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IV.ALL(zzz) This text has not yet been proofread. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! V.1

H. B. Cotterill
Medieval Italy

(1) HENRY VI

It will be remembered that the year before Frederick Barbarossa was drowned in the Salef his son Henry became, through his wife Constance, the successor of William the Good of Sicily, whose marriage with Joan of England had proved childless. Many Sicilians however refused to accept the German overlord whom the English archbishop Of A Mill had foisted on them. Of a Mill's political rival, Aiello of Salerno, who had for years acted as the late king's Secretary of State (protonotario), instigated a rising in favour of Tancred, Count of Lecce, bastard son of Duke Roger, a son of King Roger, and caused him to be crowned king; and Pope Clement III sent his blessing. Forthwith Henry the Cruel—for this title his violent and ruthless nature earned him—assembled an army, vowing vengeance; but the tidings of his father's death in the East and the insurrection of Henry the Lion in Germany compelled him to recross the Alps. He soon suppressed the rival claimant to the German crown and was ere long in Rome, where, having won the favour of the Roman people by a very dastardly act,1 he was able to compel the Pope (Celestine III) to crown him as Emperor (1191). He then marched south to subjugate the Two Sicilies, and with p454the help of ships from Pisa (that 'shame of Italy,' as Dante calls the city) beleaguered Naples—at this time almost a free city. But Norman ships drove the Pisans away, and Henry, with an army decimated by disease, returned to Germany.2 Hereupon the cause of Tancred gained strength in the south of Italy. The Salernitans threw off their allegiance to the German king and gave up the Empress Constance, residing at that time in their city, to Tancred, who was chivalrous enough to set her at liberty—an act which makes appear all the more hideous the ingratitude and inhumanity of Henry; for when Tancred dies in 1193, and his little son William was proclaimed King of the Sicilies under the regency of the widow-mother Sibilla, Henry came marching south again and, having captured Sibilla and her child, sent them with other prisoners to Germany and caused them to be blinded.

He was now master of the Sicilies as well as overlord of Northern Italy, where by a judicious combination of concession and severity he held the republics in curb. Over Tuscany he set his brother Philip, and other German dukes over Umbria and Romagna. With the Papacy and Rome he did not attempt to meddle much. As usual, there were conflicts going on in the city between the people and the nobility. Just at this time an oligarchy with a Podestà at its head was in power—soon to be supplanted by a republican Senate and a Prefect. To Henry it was fairly indifferent which party prevailed, for both kept the Pope in order.

The Empress Constance, who was a gentle and pious, and now an elderly woman, doubtless felt keenly the barbarities committed by her German spouse. She had retired to the little town of Jesi, not far from Ancona, and here in December 1194 she gave birth to a son—the future Emperor Frederick II. p455The child was elected King of the Romans by the German nobles assembled at Aachen in 1196, on which occasion Henry extracted from the electors the recognition of the absolute hereditary right of his descendants, whether in the male or the female line, to the German crown. Shortly after this he was recalled to South Italy by renewed insurrections, which he suppressed by the most barbarous inhumanities. Encouraged by his success, he began to form plans for the conquest of Dalmatia, which he claimed as an integral part of the Norman dominions, and even for the overthrow of Constantinople and the annexation of the Eastern Empire—a project that was realized not much later, but not by him; for he died at Messina in 1197, aged only thirty-two years.

 

(2) FREDERICK II AND POPE INNOCENT III

According to the promise made by the electors the infant son of Henry ought to have succeeded, and for a time did succeed, under the regency of his mother, to the kingship of Germany and Italy, including the so‑called Two Sicilies; and as King of the Romans he was already Emperor-designate. But in Germany Henry's brother and a rival seized power and were both crowned king. And ere the child was four years old his mother Constance died, leaving him under the guardianship of the Pope, whom she appointed the regent of the Sicilies. What right she had to do this may well be asked—as we have already asked by what right Matilda demised the duchy of Tuscany to the church—but such an act need not surprise us in the case of a woman who had been compelled to renounce the life of a religieuse, if not of a nun, in order to contract a by no means happy marriage. Moreover, however illegal the act, it was accepted and thus became of fact of historical import. Nor is it easy to feel certain that the result did not justify the deed.

The Pope who thus became nominally the regent of the Two Sicilies—for this was of course the only realm to which Constance, as heiress of the Norman kings, had any claim—was Innocent III, the son of a Lombard Count of Segni and of p456a Roman mother. At the age of thirty-seven he ascended the papal throne, some three months after the death of Henry VI. He was of all Roman pontiffs perhaps the ablest, and certainly the most masterful and ambitious; and he finally succeeded in realizing for a time his dreams of a papal empire imposing his overlordship on all the monarchs3 of Europe, the kingdoms of which he treated as fiefs of the Papacy. 'No such spectacle,' says a modern writer, 'had been seen since the time of Charlemagne; none such was to be seen again till the coming of Napoleon.' Nor were his triumphs limited to the kingdoms of the West: he held also the East in fee; for when (in 1202‑04) Constantinople was captured and shamefully sacked3 by the French would-be Crusaders and the Venetians, although at first he professed to be scandalized, he soon consoled himself by the fact that the supremacy of the Roman pontiff was acknowledged by the new Latin dynasty of Byzantine Emperors—the first of whom received the imperial purple form the hands of the legate of Innocent and the third was crowned and invested in St. Peter's at Rome by Innocent's successor, Honorius. It was indeed no empty boast that was contained in the words attributed to Innocent, that an Emperor was but a moon that borrowed radiance from the sun of the Papacy.4

p457 Another of Innocent's triumphs was won by a still more shameful Crusade and by means even more blood-curdling than the sack of Constantinople. The story of the annihilation of the Albigenses and the devastation of a great part of the south of France, if told worthily, would occupy much space; but it is only indirectly connected with our main subject and what brief remarks I can afford to make upon it are relegated to a subsequent chapter, in order that they should not here interrupt the narrative.

In one case Innocent failed. Not only Rome—where people and nobles were as usual at strife—but also many cities of Northern and Central Italy were in a state of more or less open rebellion against German domination. This discontent Innocent fomented and captained, dreaming to substitute his own suzerainty in place of the Empire. But here he was deceived. Emperors and kings might receive their crowns from the successor of St. Peter, but cities which had so hardly won their liberties were not going to exchange servitude to a German Emperor for servitude to a Roman Pope. The Guelf League, formed (1197) by the cities of Tuscany, refused to become the tool of an ambitious pontiff, however loudly he might assert his hatred of the common foe and repeat his favourite formula: 'Away with the detestable German race!'

Nor did the republics mistrust Innocent without good cause, as was soon proved when in Germany things took such a turn as to make him dissimulate his detestation. The minority of Frederick had revived the old Welf and Waibling feuds and two rival claimants had been crowned—the one at Aachen, the other at Mainz—Otto of Brunswick, son of the rebellious Henry the lion and nephew of Richard Coeur-de‑Lion, and Philip, son of Barbarossa and brother of the late Emperor. For ten years (1198‑1208) the country was rent by civil war. Finally Philip was assassinated and Otto, proclaimed sole German king by the electors assembled at Frankfurt, courted the favour of Innocent by promising him the suzerainty of the Matilda domains and other territories in North Italy. The attempt succeeded and in 1208 Otto was crowned by the Pope p458at Rome.5 But the Romans, already hostile to Innocent's vast ambitions, were incensed at his duplicity and the bestowal of the imperial dignity on a foreign prince without their assent. Serious tumults took place when Otto attempted to pass from the Vatican across the Tiber and a thousand of his Germans were slain. In fierce anger he withdrew northwards, reoccupied the Matilda domains, and set his Podestà in the cities which he had promised to cede to the Papacy. Nor did this suffice to appease his resentment. He returned with a strong force and invaded territories of the Church and the realm of Frederick. Hereupon Innocent excommunicated him, and, as was so often the case, a weird success attended the act of the masterful pontiff. The thunderbolt seemed to wither the powers of Otto. He retreated to Germany, and ere long, after suffering a crushing defeat (1214) in a quarrel with Philippe Auguste of France, he was deposed by his nobles.6

 

(3) FREDERICK II, GERMAN KING AND EMPEROR

The German nobles had ere this (in 1212) invited the young Frederick to cross the Alps. This he did, and in 1215 he was crowned at Aachen as German king. As an infant he had been proclaimed, also at Aachen, King of the Romans, and now the title (which involved that of Emperor-designate) was solemnly confirmed by a great Council held at the Lateran, where more than 1500 prelates and many nobles were present. But although he was thus acknowledged to have succeeded to Otto's dignities he was not invited by Innocent to be crowned Emperor. The wily and ambitious pontiff evidently deemed it safer to defer this ceremony—perhaps on the ground that Otto still lived.

