and a mortal foe of the Greek Empire.' Other writers say that he was of Lombard origin, and so probably, to judge from his name, was Guaimar (Weimar). If so, doubtless the common Northern origin helped towards an understanding. How the pilgrims got to Gargano, and whether it was before or after their exploit at Salerno, is not explained.

4 See Gibbon, ch. lvi.

5 It seems that he was excommunicated for having taken Monte Cassino and turned the monks out. Matthew Paris relates that he effected the capture by introducing himself as a dead man lying on a bier — a device worthy of his cognomen. Dante places Robert Guiscard in the great Red Cross of Mars in Paradise, evidently on account of his later submission to the Church and his wars against the Sicilian Saracens.

6 It really seems as if Robert Guiscard had the 'colossal ambition of uniting in his own person the divided Empire of the Romans' (Okey).

7 His long reign as Doge is memorable for the many splendid marbles with which he adorned the newly reconstructed St. Mark's.

8 He was buried at Venusia — Horace's birthplace — where his tomb is to be seen in the abbey church of S. Trinità.

9 Possibly the father of Thomas à Becket, the archbishop.

10 Siciliae et Italiae Rex was sometimes his rather ambitious signature. The expression 'the Two Sicilies' seems of somewhat later date.

11 It will be noticed that the kingship of the continental territories is not mentioned.

12 Norman-French doubtless remained the home-language, perhaps the court-language, of the princes and the veterans for some time. But the Normans evidently had the gift of assimilation, as proved by the rapid disappearance of the lingua Danica in Normandy. Also by this time doubtless the Sicilian-Italian was largely in use as a lingua volgare.

13 It is ever again a matter of surprise that these Norman princes should have been so anxious to profess themselves feudatories of the Papacy; and how the Popes upheld their fictitious right to confer investitures is also a puzzle.

14 Par. xx, 62. The star-like souls of William the Good, of Ripheus the Trojan, Hezekiah, Trajan, and Constantine the Great form the circle of the Eagle's eye, in the centre of which blazes the soul of King David.

15 Or, as Dante puts it (Par. iii): 'to bear to the second wind of Suabia [Henry VI] the third and latest potentate [of that dynasty, viz. Frederick II].'

16 See table of Norman Dukes and Kings. For the churches and palaces of Palermo during the Norman supremacy see ch. ix of this Part. The very striking gifts and the nobler characteristics of Frederick were certainly not derived from the stupid and brutal ferocity of his father, Henry the Cruel, but from his Norman mother. A Norman Conquest might have done for Italy what it has done for England.

p413  

 

CHAPTER III

THE RISE OF THE REPUBLICS

UNTIL c. 1200

 

 

Partly owing to the incompleteness of their conquests and partly to racial differences none of the invaders and foreign overlords of Italy had succeeded in founding an Italian nation. The forces which under some conditions draw various peoples together into one nation manifested themselves in medieval Italy, as they did in ancient Greece, in local patriotism and the formation of a number of independent cities, which, having no organic cohesion, were doomed, like the cities of Greece, never to coalesce into any true confederation, such as forms the stable body of the modern constitutional republic or limited monarchy, but were in a constant process of disintegration, except when temporarily held together by external pressure. Internally too the Greek and the Italian cities had experiences which, being the effects of similar forces acting under somewhat similar conditions, offer many analogies and some curious contrasts. (1) Their domestic, religious, and political feuds, their revolutions, the phases of democracy, oligarchy, and despotism through which many of them passed, afford interesting material to the student of comparative politics. But here it must suffice to relate briefly the rise of these Italian communes, following their development up to the end of the twelfth century — the epoch of the Peace of Constanz — and giving a few details in connexion with some of the important cities. p414Republicanism found of course no opportunity for development under the military despotisms of Goths, Byzantines, Lombards, or Saracens, and it was detested by the civil and clerical feudalism of the revived Empire. The instinctive yearning for liberty and self-rule did indeed, as it was bound to do, give evidence of its existence. (2) The resentment against foreign domination ever and again, from the time of Theoderic onward, found vehement expression — as, for instance, in the serious riots which, at Rome and elsewhere, often accompanied the imperial coronations — and when during the weak rule of the Carolingian princes and the anarchy of the succeeding period many cities were left to fight their own battles against various foes — Saracens, Magyars, Byzantines, Lombard dukes, or rival municipalities — it was natural that they should learn to depend on their own resources and to assert their independence.

We have already seen (part III, ch. iii) how Venice in early days took advantage of its natural position to form a confederacy of its island towns and to liberate itself both from the Eastern and from the Western Empire. In the south too we find at an early period several maritime cities such as Naples, Gaeta, Salerno, and Amalfi, (3) asserting independence — not always republican in form — and developing very considerable wealth through their commerce, and sea-power through their fleets, by means of which they made a gallant stand against the Moslem invaders, against Byzantine oppressors, and against the Normans, until they were finally incorporated p415in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. When the independence of these southern maritime cities was extinguished by the Normans, although the Normans by no means extinguished their commerce, a great part of the eastern trade passed into the hands of the Pisans, Genoese, and Venetians. At the beginning of the eleventh century the fleets of Pisa and Genoa had succeeded in occupying Sardinia and in driving the Saracens from the Ligurian and Tuscan coasts and seas, (4) and from this time onwards these two cities, under the rule of their republican consuls and popular assemblies, increased rapidly both by land and by sea, Pisa becoming mistress of the Tuscan and the Roman Maremma from Spezia to Civitavecchia, as well as of Sardinia and the Balearic Isles, while Genoa occupied most of the Riviera and disputed with Pisa the possession of Corsica. Both cities also took prominent part in the Crusades and extended their commerce in rivalry to the East, (5) outvying for centuries all other sea-powers except Venice; for Venice had the double advantage of standing in close relationship to the Byzantine Empire and of being an emporium and transit-station for Oriental merchandise destined for Western and Northern Europe, which were now beginning to import largely the culture and the luxuries of older civilizations.

In passing it may be noticed how with the rise of these Italian republics the 'bane of republics' at once began to spread its poison. No sooner did Pisa and Genoa attain sea-power by their victories over the Saracens than they turned their fleets against each other and began those pitiable conflicts p516among the free cities which for centuries drained the life-blood of Italy. And in order to extinguish some of their rivals they even lent their fleets to foreign oppressors and foes of republican liberty. (6)

Beside the maritime cities (among which Venice held of course a conspicuous place and will claim our attention later) there remain for consideration the Lombard and Tuscan cities and also Rome.

The attempts of the Roman people to refound the Republic have been described in the Historical Outline. That these attempts, though for a time crowned with success, should have ended in failure is scarcely surprising when we consider not only the endless conflicts between the Popes and the nobles, but also the fact that, although there was great wealth in the hands of the feudal nobility both lay and ecclesiastic, the city itself had no such trade as that which formed the foundation of the new Communes. Rome was not a port and a sea-power. It was not the centre of a productive region. It possessed no large and wealthy mercantile burgher class. The population consisted almost entirely of mob and aristocracy — two classes far more widely separated than the plebeians and patricians of earlier days — and between them stood only a small middle class, the members of the military scholae (city-militia), who had certain political rights and were allowed to be freeholders, and whose one great ambition it was to gain admission to the ranks of the nobility.

In former chapters many points of interest have been touched upon in connexion with the earlier history of the more important cities of Northern and Central Italy. Here we must limit our attention to some of those which took prominent p417part in the great republican movement of the twelfth century against Frederick I. This movement was at first confined to a few Lombard cities, among which the chief were Milan, Brescia, Piacenza, Parma, and Modena (as against the imperialistic Pavia, Como, Lodi, Cremona, and others), but the League was ere long joined by cities lying more to the east, namely Verona, Padua, Bologna, Mantua, and Vicenza. These where headed by Venice. (7)

Such an outburst as that which caused the formation of the Lombard league must have been the result of deep and widespread influences that had been at work for many years. Some of these influences we have already noted in the case of the republican movements n the maritime cities. In the case of most of the inland cities of Lombardy and Tuscany the frequent presence, or passage, of powerful German armies doubtless prevented the early development of republicanism, and it was evidently first during the fierce and long-drawn wars of the Investitures (c. 1073‑1122) that these cities began to realize their own importance as allies and as strongholds and to join one side or other of the great feud, as seemed likely to forward their interests. Florence, as we have seen in a former chapter, was, together with much of Tuscany, long under rulers vehemently hostile to German imperialism, and when on the death of Countess Matilda in 1115 the city acquired a certain measure of self-rule its sentiments remained for many years strongly Guelf. But neither Florence nor any other Tuscan towns — some of which were its enemies and violently Ghibelline — took any active share in the wars between the republics and Frederick, although by this time many of these Tuscan towns (such as Siena, Volterra, and S. Gimignano) had asserted their right to rule themselves p418by means of yearly elected consuls (8) — an example ere long to be followed by many other cities of Central Italy, such as Spoleto, Assisi, Perugia, and Foligno.

The story of the conflict between the allied republics and Frederick Barbarossa has been told elsewhere. We may therefore now turn our thoughts for a short time to the internal history of the two most important cities of the League, Venice and Milan, without any further anxiety as to fitting our facts very exactly into the framework of wars and general politics.

 

VENICE (800‑1200)

A slight sketch of the history of Venice, or rather of Venetia, from its first origins to the days of Charles the Great has already been given (Part III, ch. iii). I purpose to give here a few more items of interest from its annals down to the thirteenth century. It will be remembered that the ineffectual attempt of Pipin, the son of Charles, to conquer the Venetians resulted in the foundation of the new capital on the banks of the Rivoalto — a site which had proved impregnable. The commander of the gallant islanders who had defied the might of the Frankish invader was elected Doge (811). He, Agnello Partecipazio, was the first Doge of Venice, though there had already been ten Doges of Maritime Venetia, the first, Anafesto, having been elected as early as 697. In 813 the seat of government was formally transferred to the Rivoalto. Here, on the western bank of the 'Deep Stream,' or Grand Canal, where it was later (in 1173) spanned by the first wooden Rialto bridge, had for some three or four centuries existed the market-place of these islanders — the Campo di Rialto — and p419their earliest Church, S. Giacomo, which was founded, tradition says, in the year 421. (9) On the eastern bank of the canal stood amidst a grassy campo — the Broglio or Brolo — the ancient church of S. Teodoro, the first patron-saint of Venice, which had been erected (if annals do not lie) nigh three centuries before the days of Partecipazio by Byzantine builders summoned from Constantinople by Narses (see p. 287). Near it was soon built, perhaps by Partecipazio's son and successor, the original Palace of the Doges. (10) Also the original church of S. Zaccaria now arose in order to receive the supposed body of John the Baptist's father (11) and to serve as the burying-place of the early Doges.