On his journey from Palermo to Germany Frederick had visited Rome and Pope Innocent, whom he then saw for the p459first time. The generous and impulsive youth, not more than eighteen years of age, seems to have been most effusive towards his former guardian, expressing his deep gratitude by confirming the Pope's title to the territories claimed by the Church, by promising to join a Crusade, and even, it is said, by vowing to cede his southern kingdoms as a fief to the Papacy under the rule of his (still infant) son Henry, as soon as he should receive the imperial crown. Luckily, this last promise was never fulfilled. Even before the death of Innocent, which took place in 1216, Frederick had repented and recanted, and ere long he was to prove as fiercely adverse to the Papacy as Otto had been. Nor was Frederick alone in this rapid change of front. A general movement had begun which was destined finally to overthrow the whole fabric of the temporal power of the Popes, and first to fall in sudden collapse was Innocent's Babel-tower of papal supremacy, founded as it was on superstitious reverence for an antiquated form from which moral greatness had long ago departed.

How the Church was for a time to regain some of her ancient moral grandeur and moral influence—not through Popes and cardinals, but through the revival in humbler hearts of the spirit of Christian love and unworldliness, as practiced by St. Francis and professed, if not practiced, by Domenic—we shall see.

In 1220 Frederick determined to revisit his southern dominions, leaving Germany under the viceroyalty of his son Henry—a lad of about ten—whom he caused to be crowned King of the Romans at Frankfurt. Henceforth, during thirty years, his life was associated almost exclusively with Sicily and Italy. In Northern Italy his authority was to a great extent nominal, for many of the cities, having become still more powerful by the Guelf League and the vast increase of trade, enjoyed complete liberty, except when, from time to time, they were overawed by the presence of imperial troops. Moreover his North Italian domains had little attraction for him; it was the south, Sicily and Apulia especially, that he regarded as his home and his true kingdom. And he had other reasons for p460his return. During his absence in the north trouble had arisen in Sicily. His Moslem soldiery had proved overbearing and the Christians were indignant. He felt it necessary to put things in order—and he did this effectually on his arrival by removing all Saracen troops from Sicily and forming a settlement of them in Nocera (near Pompeii), which henceforth was known as Nocera dei Pagani and proved for him an invaluable point d'appui.

Innocent had been succeeded in 1218 by Honorius III, who was at first hostile; but when Frederick arrived at Rome this mild-tempered Pope was persuaded by lavish concessions and promised about Crusades and other matter to crown him as Emperor—a ceremony facilitated by the fact that the deposed Otto had lately died. The coronation of Frederick and his queen, Constance of Aragon, took place in 1220. Two years later—the year of the terrible earthquake which on Christmas Day caused the death of many thousands in North Italy—Frederick's queen died, and the Pope, ever intent on Crusades, persuaded him to marry Iolanthe de Brienne, sister of the French titular King of Jerusalem (afterwards Emperor of Constantinople). Nevertheless Frederick showed no great desire to keep his promise and distinguish himself as a Crusader. Although, curiously enough, he proved later a zealous and cruel persecutor of heretics, he had not only toleration but admiration for infidels; indeed he was probably to say the least, as good a Moslem as he was a Christian. So years passed, and Honorius died (1226) and the promise was still unfulfilled. But the next Pope, Gregory IX, though over eighty years of age, showed such determination that Frederick felt compelled to yield, and, having collected a large band of Crusaders—mostly Germans—set sail from Brindisi. A severe epidemic however broke out among his followers, who had suffered intensely from the Apulian dog-days, and he hastily ordered the fleet to put about and the armament to be disembarked at Otranto.

Thereupon the fiery old Pope Gregory excommunicated him and published an Encyclical branding him as a traitor and p461coward. The no less fiery young Emperor responded with a courage and a candour which, as Villari says, would have done credit to Luther himself. His famous Manifest was the first really important and formal protest of the highest civil power against the usurpations of the Church and that Papal Supremacy which Innocent had build up so successfully. 'It was addressed to all the Princes and Peoples of the Empire, reminding them of the fate of the unlucky Count of Toulouse and of King John of England, and it drew with pitiless hand a vivid picture of the demoralization of the Church and the worldly ambitions of the Popes. The Emperor of Christendom declared himself in sympathy with the views of heretics in regard to the unapostolic character of the Papacy.' (Gregorovius.) The Manifest was read in public on the Roman Capitol amid great enthusiasm. A tumult arose and Gregory fled to Viterbo and then to Perugia whence he launched excommunication against his adversaries.

It may at first somewhat surprise us to hear that under these circumstances Frederick decided voluntarily to undertake a Crusade — this time in all seriousness — but reflexion will make us realize that it was something of a master-stroke. He wished to show the world that Emperors and Crusaders were wholly indifferent to futile thunderbolts, and to prove that the Pope cared less for the liberation of the Holy Sepulchre than for his own petty vengeance. Still under ban and stigmatized by the clerics as a 'pirate, not a Crusader,' he reached Jerusalem. Here, no priest daring to perform the ceremony, he lifted with his own hand the crown from the altar of the Holy Sepulchre and set it on his head — an act which by force of contrast recalls that gran capitano of the first Crusade who refused to be crowned in the city where the King of Kings had worn a crown of thorns.8

p462 Meanwhile in Italy Pope Gregory, still in exile at Perugia, had proclaimed a Holy War against the absent and excommunicated Emperor, and when Frederick landed in Apulia (1229) his Crusaders, many of whom were Moslems, were confronted by a motley force arrayed under the banner of the Papacy. But the Saracen soldiers of the Cross soon put to flight the soldiery of the Cross Keys, and the Pope was glad to make peace and graciously liberated Frederick from ban.9 He then turned his mercenaries against humbler, but not less dangerous, adversaries — the Patarini and other heretics, who of late had been zealously disseminating their pernicious doctrines in North Italy and elsewhere; and strangely enough we find Frederick joining in this pitiable persecution. Gregory IX has the unenviable renown of having first introduced the dread tribunal of the Inquisition into Rome and of having burnt many condemned heretics — probably in the piazza of S. Mara Maggiore — to make a Roman holiday. In passing we may note the strange fact that the Roman mob, which for political reasons was for ever expelling and recalling Popes, was apparently in full sympathy with the Popes in regard to such inhumanities perpetrated in the name of religion. But after glutting their eyes on these autos-de-fé the mobile mob suddenly turned against their benefactor and again chased him out of Rome.

The years 1230‑35 were momentous for Rome. Twice she made a desperate attempt to rid herself, so to speak, of the Old Man of the Papal See; but on both occasions Frederick — compelled by political reasons, especially by his son's treasonable intrigues — listed to the pitiable appeals of the exiled Pope, who was now calling on Christendom to wage a Holy War against the Romans just as shortly before he had proclaimed a Crusade against Frederick himself. Had Rome at this crisis gained political freedom and put herself at the head of a Roman p463Confederation the later fortunes of Italy would have been very different from what they were — whether to her advantage and that of humanity, who can tell? But the struggle ended in favour of the Papacy in spite of the heroic efforts of the Romans. Their citizen army under the command of Senators followed their red and golden banner, inscribed with the proud S.P.Q.R. of the ancient Republic, and harried the towns of Tuscany and Latium, which the fugitive Pope was endeavouring to fortify and form into an anti-Roman Confederation. Then, on the mediation of Frederick, they allowed Gregory to return. But they soon repented — or, to use the simile of the old papal chronicler, seven worse devils entered into them — and, driven to fury by the thought of the free northern republics and their own servitude, they once more rose and demanded liberty. Their Senator Lucas Sorelli proclaimed Lower Tuscany and the Campagna to be domains of the roman Republic. Pope Gregory fled and laid Rome under interdict. The Romans retaliated by plundering the Lateran. Finally, in response to his loud appeals auxiliaries from far and near came to the Pope's succour, and Frederick again lent his aid. A fierce battle took place near Viterbo. The Romans were defeated and chased back to their city; and ere long they were forced to renounce the hope of liberty and to accept papal overlordship,10 under the condition of a nominal municipal autonomy on the one side, and on the other immunity of the clerics from taxes and the operation of civil law.

Frederick's son Henry, who since the year 1220 had acted as viceroy in Germany, now set up the standard of revolt, intrigued with the Lombard cities and the Pope, and proclaimed himself king. Frederick, after foiling his son's negotiations by sending help to the Pope, hastened across the Alps and succeeded in overpowering and capturing the rebel, who was sent (1235) to Apulia and lingered out the rest of his life in prison — a fate that, as we shall see, befell another of Frederick's sons.

p464 In the place of Henry, as viceroy of Germany, Frederick elected his second son, Conrad. He then turned his attention to the Guelf Lombard cities, which had become more and more wealthy, independent, and rebellious, even to the point of blocking Alpine passes, and had engaged in ever fiercer conflict with the cities that favoured the imperial cause. This cause had however recently gained greatly in power under the leadership of a monk's son, that 'Son of the Devil,' as he was popularly called, the 'black-haired Ezzelino,' whom Ariosto has called a child of hell and Dante has put in the infernal river of blood together with Alexander and Dionysius. Ezzelino had already made himself master of several towns, and when Frederick came and captured Vincenza it was given over to this condottiere, who shortly afterwards took Padua and Mantua and thus became the tyrant, or viceroy, of a considerable domain. Milan headed the resistance of the remaining Guelf cities, but at Cortenova they suffered a rout as terrible as that of Legnano and Frederick entered Cremona in triumph, bringing with him the Milanese Carroccio, drawn, it is said, by a white elephant and bearing strapped to its mast the Milanese Podestà, Tiepolo, son of the Doge of Venice. Broken remnants of the car Frederick sent to Rome, to be exhibited and preserved in the Capitol.