 

INSERT SKETCH

VENETIAN COIN OF c. 800

See p. xxvii

 

About 828 the supposed body of St. Mark was brought to Venice, stolen from his tomb in Alexandria, if the tale told by the pious thieves is to be credited, and saved from the impious quest of pagan Saracens by being suspended on the ship's mast and covered over with swine's flesh. A chapel (memoria) was erected on the Broglio to receive the relic.

In 976 a great conflagration destroyed this memorial chapel, and also, at least to some extent, the ducal palace. This occurred during the short reign of that Doge Pietro Orseolo I who, as was related in an earlier chapter, was persuaded by St. Romuald of Ravenna to turn hermit, or recluse, and left Venice by stealth (see p. 343). Orseolo is said to have sent to Constantinople for skilled builders and to have spent all his wealth in reconstructing the chapel, or perhaps in p420beginning the construction of the much larger church which slowly rose on the same site.

That Venice already in these early days, in spite of the wonderful growth of its commerce and its sea-power and in spite of its apparently stable system of government, was exposed to dangers similar to those from which all other Italian Communes had to suffer is evident from the many and serious intrigues and disorder of which we hear in connexion with the election of the Doges, and the many feuds and factions that seem to have taken permanent root in the city. As an illustration of this we may note that in the reign of Memo — a weak and bad man, deposed in 991 on suspicion of murder — the powerful family of the Caloprini very nearly succeeded in sacrificing their native city in order to wreak vengeance on their political rivals, the Morosini; for they fled to the court of Otto II and induced him to bring a powerful fleet and army against Venice, where their partisans were ready to aid the besiegers by treason. Fortunately for Venice, the death of Otto frustrated the design.

Memo was followed by one of the greatest of the Doges, Pietro Orseolo II, who first started Venice on her career of conquest as a great Mediterranean sea-power by overcoming the Croats and Adriatic pirates and annexing Dalmatia. Henceforth the title 'Doge of Dalmatia' was borne by the Venetian Doge, and Venice herself claimed to be mistress of the Adriatic — a claim that found expression in a festival called the Sensa, in which the State barges sailed out into the open sea and the Doge was 'asperged' with salt water by the bishop. This festival in later times (c. 1180) was developed into the picturesque ceremony of the Sposalizio — the wedding of Venice to the Adriatic — a ceremony which was not discontinued till 1797, about eight hundred years after the first institution of the Sensa. Orseolo II excited great admiration in the sentimental mind of Otto III. It will be remembered that this pious and hysterical prince harboured designs, never to be fulfilled, of withdrawing from the world, as the first Doge Orseolo had done, and that for a time p421he lived in retirement in the monastery of Classe, near Ravenna, where St. Romuald vainly endeavoured to overcome his vacillation. During this sojourn at Ravenna (about 1000) Otto is said to have visited Venice 'disguised in mean attire,' and to have been 'moved to tears' at the glories of the newly reconstructed cathedral and the ducal palace. But in spite of tears Doge Orseolo seems not to have promised — or anyhow not to have lent — the Venetian fleet, which Otto was very anxious to procure in order to forward certain designs not of a religious nature.

By the year 1032 so many of the Doges had been deposed, disgraced, or even killed, often on the suspicion that they aimed at founding hereditary despotisms, that the Arengo passed laws which were doubtless meant as steps towards democracy, but proved to be steps in the opposite direction. Hitherto the Doge had possessed powers almost absolute, though he was elected and deposed by the popular voice. Thus the Venetian state was a republic which delegated kingly powers to its president; and when this proved a dangerous experiment, instead of moving (as the Norman kings of Sicily had moved) in the direction of representative popular government, the Arengo limited the powers of the Doge by giving him two consiglieri and compelling him to 'invite' other prominent citizens to give him their advice in matters of grave importance. These privy councillors and this chamber of the Pregadi ('Invited') neutralized the absolutism of the Doges, but were themselves the nucleus from which sprang the Venetian oligarchical tyranny and the Council of Ten, of sinister fame.

Fifty years later (1082‑84) took place the war waged by Venice, as ally of the Eastern Emperor Alexius, against Robert Guiscard, and the disastrous sea-fight near Durazzo (p. 405) which resulted in the serious crippling of the Venetian fleet and the deposition of Doge Selvo. But from this misfortune Venice soon recovered. The death of Robert Guiscard in 1085 was followed by the withdrawal of the Normans from the Eastern Adriatic, and thereupon the Venetian Doge resumed his title as Duke of Dalmatia. From this time we may date the

 

422

rapid development of Venetian power in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Doge Selvo, whose reign of thirteen years came to such a tragic conclusion, is said to have adorned the new St. Mark's with many precious marbles and with Byzantine mosaics, as he had done in the case of S. Giacomo di Rialto. (12) A new building, on the plan of the ancient church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople, had been perhaps begun by Doge Orseolo I soon after the conflagration of 976, but whether Orseolo's building was destroyed by another fire or was never completed, and was demolished, is unknown. Anyhow the reconstruction of St. Mark's in the Byzantine style is usually dated from about 1065 — shortly before Selvo's reign. (That the remains of the old memorial chapel and the still more ancient church of S. Teodoro were incorporated in the new building is proved by the fact that some thirty years ago portions of these churches were discovered in the present edifice.) In 1094 the new and magnificent church was ready for consecration; but since the great fire of 976 the body of St. Mark had disappeared — apparently devoured by the flames. The wondrous story of its opportune recovery — its miraculous self-revelation by perfume and an extended gold-ringed hand — need not here be narrated. To those of us who may be slow to accept the legend as represented by Venetian artists conviction may be brought by the statement that in 1811 the recovered body, or what did duty for it, was discovered in the crypt of the church, and that on the finger was found the famous gold ring, and not far off a metal plate inscribed with the date October 8 1094, and the name of Selvo's successor, Doge Vitale Falieri.