All this naturally caused the Pope Gregory deep displeasure. He assembled a Lateran council and fulminated excommunication. A reply was sent by Pier delle Vigne, that trusty secretary of the Emperor who held both keys of Frederick's heart.(11) Frederick proposed to submit himself to a general Council. The Pope convoked a Council, but it was a purely clerical Council and was to be held at Rome. This was not at all what Frederick meant, and when (1241) a multitude — a rabble, turba, as Frederick called them — of cardinals and p465bishops and other clerics embarked for Rome at Genoa it was decided that Pisan and imperial vessels should attack them. The strange naval encounter took place near the isle of Monte Cristo. The convoy of Genoese galleys was routed and the captured clerics taken in triumph to Naples

Meanwhile Frederick had marched southwards, and was contemplating an attack on Rome when news reached his camp at Grottaferrata (near the Alban Lake) that his old adversary Pope Gregory, who had nearly reached his hundredth year,12 was dead. Many of the prelates were still in Frederick's hands, and the Ten Cardinals that were in Rome, after being for two months closely imprisoned by the Senator Rubeus — a despotic individual who at that time was paramount in the city — at last gained their release from the cruel confinement (in which one of them had died) by electing a weakly old man, Celestine IV. He survived his election only eighteen days. Then followed a papal interregnum of nearly two years, during which all the cardinals dispersed, taking refuge in various country strongholds. At last, after many admonitions and threats from Frederick, who continued to devastate the Campagna, though he did not venture to attack Rome, the electors met at Anagni.

Frederick had released some of the captured prelates in order to secure their support at the papal election, and Cardinal Fieschi of Genoa, who had long enjoyed his friendship, was chosen. But Frederick only lost a friend by this election, for, as he himself exclaimed, 'no Pope was ever a Ghibelline.' Indeed Innocent IV proved as determined an opponent as ever Gregory had been. He began by refusing to remove the ban from the Emperor because he would not evacuate certain fortresses, and in 1245 he sailed off to Genoa and made his way to Lyon, in France,13 where he assembled a Council and proclaimed Frederick's deposition.

A battle of Titans then took place, in which Encyclicals and p466Manifests were hurled like rocks and thunderbolts, while Europe looked on in silent awe. The contest seemed at the time to have no very decided result. Frederick's attack on the greed and arrogance and vices of the Papacy and clergy was hailed with enthusiasm by the greater part of Christendom, but Innocent also found wide support when he claimed that 'to the Head of the church had been given the two swords of power, spiritual and temporal, and that of his own will he could lend one to the Emperor.' Europe had not yet arrived at that discernment between the realms of religion and civil power for which in his Monarchia and in his poem14 Dante so vigorously contends. But doubtless this great conflict had far-reaching, if not easily perceptible, effects, and even at the time it caused on the one side dangerous risings and the proclamation of a rival Emperor, and on the other a very strong revival of anti-papal feeling, of which the Ghibelline party in North Italy took advantage in order to suffocate the young republics. The bloody Ezzelino, now Frederick's son-in‑law, supported by Frederick's illegitimate son Enzio (or Enzo), subjugated many of the towns of Lombardy, Emilia, and Venetia, and endeavoured to convert them into Signories (a fate that ere long was to fall on most of the Italian republics), or rather perhaps to found one great Signoria of many cities.

For a time Frederick remained in his southern dominion, in constant conflict with allies of the Pope, who continued to preach crusades against the excommunicated monarch and found no methods too shameful if only by stirring up the fanaticism against the 'infidel foe of the Faith' and inciting revolt against this 'second Nero' he could annihilate the 'viper brood' of the Hohenstaufen princes. Mendicant friars, suborned by papal gold, instigated the Sicilian barons to murder the Emperor.15 The plot was however fortunately discovered, and not long afterwards (1247) Frederick made his way to North Italy in order to join his son Enzio in the campaign p467against the republican cities. Here he suffered a disastrous reverse, for during his siege of Parma, which made a heroic resistance, the besieged took advantage of his absence on a hunting expedition to venture a sally and succeeded in destroying his camp and slaying and capturing thousands of his men, so that, in almost as desperate state as was Frederick Barbarossa after Legnano, with great difficulty he reassembled his forces in Cremona, intending to renew the war. But another blow fell on him. His son Enzio was captured by the Bolognese, and the unfortunate youth spent all the rest of his life, nigh twenty-three years, as a prisoner.16

As was the case also with the great Theoderic, the last years of Frederick were overcast not only by disaster but by dark suspicions and by acts cruel and unjust. The fate of his secretary and counsellor Pier delle Vigne of Capua, who had long enjoyed his confidence, has been already related. It seems to have been at Cremona that Frederick had him arrested, and perhaps blinded, and at Pisa that Pier ended his life by suicide. In the same year Frederick, broken down by calamities, withdrew to his well-loved Apulia, and a few months later (1250) he died, after a short illness, in one of his castles — Castel Fiorentino, near Lucera — some say surrounded by his faithful Saracens, according to others, whom Gregorovius follows 'clothed in the habit of a Cistercian monk and absolved by his true friend the Archbishop of Palermo.'

Laetentur caeli et exsultet terra, wrote Innocent, the Chief Pastor of the Christian Church, to the Sicilian people when he heard of the death of their king — with which brutality we may contrast the words of that king when he learnt the death of his great opponent, Pope Gregory IX: de morte jus multa compassione conducimur, et licet digno contra cum odio moveremur.17

p468 Innocent's one object in life seems to have been to crush the 'viper brood' of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. He at once hastened from Lyon to Italy, which he had not visited for six years, fulminating excommunications and preaching crusades against the youthful Conrad, Frederick's son, the German king. Conrad came down to the south to assert his rights; but he soon died (1254), leaving an infant son, Conradin — the last legitimate scion of the imperial house of the Hohenstaufer.18

(4) MANFRED AND CHARLES OF ANJOU

An illegitimate son of Frederick, Manfred, Prince of Taranto, had been appointed by his father's will the viceroy of South Italy under the suzerainty of his half-brother Conrad. On Conrad's death Manfred, who was a youth of twenty-two, at first loyally supported the infant heir, Conradin, and appealed to Innocent to do the same. But Innocent demanded full and p469open submission to papal overlordship, and Manfred preferred open hostility, and by the help of is faithful Saracens, he succeeded in routing the Pope's mercenaries at Foggia. Five days later Pope Innocent died at Naples.

The new Pope, Alexander IV (1254‑61), was at first much hampered by the state of things in Rome, where under a Bolognese Podestà named Brancaleone a republican government fully constituted with the popular councils and guilds (Arti) of the northern Communes held sway for a season and favoured Manfred as the adversary of the Papacy. So it came to pass that in spite of various papal excommunications — to which Christendom was becoming alarmingly indifferent — Manfred's cause so prospered that, taking perhaps advantage of a false rumour of Conradin's death and in any case considering it better to take the reins out of the hands of a feeble child whose authority even in Germany was challenged by rival claimants (such as Richard of Cornwall and Alfonso of Castile), he followed King Roger's example and assumed the royal crown in the cathedral of Palermo (1258).

Manfred now had against him not only the Pope and the Guelfs but the legitimate Ghibellines, the supporters of Conradin. In the south he held his own by the aid of his German troops and his faithful Saracens; but this did not increase his popularity, and he deepened the resentment by importing from Africa fresh contingents of Moslem mercenaries.

Meanwhile in the north the Ghibelline cause, which — although the great feud often lent itself to private faction — was generally the cause of feudalism and foreign domination as against republican liberty, had received a serious blow by the overthrow of Ezzelino. For twenty years his had been a name of terror in North Italy. He lorded it as despot, though nominally a feudatory of the Empire, over all the cities between Lago di Garda and the Venetian lagunes. But the republican spirit was not to be extinguished. With the aid of the Guelf communes the enslaved cities freed themselves, and Ezzelino was thrown into prison, where (1259) he perished, it is said, by tearing the bandages from his wounds.

p470 Thus the popular cause was for a time triumphant in the north, while in Tuscany the Florentine Guelfs succeeded in expelling the Uberti and their Ghibelline supporters. This triumph however was short-lived, for (as we shall see later) the exiles collected an army and crushed their adversaries at Montaperti, near Siena, and Florence would have been sacked and razed to the ground but for the interposition of the great Ghibelline chief Farinata degli Uberti. In this battle, which, as Dante says, 'stained the Arbia red' with the blood of the Guelfs, Manfred's German cavalry took a conspicuous part. This established his authority also in Central Italy, and his Vicar, Guido Novello, for a time governed Florence.

But his fortunes were now to decline. Pope Alexander died in 1261, and the cardinals, after months of hesitation, chose the son of a shoemaker of Troyes who had risen to be Patriarch of Jerusalem. The election of this French Pope (Urban IV) soon had its results. Seeing that Henry III of England was too much occupied with his barons, he offered the crown of Sicily (already presented by Innocent to the little English prince) to Charles of Anjou, brother to Louis IX (St. Louis) of France; and this offer was unfortunately accepted.

Charles, Count of Anjou and also, through his wife, of Provence, had distinguished himself together with his royal brother in the seventh Crusade and had lately been elected Senator by the Romans. His ambitious, adventurous, unscrupulous, and cruel character, and his extraordinary luck, found ample scope, as we shall see, in bringing disasters on Italy and Sicily. This he accomplished mainly by the aid of the Papacy. When the French Pope died (1265) a Provençal, a subject and admirer of Charles, was elected. This pontiff, Clement IV, found it easy to persuade Charles's brother, the French king, to allow a crusade to be preached in France against Manfred, and a large body of recruits was enlisted by means of the contributions of the pious and by papal indulgences. Manfred, on the other hand, assembled at Capua his German and Saracen land forces — who derided the advent of the French adventurer — while a fleet of Sicilian and Pisan ships p471cruised along the coasts to prevent the invader effecting a landing.

The adventurous Charles however trusted to his luck. He sailed from Marseille with only a thousand horsemen. His armada of seventy small vessels was dispersed by the winds, but he ran the blockade with three and by means of a boat reached land safely near Ostia. He was received with enthusiasm by his Roman friends and given quarters in the convent of S. Paolo fuori le mura. Two days later the rest of his ships arrived, the tempest having scattered the enemy. He then made his formal entry into Rome (May 21, 1265 — the month and year in which Dante was born). Here he had to wait eight months for his land army. Meantime, though often in great straits for want of money, he amused himself by acting the rôle of Senator, founding the University of Rome, and being invested and crowned as King of the Sicilies — a function performed by cardinals,19 as Pope Clement was still at Perugia, not having yet ventured to come to Rome.

Had Manfred risked at this crisis the bold stroke of surprising Rome and capturing the French adventurer, the history of Italy might have been very different from what it is. His nobles however were not to be trusted, and while he hesitated the land army of Charles, augmented by Italian Guelfs (among them four hundred Florentine exiles), made its way to Rome. Manfred now took up a position near Benevento, and here Charles attacked him. The battle, long doubtful, was decided by the desertion of Manfred's barons; whereupon he dashed forward into the midst of the fray and was killed. Among the thousand of the slain his body was at last discovered, and the soldiers, honouring their gallant foe, raised above it a great cairn of stones; but the Archbishop of Cosenza, ordered by Pope Clement, dragged it forth and carried it, 'with candles quenched and inverted,' beyond the frontier of the kingdom, to the 'banks of the Verde' — perhaps the Liris — and there p472cast it out to the winds and rain and birds and beasts of prey.20 Charles wreaked his fury also on the young wife and four of the children of Manfred — all of whom spent the rest of their lives, some more than thirty years, in dungeons. One escaped — to become later Queen of Sicily — and to her, his belle figlia, la buona Costanza, Manfred sent greetings by Dante from the Mount of Purgatory.

The fall of Manfred of course produced a great revival of Guelf supremacy in the northern cities. Florence expelled Manfred's officials and the Guelf constitution was established on a firm basis.

(5) CONRADIN AND CHARLES OF ANJOU

The cruel and tyrannical conduct of Charles soon aroused hatred and revolt, both in Sicily, where his intolerable extortions and his intention to make Naples the capital of his kingdom instead of Palermo made him specially unpopular, and also in the north, where the Ghibellines, led by Pisa and Siena, were once more gaining strength and beginning to look towards Germany — for the young German king, Conradin, now a lad of fourteen years, seemed to show a desire to try his fortunes against the French usurper.

It was a strange state of things and one which well illustrates the complexities of Italian history. Here we see half the inhabitants of Italy turning to a German youth for help while thy groan under the lash of the French tyrant who has been imposed on them by the Pope, the supreme guardian of their moral and spiritual weal; we see the Pope abetting this foreign oppressor and at the same time craftily patronizing the cause of republican liberty in order to gain allies against the 'viper brood' of German princes; we see some of the p473so‑called republics utterly false to the cause of true liberty merely for the sake of wreaking vengeance on political rivals, making alliances with the Papacy and at the Pope's bidding slavishly recognizing Charles of Anjou as their lord and master — even electing him as their Podestà, as Florence did, to her eternal disgrace.

In the year 1267 the brave young Conradin crossed the Alps. He was received enthusiastically by Pavia and Pisa and other Ghibelline cities. The feeble bolt of excommunication launched by Pope Clement from Viterbo had no effect, and by midsummer of 1268 the boy-king was in Rome, where, on the Capitol, he was acclaimed Emperor by the fickle mob. Impatient to meet his foe, he soon, perhaps too soon, led forth his troops. He found Charles not far from Tagliacozzo, in the vicinity of Lago di Fucino. At first fortune favoured him; but his troops betook themselves to pillage and were suddenly assailed and routed by a strong reserve of cavalry commanded by Charles himself and Valéry, constable of Champagne. With five hundred horseman Conradin escaped and reached Rome; but he was timorously received, and with a few companions he decided to flee. They struck southwards, towards the Pomptine marshes, as once Caius Marius and Cicero had done. At Astura, then a small fishing village, he found a vessel and embarked, hoping to reach Pisa, but the owner of the neighbouring castle,21 gave chase and captured him and handed him over to his pursuers.

Charles had slaughtered most of his important prisoners — cutting off the hands and feet of many, and, as this proved too long and disagreeable a process, shutting up the rest in a wooden building and burning them to death. But he thought it politic to give Conradin a mock trial. Of the judges, appointed by Charles to pass the verdict that he wished, only one gave his voice for it; one, like Socrates, risked his life by p474opposing it; the rest were silent. Then Charles, interpreting silence as consent, pronounced the sentence of death on the young king and twelve of his companions. The tidings was received [Susan note] by Conradin as he was playing chess with his relative and fellow-victim, duke Frederick of Baden. On October 29, 1268, the pitiable execution took place at Naples, in the Piazza del Mercato, which in those days was open to the sea.22 Conradin, who was but sixteen years of age, is said to have shown no terror, but to have embraced his companion and the executioner and to have laid his head on the block exclaiming, "Ah, my mother, what sorrow I have caused thee!"

 

(6) CHARLES OF ANJOU AND THE SICILIAN VESPERS

 

A month later Pope Clement, who had never dared to return to Rome, died at Viterbo. He had given no sign of horror at the bloody and brutal deed perpetrated by Charles. Indeed he exulted at the extinction of the hated 'viper brood' of Hohenstaufen. But he had doubtless begun to realize that Charles was his master — that he had raised a fiend whom he could not exorcize. And how entirely Charles was master is shown by the fact that for nearly three years no Pope was elected, the Italian cardinals being paralysed by the insolence of the French prelates and officials. Nor was he content with being master of the Sicilies and in Rome and the greater part of Italy. He dreamt of a far greater realm. After persuading his brother to undertake a crusade against Tunis (where Louis died of the plague) he tried to establish and extend his rapacious dominion in those regions. Then he turned his thoughts to the East, and by betrothing his daughter to the son and heir of the exiled Latin Emperor of Byzantium, Baldwin II of Courtenay, who offered to cede him the province of Thessalonica when restored to his throne, he hoped to found a dynasty which should rule the combined Empire of the East and the West. But Baldwin, expelled by Michael Palaeologus, spent the rest of his existence in soliciting aid from the p475princes of Europe, and the dreamland castle of Charles melted into air.

In 1271 the cardinals at last ventured to meet at Viterbo in order to elect a Pope; but such tedious delays did the opposition of the French prelates cause that at last the people of Viterbo unroofed the building in which the electors were confined so as to hasten their decision. While all this was going on Charles, who had just returned from Tunis, appeared on the scene. There came also Guy de Montfort, who was now his viceroy in Tuscany. He was grandson of the terrible Simon de Montfort, exterminator of the Albigenses. His father (Earl Simon of Leicester) had been killed in the battle of Evesham, and his body had been despitefully treated.

Now with Charles from Tunis had come an English prince, a cousin of Guy's, Henry of Cornwall, nephew to Henry III of England, the great enemy of the Montforts. The sight of the young Henry so enraged Guy de Montfort that during the celebration of Mass in the cathedral of Viterbo he killed him at the high altar in the presence of Charles and the cardinals and dragged him out of the church by the hair. Guy fled; but Charles took no serious step to punish the deed of his viceroy — a fact that throws a lurid light on this reign of terror. Dante however has made compensation by condemning the murderer to the second deepest pool of the River of Blood23. Why he did not consign Charles to a similar fate instead of assigning him a pleasant glade in Antipurgatory is unexplainable, I think, except by the fact that the poet loved his grandson, Charles Martel (for whom see Par. viii, and table, p. 477).