Among those who at this time visited Venice to pay reverence to the recovered body of the saint (13) and to see the new cathedral

INSERT FIG 37

p423 with its Oriental mosaics and marbles was Henry IV. He was accorded a magnificent reception, and in return for privileges vouchsafed to Venetian merchants he probably received the promise of aid from the Venetian fleets against his many enemies — for at this period of his reign he was not only still engaged in his desperate struggle against the Papacy and against revolted cities in all parts of Italy, but was already being involved in the more tragic conflict with his own sons.

In the first and second Crusades (1095‑99 and 1147‑49) the Venetians took a brilliant part, perhaps more from commercial than from religious motives — pace Mr. Ruskin, who assures his 'cockney friends' that though Venice was intensely covetous she was sincerely pious, and that she was covetous not merely of money but of fame and marble pillars. Perhaps as evidence of her commercial jealousy we may note the fact that in the first Crusade she had a very severe and victorious naval combat with the Pisans off Rhodes, and as a specimen of her covetousness of marble pillars we may call to mind the three magnificent columns brought home in 1127 by Doge Michieli, who had gone to the East to succour King Baldwin of Jerusalem, had inflicted a terrible defeat on the Saracen fleet off Jaffa, had helped to capture Tyre, and on his homeward voyage had seized and ravaged many islands belonging to the Eastern Emperor. Among the splendid spoils that he brought in triumph to Venice were the corpses of two saints already mentioned and these three great columns — one of which still lies somewhere in the Grand Canal, while the other two were with very great difficulty erected by the skill of a Lombard engineer, Barattieri, and have stood for the last seven hundred years and more in the Piazzetta. (14)

p424 In 1172 another change was made in the constitution. The Doge's authority was again limited, but once more what was doubtless believed by the people to be a measure tending towards democracy really increased the power of the nobles. The sestieri (six wards of the city) were nominally allowed to elect the great annual Council; but although in the first instance this body was elected by twelve nominees of the wards, after the first year the council itself chose the twelve electors. It thus became practically self-elective. It also delegated a small committee of its members to choose the Doge. Thus the people were defrauded of their elective powers.

In 1177 took place at Venice the dramatic meeting of Frederick Barbarossa and Pope Alexander III. The scene has already been slightly sketched (p. 374). During the third Crusade (1189‑92) — the Crusade in which Frederick Barbarossa lost his life — the Venetians were once more induced by commercial and perhaps other motives to send a powerful fleet to the East, where they distinguished themselves at the relief of Tyre and the siege of Acre.

In 1193 was elected as Doge the famous Enrico Dandolo, whose name perhaps first became familiar to some of us through Byron's well-known line — though whether we are right in calling him 'blind old Dandolo' seems doubtful. (15) During half a century he had already distinguished himself greatly both in diplomacy and in war, and although he was now about eighty-five years of age we shall hear much more of him in a later chapter — for at the age of ninety-seven he was twice captor of Constantinople, and his feats at the storming of this city have invested him with a nimbus of fame which even the iniquity and the horrors of this so‑called fourth Crusade have failed to dim.

 

425

MILAN

The story of Milan offers a very striking contrast to that of Venice. It was neither a sea-power nor a wealthy trade-mart. It possessed no natural defences, and lying close to the northern gates of Italy it has ever been the prey of invaders, and probably more than any other European city, except perhaps Rome, has suffered from devastation and enslavement ever since the fall of the Roman Empire down to our days. Venice though not by any means always a model of political freedom, was autonomous under her own Doges during eleven centuries (697‑1797), whereas Milan was twice almost totally razed to the ground, and, except for about two centuries (1076‑1277) of stormy and precarious republican liberty, groaned during all these long ages under taskmasters of many nationalities. (16)

Of Roman Mediolanum, although from the days of Diocletian to those of Attila it was the residence of the western Emperors and is said to have equalled Rome in extent and importance, there is scarce a relic extant save the sixteen Corinthian columns in the Corso della Porta Ticinese. From the age of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine have survived probably only certain parts of the basilica of St. Ambrogio (wholly reconstructed in the ninth century), and although the Franks and Burgundian, who in 538 sacked the city and massacred, according to Procopius, 300,000 of the inhabitants, are said to have spared a few churches, the oldest complete edifice in Milan is probably S. Lorenzo, which was built (17) on the foundations of a Roman temple a few years after this catastrophe.

Ever since the time of St. Ambrose the Church of Milan, like that of Ravenna, was inclined to assert its independence of Rome, and in seasons of danger or disorder after the fall of the Lombard kingdom the Archbishops of Milan sometimes p426took the lead in the city and assumed the reins of civil government. A striking example of this is seen in the case of Archbishop Aribert (Heribert, or Herbert), who for about ten years, 1035 to 1045, made stand against the Emperors Conrad II and Henry III. At first he was an imperialist (for his coronation of Conrad and Gisela see p. 348) and headed the hereditary nobles against the people and the petty nobility (vavasors); but he was suspected and arrested by Conrad. Finally he set himself at the head of the popular party and defied the imperialist nobles and the forces of the Emperor, who attacked Milan, but died while it was still being besieged. Aribert seems to have inspired almost the whole of the citizens with enthusiasm for freedom from the German oppressor and successfully repelled the besiegers. An invention of his, adopted later by other Italian cities, (18) proved very effective in arousing and concentrating patriotic ardour. This was the Carroccio, which, like the Ark of the Israelites, accompanied the citizens to the field of battle — a car drawn by oxen and surmounted by a mast bearing a large crucifix and by a yardarm from which waved two ensigns. From this car, or from another that followed it, resounded the bell that gave signals to the fighters.