The cardinals finally chose — evidently in protest against this murder and against Charles and his French officials — an Italian archdeacon in attendance on Prince Edward of England in Palestine. Gregory X, soon after he landed at Brindisi, gave manifest proofs of being a wise but determined antagonist of Charles, and when, in October of 1273, Rudolf of Habsburg p476was elected as German king, or rather German Kaiser,24 he gave his explicit approval — an act that naturally incensed Charles, for the new German 'Emperor' soon began to re‑establish German influence in North Italy and Tuscany. Moreover, in opposition to Charles's policy of bloody reprisal, Gregory endeavoured to conciliate factions and feuds. He succeeded to some extent at Bologna and Milan, but failed entirely in the case of Florence, where Guelf predominance was now finally established, and where (as indeed in Rome and elsewhere) the Guelf, or republican, party by no means identified itself with papal interests25 Gregory also opposed Charles in favouring Michael Palaeologus and refusing to listen to the mendicant ex-Emperor Baldwin; and when, in 1275, he actually went so far as to meet Rudolf of Habsburg at Lausanne and promised to crown him Emperor open hostility was inevitable.

But early in 1276 Gregory X died at Arezzo (his tomb is in the Duomo). During the next eighteen months three Popes came on the scene and passed. Then, after a vacancy of six months, Nicholas III, of the Orsini family, was elected.26 He is said to have tried to marry his niece to Charles, and p478having been repulsed contemptuously, to have not only continued Gregory's anti-French policy, but to have incited the rebellion which terminated in the Vespers of Palermo.

p477 INSERT GENEALOGY TABLE

1. ANGEVINS AND CHARLES OF VALOIS

 

2. EARLY SPANISH KINGS OF SICILY

In the north of Italy Rudolf's influence and that of the Ghibelline nobles now increased rapidly. In Milan the Visconti became masters; in Verona the Scaligeri; almost everywhere hatred of Charles and the French deepened, except in Florence, where the Arti found their trade favoured by his policy. The storm was gathering fast; but it was from the south the fatal flash was to come.

The moment before Conradin laid his head on the block, it is said, he threw his glove amidst the crowd. This glove was taken to Peter, a Spanish prince who was married to Manfred's daughter, Constance, and who later (1276) became King of Aragon and Catalonia and had already conquered Valencia and Majorca from the Moors and had thus gained free access to Sicily. Incited by his wife, he listened to the appeals of the Sicilians, driven to despair by the tyranny of Charles and his French officials, and to the arguments of John of Procida, a learned physician, who after the battle of Tagliacozzo had fled to Spain and had for ten years urged Peter to lay claim, as heir of Manfred, to the crown of the Sicilies. And now Peter was watching his chance — which soon came.

Pope Nicholas having died in 1280, the cardinals again met at Viterbo, and Charles once more betook himself thither, determined this time to have a proper Pope; and the Frenchman who was elected (Martin IV) proved all that he desired and supported his tyranny vigorously until, a few years later, he died of a surfeit of Bolsena eels and Vernaccia wine, as related by Dante, who met his skeleton-spirit on the Mount of Purgatory doing penance for gluttony.

It was on Easter Tuesday in 1282, just when Charles, confiding in his papal ally, was again meditating the conquest of the Eastern Empire, that a spark — an insult offered by a French soldier to a Sicilian bride — caused a terrific explosion. All Palermo rose, 'shouting Kill! kill!' as Dante says, and almost every Frenchman in Sicily was slaughtered.

(7) FROM THE SICILIAN VESPERS TO THE PEACE OF CALTABELLOTTA

The history of Italy during this period (1282‑1302) is dominated and obscured by the turmoil of the long and obstinate contest between the French Angevins and the Spanish Aragonese for the possession of Sicily. Although of course momentous for the political future of Italy, this struggle between her foreign usurpers is only indirectly connected with her true history. I shall therefore give merely a brief account of this struggle and then pass on to the state of things in Rome and other cities during the pontificate of the Prince of modern Pharisees, as Dante calls Pope Boniface VIII.

When the tragedy of the Vespers took place King Peter of Aragon was preparing an expedition, nominally against Tunis; but doubtless Sicily was his ulterior object. Having failed to capture Tunis, he turned his fleet northwards. In five days he was at Trapani, and five days later (September 4, 1282) at Palermo, where he was acclaimed King of Sicily. Charles, furious with indignation, sent across the Straits a large army commanded by his son, Charles the Lame (Carlo lo Zoppo). But the 'Cripple of Jerusalem,' as Dante calls him, was soon compelled to withdraw his forces from the island, and Peter's admiral, Loria, inflicted on the Angevin fleet two crushing defeats, first near Malta and then in the Bay of Naples, and succeeded in capturing lo Zoppo himself. In Calabria, too, the people rose against the French. Charles was obliged to withdraw northwards, and while awaiting reinforcements from France he died at Foggia (January 1285).

His youthful grandson, Charles Martel,27 was proclaimed king in the place of his captive father; but some four years later, through the influence of our King Edward I, lo Zoppo was liberated and for the next twenty years was King of Naples and South Italy and claimant to the crown of Sicily, which rested on the head of a Spanish monarch. This Spanish monarch was, however, not Peter of Aragon and Sicily — for he had died in the same year as his great adversary, Charles of Anjou, and had been succeeded in Sicily by his son James (the Just). James and Charles II (the Lame) waged intermittent war with little result. In 1290 James became King of Aragon, on the death of his elder brother, Alfonso, and his younger brother, Frederick, became Spanish viceroy in Sicily.

Frederick however was not content with this title, and in 1296 had himself proclaimed King of Sicily. Between the two brothers there ensued a fierce conflict, fomented and embittered by the fiendish malice and ambition of Pope Boniface, who at last induced Constance, the pious widow of King Peter, to visit Rome with her elder son, King James and to make a disgraceful compact with her younger son's arch-enemy, lo Zoppo, giving him her daughter Violante to wife. The fratricidal war was of course renewed with increased bitterness, and the old Spanish admiral Loria, who had faithlessly abandoned Frederick and had espoused the Angevin cause, defeated the Sicilian fleet with great loss. At last (in 1302), after Boniface had added to his sins the iniquity of inviting to Italy Charles of Valois (of whose ill-fated enterprise we shall soon hear more) the combatants, weary of strife, patched up, much to the disgust of Pope Boniface, the Peace of Caltabellotta, by which the kingship of Sicily was conceded to Frederick for his lifetime; but he bound himself to marry Leonore, the daughter of Charles II (lo Zoppo), under the condition that any eventual heir should receive Sardinia or Cyprus, but resign Sicily to the Angevins — a condition which, on his death in 1337, was not fulfilled because the Sicilians refused to become subjects of the French princes28.

(8) ROME FROM 1285 TO 1303. BONIFACE VIII.

In the same year (1285) in which Charles of Anjou and Peter of Aragon and Sicily died the French Pope Martin IV succumbed to his surfeit of eels and vernaccia. The pacific, although gouty, old cardinal who succeeded (Honorius IV) was brother to the Senator of Rome, Pandulf, of the illustrious house of the Savelli. The brothers — one from the Lateran, the other from the Capitol — exercised a beneficent influence and curbed for two years the fury of the rival factions of the Orsini and the Colonna, though both were so crippled by gout that the Senator had to be lifted into his curule chair and the Pope had to use a mechanical device for elevating the Host. After the decease of Honorius a vacancy of ten months was caused not only by the violence of the party factions but also by the ravages of the plague, which carried off six of the cardinals. At last was consecrated Nicholas IV, the Bishop of Palestrina (the Orsini stronghold) and formerly a friend of the Orsini Pope, Nicholas ('son of the She-bear'). This was the signal for the outbreak of a still more violent conflict between the two great families of the Orsini and the Colonna, who called themselves respectively Guelfs and Ghibellines — names which signified little but that the bearers were mortal foes and rival competitors for cardinal hats and papal tiaras.

When this Pope died (1292) the battle between the cardinals was so obstinate that for two years no election took place — a state of things that enabled Charles the Lame to assume, as his father had done, a dominating position, as if he were actually the Head of the Church. Finally, the cardinals being assembled at Perugia and the deadlock seeming as hopeless as ever, it happened that somebody mentioned a certain hermit called Peter, who lived in a cave on Monte Morrone, in the Abruzzi (•some fifty miles north-east of Rome), where he had founded a religious Order and had gained a reputation for visions and miracles.29 A cardinal, perhaps half in joke, suggested solving difficulties by electing this hermit, and with sudden and unanimous impulse the assembly greeted the solution. Three bishops were commissioned to acquaint Peter of his election.