In spite of his successes Aribert found himself in a very unpleasant position as the opponent of the aristocratic party, to which as a champion of the independent Milanese Church and of the marriage of clerics he naturally belonged. The Cluny reformers and Hildebrand, who represented the cause of the Papacy and of celibacy, favoured the Milanese popular party, as he did, but were bitterly hostile to the autonomy of the Milanese Church of St. Ambrose, of which he, as also the nobility, was a zealous advocate. Finally he withdrew into private life, and shortly afterwards (1045) he died. After his death fierce conflicts took place, the people fighting for

 

427

political freedom and religious enslavement, while the nobility, fiercely demanding liberty for their Church and their married clergy, were ready to betray their civic freedom to the foreign foe. At last the papal and popular party gained the upper hand; the married priests were chased from the churches and their wives insulted in public by the women of the city. A deacon of the Roman church, Erlembald, seized the supreme power and governed Milan for some time with a Council of Thirty, proving such a zealous champion of the papal party that the Pope dubbed him with the title il Gonfaloniere della Chiesa. But there were still many who were devoted to their Ambrosian Church, and when in a tumult Erlembald was slain the Milanese determined to appeal for an archbishop, not to Gregory, but to Henry IV — an act that brought down on Milan thunderbolts from the Papal Chair.

Not long after this we first hear of Consuls at Milan. It seems as if the Milanese had made up their minds to subordinate their religious differences to their republican freedom. For some sixty or seventy years little is recorded — a fact doubtless due to a period of comparative peace and prosperity. About 1154 the curtain rises on the momentous conflict between Frederick Barbarossa and the Lombard cities, and, as we know, Milan was the centre — the Carroccio, as it were — around which the battle gathered. The fortunes of the battle, and of Milan, we have already followed.

FLORENCE (DOWN TO 1200)

La bellissima e famosissima figlia di roma, Fiorenz

DANTE

In connexion with Florence, which later will become the chief centre of our interest, there is comparatively little of general importance to record during these four centuries, and the subject is dismissed curtly not only by the Tacitean Machiavelli, but even by Sismondi in his sixteen-volume work on the Italian Republics. There are however various details which merely through their association with the 'fairest daughter of Rome' exercise a fascination on all who love p428Italian art and Italian architecture. I shall here recapitulate very briefly what is known of the early fortunes of the city and then touch on a few of these details, without attempting to give them any historical continuity.

Florentia was originally doubtless nothing but the river-station of the Etruscan and Gallic hill-fortress of Faesulae. It first grew into a town when the pax Romana after the wars of Marius and Sulla afforded more security to the lowlands. Faesulae served as the headquarters of Catiline's army. On its capture its great Etruscan walls (of which remnants still survive) were probably entirely dismantled; but the town continued to exist. Florentia, according to tradition, was founded by Julius Caesar. He probably enlarged and walled it, as Romulus did in the case of Roma quadrata, like a Roman camp. He furnished it with baths and temples and a citadel and an amphitheatre, and populated it not only with Fiesolans but with Roman coloni. (19) A possible relic of Roman Florentia may survive in the lower portions of the Baptistery, (20) which according to the old historian Villani (d. 1348) was originally a temple of Mars, the patron-god of Florence. Another very interesting relic, which finally disappeared in the great flood of 1333, twelve years after Dante's death, was a statue of Mars. It perhaps once stood in this temple. It was afterwards placed on a column near the river, and was overthrown by Goths and lay for centuries in, or near, the water. When the Ponte Vecchio was rebuilt — some say by Charles the Great,

 

INSERT FIG 38

p429 though it was probably not till about 1180 — the weatherworn remnant of this statue was placed at the head of the bridge, where it became an object of sinister associations; for nigh this 'mutilated stone' that guarded the bridge, Dante tells us, was sacrificed to the god of war the young Buondelmonte; and his murder caused the outbreak of the great feud of Neri and Bianchi in Florence.

To return to earlier days — it may be remembered how, about the year 405, Florence together with Fiesole was besieged by Radegast and his vast army of Northern barbarians, and how Stilicho came to the rescue and smote the invaders. Old Villani ascribes the rescue to the prayers of the great first Bishop of Florence, St. Zenobius — the legends and ceremonies connected with whom are known to most who have visited Florence. A hundred and fifty years later Totila is said to have sacked the city, destroying everything but the Baptistery — a deed that Dante wrongly attributes to Attila. Then — after another lapse of centuries — we hear of it being visited by Charles the Great, who, as tradition and an inscription on the façade assert, founded the small basilica of the Santi Apostoli and caused it to be consecrated by Archbishop Turpin in the presence of Orlando and other of his paladins (!).

During the supremacy of the Carolingians and the tumultuous times of the so‑called regno d'Italia indipendente there is little certain to record. That the city was now flourishing is apparent from the frequent visits paid to it by Emperors, such as the Ottos, and from the fact that many fine Romanesque buildings are mentioned by chroniclers. Among these we may specially note S. Miniato, which Machiavelli says was founded by Henry II in 1002. It is the only complete specimen of all these Romanesque churches still extant in Florence.