The simple-minded old mink (he was seventy-two years of age) was dumbfounded and refused to entertain the idea. Then a great multitude of nobles and prelates and other people, led by King Charles and his son Charles Martel, made their way to the cave, and at last he allowed himself to be escorted thence — the king and the king's son leading the ass, on which, clothed in his simple hermit's dress, he had mounted. In a church near Aquila — evidently S. Maria di Collemaggio (Fig. 49), which contains his tomb — he was consecrated, the church being filled and surrounded, it is said, by 200,000 persons.

Instead of allowing the now Pope (Celestine V) to proceed to Rome, King Charles took him off to his court at Naples, in order to use him for his own purposes. But he soon discovered that he was useless for these purposes, and ere four months had elapsed, the poor old hermit, finding existence intolerable, abdicated; and it is said that he was encouraged to do so by angel voices that made themselves audible in his bedchamber through the ingenious contrivance or ventriloquistic accomplishments of a cardinal named Benedetto,30 a scion of the knightly family of the Gaetani of Anagni (or, as Dante calls the town, Alagna). This crafty, arrogant, and audacious man had, it is said, already secured secret conferences with King Charles and had undertaken to support his policy by every means at the disposal of a Roman pontiff; and ten days after the resignation of Celestine (Christmas Eve, 1294) he was elected by the timorous cardinals, though many of them were apparently convinced of the truth of the reports which accused him of the most scandalous vices, and of denying the immortality of the soul, the divinity of Christ, and even the existence of God. Then days later, again, he made his entry into Rome with a pomp 'never before held in Rome.' King Charles and his son, Charles Martel of Hungary, led — not this time a humble donkey, but the splendid white, richly caparisoned steed whereon sat Benedetto, bearing on his head a golden crown; then, after the magnificent ceremony of consecration in St. Peter's was over, the two kings conducted him to the Lateran and stood behind his throne at the banquet.

The first care of the new pontiff, Pope Boniface VIII, was to secure the person of his predecessor; for there were many who denied the legitimacy of the new election, affirming that although Popes had been deposed (Henry III, for instance, had deposed three at the same time) no Pope could voluntarily abdicate, and that any such attempt was not only a heinous sin against the Holy Ghost, but totally ineffective.31 Celestine had returned to his cave on Monte Morrone. Learning the design of Boniface he fled. After long wanderings he reached the Adriatic and embarked for Dalmatia; but a storm drove him back on to the Italian coast, and some good but foolish persons acclaimed him publicly as Pope and thus caused his discovery and arrest. He was imprisoned by Boniface in the castle of Fumone, the huge Cyclopean walls of which still frown over the town of Alatri, in Latium. A few months later he was found dead — probably poisoned, although monks of his Order, Celestini, are said to have possessed a nail with which, they asserted, Boniface killed his victim as Jael killed Sisera.

Having thus disposed of poor old Celestine and feeling secure of spiritual suzerainty in the kingdom of Charles, whom he regarded as his vassal, Boniface was now eager to acquire also the Sicilian realm as a papal fief, and to encircle his mitre with the double crown of the Two Sicilies. We have already seen how he induced King James of Aragon and his pious mother Constance to make an iniquitous compact with Charles, and how he instigated and fomented the long cruel war between James and his brother Frederick, whom the Sicilians had accepted as their king.

Among the chief enemies of Boniface were the Colonna. The more powerful and arrogant he himself became and the more he robbed the Church to build up the powerful faction of the Gaetani, the more vehement was the hostility of these nobles, especially on the part of two Colonna cardinals. In 1297 Boniface took an unprecedented step and caused both of these prelates to be deposed. The Colonna family accepted the challenge. They declared the election of Boniface to be void and demanded a Council to be called. They affixed their Manifest to the high altar in St. Peter's. Boniface forthwith excommunicated the deposed cardinals and others of the family and proclaimed a Holy War against them. The Colonnas withdrew to their country strongholds, of which the chief was Palestrina. The fierce struggle ended in their overthrow and humiliation. The excommunicated cardinals and nobles presented themselves before the triumphant pontiff as suppliants, with ropes round their necks. It is said (but also fiercely denied) that Boniface by affecting to pardon them gained possession of Palestrina.32 It is undeniable that somehow he did gain possession of it, and that, as once Sulla had done, he demolished it utterly — nothing being spared but the cathedral; for his Bull, still extant, orders the plough to be passed over the site and the furrows to be sown with salt, 'as was done to African Carthage.' After confiscating all the property of the inhabitants he ordered them to build another town, which he named the Civitas Papalis; but shortly afterwards in a fit of fury he had it demolished, and they were dispersed in exile. The Colonna fled to foreign courts — some even to England. Such were the deeds of the Supreme Pastor of the Church of Christ, 'waging war nigh to the Lateran, and not on Saracen and Jews' (Inf. 27).

For the year 1300 a Jubilee of the Church was appointed. The Pope used the opportunity to attract to Rome pilgrims and their money by proclaiming liberal indulgences for all who visited the great Roman basilicas. The result proved a great triumph for Boniface. Exalted on what was certainly for the time the highest throne of Christendom, he was reverenced as the Vicar of God by two or three million devotees who streamed to Rome from every country of Europe, each bringing his offering.33 Among these were probably Giotto (see Fig. 50) and Dante; for, though some say Dante first saw Rome during his momentous embassy in the following year, the celebrated passage in which he likens two files of the damned in hell to two lines of Jubilee pilgrims passing over the Vatican bridge is so vivid that it surely must have been painted from the actual scene. Another celebrated writer was also present, namely Giovanni Villani — at that time a merchant. He tells us that what on this occasion he saw in Rome inspired him to undertake his Chronicle, which was begun in the same year (that of the action of Dante's poem) on his return to Florence and ended in becoming, after completion by his brother and nephew, the greatest of Italian histories.34

An immense sum was amassed from the offerings of the faithful, which were so plentiful that 'day and night,' says an eye-witness, 'two priests stood by the altar of St. Paul's holding rakes in their hands, and raking together the money.' Some of this was used by Boniface for reviving and prosecuting the iniquitous war between James of Aragon and his brother, Frederick of Sicily, and in forwarding, as he had promised to do, the designs of Charles the Lame. But the ill-gotten and ill-spent money was of little avail. In his chagrin he turned, as Urban IV had done, to the French court and invited to Italy the younger brother of the French king, Charles of Valois, grand-nephew of Charles of Anjou. On his arrival at Anagni, the home and favourite residence of Boniface, the French prince was nominated Captain-General of the Church and Pacificator of Tuscany. He was then sent by the Pope to pacify Florence, where he only succeeded in adding fury go the flames and causing the wholesale banishment of Ghibellines and disaffected Guelfs — among whom was Dante.35 The success of Charles of Valois in the south was no greater, and after the Peace of Caltabellotta had concluded the fratricidal war between James and Frederick the Angevins and their papal ally had to renounce all hope of recovering Sicily.

All this ill-success naturally caused friction between Boniface and Charles of Valois and increased the Pope's unpopularity at the French court. Now France had of late years come forward noticeably as a new power. She had developed an independence and a national consciousness such as at that time did not exist elsewhere in Europe.36 King Philip IV (the Fair) could feel that he had a nation behind him, and when, needing money for his wars against England and later against the Flemish, especially after his defeat at Courtray, he imposed taxes on the clergy and convents, he was defended against the fury of Boniface by French public opinion — and not only by that of the laity, for even the taxed clergy held to their sovereign rather than to the Pope and displayed the independent spirit of a national Church. The legate who, in 1302, brought an arrogant Bull from the incensed pontiff was imprisoned and then expelled, and the Bull was publicly burnt in Notre Dame — an act which, though it had not the far-reaching results of the Bull-burning at Wittenberg, must have made deep impression when shortly afterwards the French States-General were, for the first time, assembled and the action of the king was confirmed by all three estates of the realm.

Meanwhile in Rome and its neighbourhood very great resentment had been caused by the wholesale peculations and appropriations of Boniface. Much of his ill-gained wealth was spent in enriching his relatives, the Gaetani, who thus became possessed of a great number of castles and splendid estates in Latium37 (some of which are still the property of the duke of Sermoneta and the Gaetani family) and formed a powerful clan devoted to the papal cause. All this, together with the fact that Boniface intended to excommunicate Philip, was reported by the Colonna refugees at the French court and excited public indignation in France to such a pitch that a band of crusaders was formed to liberate Christendom from a wretch whom they declared to be a pseudo-Pope as well as an open atheist, a slave of the obscenest vices, and a minion of the devil; and king Philip put himself at the head of this conspiracy, the execution of which was confided to Sciarra Colonna and to Guillaume de Nogaret, an expert jurist and a fiery advocate of the rights of the crown and the civil power.