Under Otto II and Otto III Florence was ruled (till 1001, or perhaps 1006) by the famous Marquess Ugo of Brandenburg — il gran barone, as he is called by Dante, ancestor of five noble Florentine families — whose tomb, sculptured by Mino da Fiesole, is to be seen in the Badía (the Abbey Church, founded p430by his mother, Countess Willa, in 978). His successor, Marquess Boniface, who extended his rule as Duke of Ferrara, Modena, and Mantua, was the father of that countess Matilda of whom we have heard so much.

Under Boniface (d. 1052) and his widow Beatrice (d. 1076) and their daughter Matilda (d. 1115) Florence became an important commercial centre and extended herself beyond the cerchia antica of her old walls, from the bells within which she continued even till the times of Dante to 'take her tierces and nones.' This was the Golden Age of Florence that is so graphically described by old Cacciaguida in the Paradiso. The city was wholly Guelf in sentiment, and the vile intestinal feuds had not yet been introduced. Men and women lived the simple life of the old heroic age. They could think of something nobler than murdering fellow-citizens. Cacciaguida himself, as we know already, girded on the sword of a Crusader and followed the Emperor Conrad III to the East, where fighting the infidel he was slain — 'unswathed from the fallacious world,' to use his own quaint phrase recorded by Dante. And we are told how another Florentine Crusader, one of the noble family of the Pazzi, brought from Jerusalem fragments of the Holy Sepulchre, from which the bishop in the presence of an excited multitude struck fire and lighted therewith the candles on the high altar — a fact that is still commemorated by the Easter ceremony of the white dove, the columbina della casa de' Pazzi, which brings the same sacred never-extinguished fire from the altar of the Duomo to explode the fireworks on the carro de' Pazzi in the Piazza.

About 1063, during the rule of Countess Beatrice and her second husband, Godfrey of Lorraine, occurred an outburst of popular feeling the violence and obstinacy of which prove how independent and headstrong the Florentines were becoming. The Emperor Henry IV, who, as we know, quarrelled with the Popes on the subject of the election and investiture of bishops, and who had elected many of his own German bishops, tried to force a bishop named Mezzabarba on Florence; by his enemies he is even accused of having sold the bishopric to p431the man. For nearly five years incessant tumults raged. In vain did the Pope send Pietro Damiano to restore peace. Finally a champion appeared — a zealot monk — who offered to stand the test of fire, and, unlike poor Savonarola, did so, it is said, unscathed. Thereupon he was made bishop and Mezzabarba had to disappear.

In 1114, one year before the death of Matilda, the Pisans — afterwards so hated by Florence that Dante rails at them as 'foxes full of fraud' and as 'the disgrace of the beautiful land where sì is heard' — begged the Florentines to guard their country against Lucca while they were absent on their Balearic expedition. This the Florentines did, and they received as a gift the two beautiful porphyry columns which flank the eastern portal of their Baptistery and Ghiberti's bronze doors. It seems an act of mean revenge that the Florentines should have later suspended from these very columns the harbour chains captured by the Genoese from the Pisans. However, reparation has been made in our age, and the chains now hang in Pisa's Campo Santo.

In her famous Legacy Countess Matilda seems to have assumed rights of private ownership which even the most absolute of feudal monarchs would scarcely have claimed. She attempted to bequeath to the church, and to the Pope as the representative of the Church, not only her allodial possessions but apparently the whole of the Tuscan territory, consisting mainly of fiefs that under the feudal system reverted to the Empire. This Legacy brought many evils in its train, but for Florence it was a blessing in disguise, seeing that the attempted alienation of the state's territory on the failure of hereditary rulers incited the city to assert republican freedom.

The system of communal government that was gradually introduced will occupy our attention on later occasions. It is here sufficient to notice that the one real bulwark of popular power consisted in the merchant guilds (Arti) by means of which the middle classes, ever more influential through commerce and the crafts, combined against the nobles. A feat that confirmed the self-confidence of the citizens and made p432them realize their strength was the capture and destruction of Fiesole, which, although no longer a strong fortress, had begun to prove a thorn in the side of the young republic.

In 1173 the city was surrounded by its new (second) circle of walls. These included a much larger space than the old Florentia Quadrata, though as Professor Gardner says) much which we are wont to regard as essential to Florence stands outside them. A few years later the popular government was for a time overthrown by a rising of the nobles, headed by the German family of the Uberti — ancestors of that Farinata degli Uberti whom Dante saw in the Inferno rising from his fiery tomb in gloomy and proud defiance, 'as if he held hell in great contempt,' but who surely, as the saviour of Florence from utter destruction after the rout on the Arbia, deserved a better fate.

 

 

INSERT DRAWING

FLORENTINE COINS OF c. 1200

See p. xxviii.

The Uberti deposed the republican Consuls and wielded the supreme power for about two years (1177‑79), but the popular party proved the victor, and in spite of the attempted suppression of their commune by Frederick Barbarossa they finally compelled the nobles to submit themselves to the popular magistrate (21) and to take up their abode, to a certain extent at least, within the new circle of the walls and the new city wards (Sestieri). This arrangement was doubtless deemed necessary, but it introduced a new and terrible danger, for these nobles took to building impregnable strongholds within the precincts of the city (22) and formed so‑called 'Tower p433Societies' (Societâ (Susan note) delle Torre) in opposition to the Arti or Merchant Guilds. Moreover, finding themselves in such close quarters, they naturally began to fight one with another. Things came to a crisis in 1215, when, as has been already mentioned, young Buondelmonte was murdered to revenge the slight that he had cast on the noble family of the Amidei, relatives of the Uberti, by jilting his fiancée and marrying a maiden of the Donati clan. This caused the outburst of those family feuds which, complicated with the Guelf and Ghibelline political factions, were to prove so disastrous to Florence for many years to come.

1 The Papacy — a political power possessed of enchanted weapons, so to speak — had scarcely its counterpart in Greek history, although Delphic priestcraft was often a powerful agent. In regard to pitiable internal discords and to traitorous collusion with a foreign foe — Persian, Macedonian, Saracen, German — there is little to choose between Greece and Italy.

2 Some have tried to trace the Italian Commune back to the Roman municipium, others to the popular elements in the Lombard system of government; but the real source is doubtless to be sought in the human breast.

3 Amalfi, now a fishing village nestling amid steep crags that overhand the Bay of Salerno, was in those days a city of 50,000 inhabitants. Under its Doges and, later, under Norman rule it extended its commerce to Egypt, Syria, and Arabia, and took a conspicuous part in transporting the early Crusaders to the East. An evidence of its sea-power are the Tavole Amalfitane, a maritime code which was used through the whole Mediterranean. From a hospital founded by Amalfi in Jerusalem the Knights Hospitallers took their name. All the lower town of Amalfi has been swept away by inundations.

4 The Saracens had till now dominated Sardinia, Corsica, the Balearic Isles, a great part of Spain and North Africa. They had even plundered Genoa (936) and burnt a part of the city of the Pisans and extended their ravages down to Ostia. In Sicily they were supreme till conquered by the Normans (1070‑90).

5 The Pisans followed up the conquest of Sardinia and Corsica by defeating the Saracens off Tunis and, in 1063, destroying a great Moslem fleet off Palermo. In 1114 they took the Balearic Isles. The zenith of the Pisan maritime power may perhaps be marked by the date 1203, the year in which they transported the fifty-three shiploads of earth from Jerusalem to form their Campo Santo. Eighty years later their sea-power was crushed at Meloria by the Genoese and Florentines.

6 For instance, they often lent ships to Frederick I and Henry VI. Imperial avour (Susan note) confirmed, it is true, many of their liberties and aided them against rival cities, but these staunchly Ghibelline and cantankerous 'republics' are a somewhat discreditable phenomenon — one which it is pleasant to view merely as a background to the rusty chains now hung up in the Campo Santo — old war-trophies given back to Pisa by Genoa and Florence in the nineteenth century, when Italy was proving worthy to become a nation.

7 Ravenna seems to have kept aloof and was imperialistic in sentiment. It was under imperial Podestà, and later under the Polenta. Ferrara was ruled by Margraves of Este from the days of Henry IV down to those of Tasso — more than five hundred years. Bologna was made a free city by Henry V in 1112 (whence its ensign 'Liberty') and joined the League; but first in 1228 it ejected its nobles and introduced a full republican system, like that of Florence.

8 After the death of Countess Matilda (1115) Siena asserted its independence, and soon afterwards adopted (unless, as tradition asserts, they had long ago been granted by Charles or Otto the Great) as its ensign a white lion on a red field and the motto 'Liberty.' About this time too Siena produced that great and successful adversary of Frederick, Pope Alexander III. Later the nobles gained the upper hand, and it was with the help of Siena that the Florentine Ghibelline exiles won the bloody battle of Montaperti, on the Arbia (1260). S. Gimignano, first mentioned in the tenth century and long subject to Volterra, won its independence before 1200 and had its consuls and councils.

9 Entirely rebuilt and furnished with Greek mosaics by Doge Selvo in 1073 and reconstructed on another site in 1322. See Ruskin's 'St. James of the Deep Stream' in his St. Mark's Rest.

10 Burnt and rebuilt in 976 and again in 1025, and subsequently much altered.

11 A present from the Eastern Emperor Leo. The present church, built c. 1470 on the same site, just to the east of the ducal palace, contains no ascertained relic of the original building.

12 See p. 419 n. Selvo's love for Byzantine architecture and mosaics was doubtless encouraged by his wife, a Greek princess di tanta delicatezza that she used to bathe in dew and use a golden fork, instead of her fingers, to carry food to her mouth (Okey's Venice).

13 The extent to which the dead bodies of saints (some perhaps genuine) bulk in the history of Venice is remarkable. We hear, for instance, of St. Stephen's body, stolen from Constantinople; of a hand of John the Baptist and the corpse of his father, both given by Eastern Emperors; of the bodies of S. Isidoro and S. Donato, the acquisition of which was regarded as a greater triumph than the capture of Tyre or Jerusalem.

14 For details see guide-books and Ruskin's pugilistic St. Mark's Rest; also Venice, in Mediæval Towns. A strange commentary on the assertions of chroniclers, ancient and modern in regard to the immense prosperity of Venice at this period is the statement made by others that during the reign of Doge Vitale Falieri (1085‑96) two-thirds of the citizens perished from famine and earthquake.

15 'The alleged blindness of Dandolo,' says Mr. Okey, 'is one of the enigmas of history. The chroniclers are hopelessly at variance.' One of these, who was his constant companion (Villehardouin), asserts that he 'could not see a whit.' Others do not mention the subject.

16 Goths, Lombards, Franks, Saxons, Franconians, Hohenstaufer, the Visconti, Sforzas, Louis XII, Francis I, Charles V. Philip of Spain, Austrians, Buonaparte, Austrians again. The French took Milan four times.