During the night of September 7, 1303, the conspirators, who had with them a strong force of armed men, entered Anagni, and after a severe fight, during which the papal palace and the adjoining cathedral were set on fire, they forced their way into the presence of Boniface, whom they found seated on his throne, the two-crowned tiara on his head and in his trembling hands the keys and a golden cross. Sciarra, it is believed — though Nogaret fiercely denied it and Villani does not assert it-seized the Pope by the arm, dragged him off his throne, and tried to stab him. Finally, after being imprisoned for three days, during which for fear of poison he refused all food, Boniface was liberated by the people of Anagni and the conspirators took to flight. He was then conducted to Rome by two Orsini cardinals and a troop of 400 armed men, and when after a visit to St. Peter's and a friendly welcome from the mob he retired to the Vatican he probably imagined himself in safety, seeing that the Orsini were the sword foes of the Colonna, and he hoped too for help from Charles the Lame. But he soon perceived that his letters were intercepted and that he was a close prisoner, the Orsini having occupied with their armed followers both the castle of S. Angelo and the Borgo. About four weeks later (October 1303) he was found dead. It is said that in an access of fury he killed himself by running his head violently against the wall of his chamber.38

(9) HENRY VII, OF LUXEMBURG

The next Pope, Benedict XI, seems to have been an honourable and courageous man. Two days before being assaulted Boniface had decided to proclaim the excommunication of King Philip — from the same pulpit in Anagni Cathedral whence the ban had been launched against the two great Fredericks. Instead of carrying out his design of Boniface the new Pope liberated the Colonna from ban, with the exception of Sciarra; he ordered full restitution to be made to the Church for all that had been stolen; he condemned openly and annulled various unjust acts of Boniface; but he also openly condemned the Anagni outrage and excommunicated the chief accomplices. It was doubtless a misfortune for the Church that after eight months he died; and a still greater misfortune was the election of his successor, the Gascon Archbishop of Bordeaux, who took the name Clement V. He had been a minion of Boniface, but now, to secure election, he became a submissive underling of King Philip.39 He was consecrated at Lyon, in the presence of the French court, and after residing about three years in France (1305‑8) he removed the seat of the Papacy from Rome to Avignon, on the Lower Rhone, where for just about seventy years (the years of the so‑called 'Babylonian captivity') the Roman pontiffs continued to reside, and where they raised the enormous masses of the Palais des Papes that still overhang the city and the great river like a towering thundercloud.

It is somewhat perplexing that Clement, although in all else apparently the willing tool of King Philip, should have persistently resisted that monarch's desire to acquire, for himself or for his brother Charles of Valois, the imperial crown. Possibly the king was not really anxious to fight for the empty title, knowing the independent and hostile spirit of the Italian cities and remembering the ill-success of Charles; or perhaps Clement realized that with a French Emperor the Papacy would be doomed to total extinction. However that may be, he at first secretly favoured and then openly supported the claims of Henry VII, who had been elected German king and King of the Romans and was thus not only regarded as Kaiser in Germany but as the Emperor-designate, who could legitimately claim confirmation of his title by the Roman people and by papal coronation.

Henry VII, who as Count of Luxemburg had been not even a reigning noble (regierender Fürst) and had possessed no body of armed liegemen, was raised to the throne amidst the disturbances that followed the murder of Kaiser Albert by his nephew, John the Parricide. Since the days of Frederick II no German monarch had come to Italy to receive the golden crown.40 But Henry's ideas were of a higher mood. His one great ambition was to re‑establish the German-Italian Empire and to be crowned in Rome. The German nobles for the most part refused to accompany him, but in 1310 he assembled a few thousand men at Lausanne, crossed Mont Cenis, and was rapturously hailed by the Ghibelline and even by some of the disaffected Guelf cities of Northern Italy; and his army was considerably increased by contingents sent by several powerful lords. But there were serious difficulties to confront — firstly the hostility of the Angevin King of Naples, now Robert of Calabria;41 secondly the hatred of the old Guelfs, such as the Neri and Donati party in Florence, who had banished both Ghibellines and disaffected Guelfs, including the poet Dante; thirdly and principally, the indignation of those who had so rapturously hailed his advent but who were bitterly disappointed because this rex pacificus, as he called himself, attempted to unite all local factions for imperial objects and ignored, as too petty for consideration, the personal feuds which had appropriated the names of Guelf and Ghibelline.

At first, nevertheless, the enthusiasm was great. Venice, Genoa, and Florence, where republican feeling was strong, snarled and showed their teeth, but Cremona, Padua, Brescia, Pisa, Verona, Mantua, and other Ghibelline cities and Signorie sent delegates to offer vows of fealty, and amidst much rejoicing Henry was crowned (January 1311) with the Iron Crown in S. Ambrogio at Milan.

However, the rejoicings were short-lived. As Pacificator he had restored from exile the Milanese Visconti, hoping to reconcile them with their successful Guelf rivals, the Della Torre faction; but the well-meant interference resulted in an explosion which must have startled him. A tumult broke out, and after much bloodshed the Torriani were expelled. Thereupon Cremona, Brescia, and other towns took up their cause and defied Henry, and he felt compelled to resign his function as rex pacificus, to sack Cremona and demolish her walls and to force Brescia to capitulate after a siege of four months, during which the most barbarous atrocities were perpetrated on both sides.

A whole year had now elapsed and Rome was still a long way off. In October 1311 Henry entered with his troops the unfriendly city of Genoa, where he was detained by the illness and death of his wife. In March 1312 he was welcomed at Pisa, which was, as usual, on the imperial side on account of its hatred of republican Florence. At Pisa he heard that the Colonna and other imperialists at Rome, who had already sent envoys to invite both him and Pope Clement, were zealously preparing for the coronation, but that the Orsini had made the counter-move of inviting to Rome King Robert of Naples, and that the Florentines were doing all that lay in their power, by bribing the French and the papal courts and leaguing together the Guelf cities, to support King Robert in any attempt that he might make to eject the 'barbarous German enemy of Italy' — lo straniero, il Tedesco, il barbaro nemico d'Italia e della sua libertà. He learnt that in answer to these appeals and invitations Robert had sent his brother John with troops to co-operate with the Orsini at Rome, and that they had occupied the Vatican, the Castle of S. Angelo, and the Trastevere.

But in spite of all this, and in spite of Dante's passionate appeals that he should first crush that 'poisonous viper,' Florence, Henry marched southwards and in May 1312 entered the Porta del Popolo and took up his quarters in the Lateran. Then fighting began between his troops and those of King Robert. He captured the Capitol and attempted to cross the river, but was repulsed with severe losses. Finally he had to renounce his long-cherished dream of a coronation in St. Peter's and to content himself with a ceremony in the Lateran basilica42 and with receiving a crown from the hands of a papal legate — for Pope Clement had not ventured to come to Rome.43

During the intense heats of August Henry left Rome and marched northwards with his fever-stricken and much diminished army, intending to follow Dante's advice and crush Florence. But the Florentines had collected what Villani calls an 'infinite number of foot-soldiers,' besides some 4000 horsemen, and defied him, merely shutting the gates of the city that faced towards S. Salvi, where he had his camp. At last, seeing that he could effect nothing, he moved off by night, and marching southwards again, as if wishing to return to Rome he took up quarters at Poggibonsi, not far from Siena.44 Here he remained until March 1313. He then moved to Pisa, which he reached very worn out both in mind and in body.

Since Henry had left Rome the people had gained the upper hand in a struggle with the nobles and had established once more a republic. They now invited him to return and receive the imperial dignity from their hands, intimating that they alone had the right to bestow it. Henry was inclined to accept the offer. He was also eager to chastise King Robert for his impudence, and for this purpose he had made alliance with Frederick of Sicily — an act which so enraged Pope Clement that he launched, too late, the bolt of excommunication at the Emperor.

Having collected a very considerable land army, which was to be supported by about 150 war-galleys supplied by Genoa, Pisa, and Sicily, Henry marched once more southwards. It was again midsummer and the suffering of his followers from heat and malaria were intense. He had nearly reached Buonconvento, •some twenty miles south of Siena, when he suddenly died — probably from an attack of malarial fever, or blood-poisoning, although it was reported and generally believed that the fatal poison had been administered by a Domenican priest in a sacramental wafer, or the rinsings of a sacramental chalice. His body was carried back to Pisa and entombed in the cathedral. Later it was removed to the Campo Santo (see Fig. 51 and explanation).

With the death of Henry of Luxemburg the medieval German-Italian Roman Empire (to give the somewhat fictitious dignity a full and fairly accurate title) passed away for ever. Other 'Holy Roman Emperors' crossed the Alps for divers political objects, but no other came, as he did, to re‑establish the Roman Empire, as the successor of Augustus, on its old foundation — the will of the roman people. With the death of Boniface VIII and the removal of the pontifical Seat from Rome to Avignon came to an end also the Italian Papacy of the Middle Age.

But this so‑called Middle Age did not likewise come suddenly to an end. It was at this time gradually merging into a transition period such as the twilight spell between the first grey of dawn and the first gold of sunrise — or perhaps, without indulging in misleading solar similes, we may point to literature and art as, in this case at least, truly reflecting 'the very age and body of the time' and as being the best means for determining the various stages in the development of what goes by the name of the Renaissance or the Rinascimento.