17 In imitation of S. Vitale in Ravenna. There are several Romanesque churches (Simpliciano, Sepolcro, and others) that survived the later catastrophe of 1162.

18 Imitated also by the English at the Battle of the Standard (1138). At Montaperti, in 1260, the Florentine Guelfs made their last desperate stand around their Carroccio. This Florentine Guelf Carroccio was painted red (like their giglio vermiglio of Par. xvi), and their bell was, according to Machiavelli, called the Martinella.

19 Dante believed himself to be of Roman descent. It is likely that the family (Alighieri) was related to the Roman Frangipani of later days. In his poem (Inf. xv) he makes his old teacher Brunetto Latini speak with hatred and contempt of the bestie fiesolane, that 'ungrateful and malignant fold that in ancient days descended from Fiesole' and brought discord and other evils into Florence. In the Paradiso Justinian speaks of the Roman Eagle having been 'bitter to the hill' beneath which Dante was born.

20 Evidently built on the site of the temple — perhaps by St. Ambrose, who is known to have founded S. Lorenzo in 394 ? or by his friend Zenobius ? or about the sixth century ? or by Theodelinda ? It was the cathedral till 1128, when the honour was transferred to S. Salvatore (S. Reparata ?). the original of S. M. del Fiore. During about fourteen centuries Dante's il mio bel San Giovanni has served as the one Catholic baptistery for Florentines. In it Dante, as also his ancestor Cacciaguida (he tells us) was baptized, and here he hoped, in vain, some day to be crowned as poet (Par. xv, 9).

21 It was about this time that instead of Consuls the Florentines instituted as their supreme magistrate a Podestà (a 'Power' or 'Authority,' almost a dictator, originally the name of the German governor imposed on a city by the Emperor). He was not a Florentine, but a stranger and he was not allowed to marry a Florentine nor to eat or drink in the house of any citizen.

22 A striking example of this is afforded by the fifty towers (now thirteen) of S. Gimignano. See Fig. 54.

u434

CHAPTER IV ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE (1) 800‑1200

The epithet 'Romanesque' is sometimes applied to all the round-arch styles of medieval architecture which were derived from the Roman — to the Early Christian (basilican), to Byzantine, to Lombard, Tuscan, Norman (French, English, and Sicilian), to German and Spanish Romanesque, even to Saracen, as being influenced by Roman or Byzantine; and some writers go so far as to call Gothic a form of Romanesque, regarding it as the final outcome of the round-arch period of transition. This use of the word can perhaps be defended; but I have preferred to regard the Italian basilican style, the Byzantine, the Romanesque, and the Gothic as specifically distinct, (2) and in a former chapter I have briefly discussed the origins of that architecture which, I think, may equally well be entitled 'Early Italian Romanesque' or 'Roman-Lombard,' if we keep in mind that the word 'Lombard' by no means limits Roman-Lombard architecture to what is now called Lombardy.

Some of the Early Romanesque relics of the Lombard period and of the days of Charles the Great have been already described. During the next period-the reigns of the Carolingians and the succeeding Dark Age — architecture, as all other art, suffered almost total eclipse for about two centuries. (3) At p435Rome indeed the obscuration lasted far longer. We hear of restorations and reconstructions, for which the ancient monuments were ruthlessly plundered, and a few curious mosaics and frescos of this age have survived; but until the twelfth century, or later, Rome remained in gross darkness, while in other parts of Italy, both in the north and in the south, a new and splendid architecture was rapidly arising — developing itself in wonderful perfection from that Roman-Lombard architecture which had begun to unfold as early as the days of Queen Theodelinda (c. 600), but which seems to have been arrested in its growth until towards the close of the tenth century, in spite of all the favour that for a time art and learning are said to have received from Charles the Great. Possibly the dread that the world would come to an end in A.D. 1000 may have to some extent paralysed Christendom and made the erection of substantial churches seem superfluous; but, whatever the reasons were, soon after the year 1000 almost all the Christian world was seized with a sudden desire to build splendid temples — to cast aside its old attire, as Rodolf Glaber says, writing about 1045, and 'put on a new white robe' (candidam ecclesiarum vestem induere).

The Romanesque style resulted from the alliance of ancient Roman architecture with that of Northern countries — the home of the Lombards — and, as Mr. Ruskin has pointed out, some of the characteristics that distinguish it sharply from the Basilican and Byzantine styles were evidently due to Northern influences. For example, a Romanesque church offers generally a most striking contrast to the richly coloured and decorated surfaces, the gleaming columns and marble-covered walls and great mosaics, of Byzantine architecture. We Northerners often seem to distrust bright colour and rich decoration; most of us prefer what is dim and almost colourless — the checker p436and play of light and shadow amid the gloom of forests or in our great cavernous Norman cathedrals. In Italy the Northmen had the advantage of being able to procure — sometimes to steal from ancient buildings — splendid marble columns instead of having to construct massive piers, and the contrast of marble and stone and brick in Italian Romanesque is often exceedingly beautiful. The chief decorative effect aimed at was, however, not that of colour and reflexion, but the play of light and shade amid mouldings and sculptures and arcades and all kinds of concave and convex work. Thus capitals and high reliefs, to catch the light, and outside we have the hollows of arcades, and colonnaded façades, and sculptured reliefs, and overhanging corbels, and beautiful, deeply receding portals and windows, which catch the shade and by acting as a foil to the sculptures and the marbles invest the building with a beauty which is incomparably finer than that of any old basilica viewed exteri