The age of Boniface VIII and of Henry VII was also the age of Dante, and in Italian literature Dante's gigantic figure seems to fill the whole of the space between the real Middle Age and the beginning of the New Learning. From different standpoints he is for us the one great poet of medieval literature and the first great modern poet. He stands alone. Before him there were a few faint songsters who in the new Italian tongue 'practised the sweet and gracious rimes of love,' but (to revert to solar similes) they were like morning stars that faded away before the sun. And after his death we come, as it were, to a sudden precipice; for, although in their lives Dante and Petrarch overlapped by seventeen years, there is between them a gulf so impassable that they seem to belong to two quite different ages. Thus a remarkable break in the history of the Italian people would seem to be here indicated. It is true that many extend the 'Middle Age' to a considerably later date. Some indeed would extend it to the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 or even to the discovery of America in 1492. But it seems not unreasonable to regard the great poem of Dante, written between 1301 and 1320, as the true boundary-stone between medieval and modern Italy, or perhaps we should call it Italy of the Renaissance. In regard to art — sculpture and painting — the case is similar, although the various stages and their transition periods are not quite coincident with those of Italian literature. The revival of sculpture, for reasons that will be noted later, preceded that of painting and that of literature, but, roughly speaking, we may call the Pisani and Giotto contemporaries of Dante, and, like him, these artists stand almost unpreceded and are followed by a period such as intervenes between the wild flowers of spring and those of summer — a somewhat long and barren interval, which produced little of note except Orcagna and the Gaddi and led up to the great outburst of art in the days of della Quercia, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Fra Angelico. It is at the beginning of this transition period and somewhere nigh the end of Dante's life that I have determined to conclude this narrative of the history of medieval Italy — a narrative that has covered rather more than a thousand years.

 
NOTE ON DANTE AND HENRY VII

 

When Henry came to Italy Dante had been an exile for nearly ten years,45 and had perhaps lately returned from wanderings that may have led him as far as Paris and the Netherlands, or even England. He was possibly present when Henry received the Iron Crown at Milan, and is said on this occasion to have 'devoted his counsels, if not his sword, to the Deliverer of Italy,' possibly presenting him with a copy of De Monarchia, which doubtless Henry failed to read. Soon afterwards from his retreat in the Casentino the poet sent to his native city a furious manifest beginning with the words Dantes Allagherius florentinus et exsul immeritus sceleratissimis Florentinis intrinsecus. It is filled with sarcasm and invective. 'What will avail,' he asks, 'your ditch, your bastions and towers, when the eagle, terrible with pinions of gold, comes swooping down upon you?' And while Henry still lingered at Pisa in the spring of 1312 Dante wrote him the letter already mentioned, in which he addresses the would-be Roman Emperor in the most amazing terms, calling him not only a Sun-god and a Sacred Sepulchre but even the Lamb of God, while he abuses Florence as a fox, a viper, a hydra, a tainted sheep, and so on. But, as we have seen, Henry took no notice.

Of far greater interest than these extravagant and furious epistles is the De Monarchia, a Latin treatise in three Books which was probably written about the time of Henry's descent into Italy. It is a striking proclamation of the hopes that then inspired many minds and a passionate appeal to divine Justice for some 'Messenger from heaven,' such as was the Angel who in Dante's poem came to succour the two poets and to open with his wand the gate of the fiery city of Dis.

In De Monarchia Dante argues at great length and with great ingenuity and erudition that the twofold nature of man needs two distinct guides — two Suns, as he says in his poem — the spiritual and the temporal, and he declares the Roman Emperor to be supreme in matters temporal. Through an universal Empire alone is it possible to attain universal peace — such peace as is necessary for humanity in order that it may devote itself to the highest objects of existence. He discussed the question whether the Roman people alone have the right to bestow imperial office, and brings proofs to show that it is so — that Rome is the one true centre of Christendom and of the Empire. He then asks whether the imperial authority is derived direct from God or through the Pope, and founds his decision on the fact that Christ recognized the temporal power as distinct from the spiritual.

But Dante was far more than a medieval casuist and dialectician. He had sight of much that was not dreamed of in the philosophy of the schoolmen. In this universal Empire of his is limned in somewhat shadowy but unmistakable outline that visionary form of universal peace and brotherhood and world-wide Federation which some of the greatest and noblest in every age have tried to summon up from the Limbo of unfulfilled hopes into the light of reason and realization, but which has now once more, like Eurydice, disappeared in the lurid gloom of a war such as the world has never known before. Dante's conception, says Sir William Ramsay, was that of a balance of forces — a commonwealth of cities, and nations free and self-ruled, but under a supreme central authority. Such an ideal Empire has been most nearly realized, some would say, by our own British Empire; others would perhaps point to the age of the Antonines — the one age, according to Gibbon, in which life has been really worth living.

 

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1 Namely, by handing over to their vengeance the town and stronghold of Tusculum—which, it must be confessed, had long been a nest of 'Tusculan Counts' and notorious for such Popes as John XII, besides being a grievous thorn in the side of republican Rome. It was now utterly destroyed. Thus disappeared the town of the son of Ulysses, the home of Cato, and the scene of Cicero's Tusculan Disputations.

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2 It was in 1193‑94 that Richard Coeur-de‑Lion was captured by Leopold of Austria and handed over to Henry VI. German historians assert that the capture was justified by the fact that Richard came to Germany for the purpose of aiding Henry the Lion in his rebellions; and they extol the magnanimity of Henry in releasing the English king; instead of giving him over to the vengeful Philippe Auguste—but they forger to mention the amount of ransom that the German monarch pocketed.

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3 King John of England among them. Once the defiant

excommunicated foe of Innocent, John ended by groveling at the feet of Pandulf, the papal legate, when he landed at Dover, and received back from his hands his crown as a vassal of the Papacy.

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4 See 'Note on Byzantine Emperors,' p. 308. The so‑called fourth Crusade (of which a picturesque account will be found in Gibbon, chs. lx‑lxi) is only slightly connected with Italian history, through Venice and Doge Dandolo and the horses of St. Mark's. Innocent had preached a Crusade, and a great number of French and Flemings assembled in North Italy and hired Venetian ships; but being unable to pay, they were persuaded by the Venetians to help them to capture Zara, in Dalmatia, formerly Venetian domain. Zara was taken. The Venetians then persuaded the Crusaders to attack Constantinople and reseat on the throne the expelled Emperor—the usurper having shown favour to the Pisans, the great rivals of Venice in the East. The Emperor was restored; but quarrels arose and the Crusaders and Venetians again stormed Constantinople and sacked it in the most barbarous fashion, and placed Baldwin of Flanders on the imperial throne—the first of six Latin Emperors of the East.

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5 A simile used also by Dante at the end of his De Monarchia, although in his poem (Purg. xvi) he more justly speaks of two suns.

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6 This seems rather inconsistent with his feelings about the detestable German race and imperial moonshine; but the bribe was big, and Innocent was very anxious that in any case the young Frederick should remain his feudatory and not become Emperor.

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7 In his struggles against his nobles and France he was supported largely by King John of England, and another result of this defeat at Bouvines was our Magna Carta.

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8 See p. 357. Frederick did not fight his way to Jerusalem. Before leaving Italy he had by clever diplomacy secured that the city should be handed over to him by the Sultan of Egypt whom he promised to help against his rival, the Sultan of Damascus. The assumption of the crown by Frederick violated the nominal rights of his father-in‑law, Jean de Brienne, who was made Eastern Emperor in 1228 and joined the Pope's motley brigade against Frederick.

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9 Gregory had been recalled to Rome by the citizens, terrified by a great inundation of the Tiber, which is said to have drowned thousands and to have broken down the Pons Aemilius (Senatorum). Of this bridge, still more damaged by the inundation of 1598, the relics form the well-known Ponte Rotto.

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10 Pope Gregory, however, declined to return to Rome — that 'lair of roaring wild beasts.' He remained two years longer in exile, and in 1237 made a triumphal entry, while Frederick was engaged in battling with the Lombard cities.

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11 Dante, Inf. xiii, 58. Later he was accused (wrongly, he tells Dante) of revealing State secrets and was imprisoned and perhaps blinded by Frederick's order; whereupon he killed himself. In Dante's Inferno his spirit inhabits the bleeding tree (in the Wood of the Suicides) from which Virgil bids his brother-poet break off a twig in order to make it utter its story 'in blood and words.'

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12 Fere centenarius, says the English chronicler Matthew Paris. He was over eighty when consecrated in 1227.

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13 He proposed himself to the courts of Aragon, France, and England, but was 'politely begged to spare them the honour of a visit' (Gregorovius).

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14 Soleva Roma . . . . Duo Soli aver. . . . L'un l'altro ha spento, ed è spada Col pasturale (Purg. xvi.)

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15 Letters of Innocent are extant in which he addresses the would-be assassins as 'glorious sons of the Church. [Susan note]

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16 Probably in the (now much restored) Palazzo del Rè Enzio at Bologna. His captivity is said to have been solaced by the affection of the beautiful Lucia Viadagola, from whom the Bentivogli claim descent.

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17 And yet Pope Gregory had often called him a 'blasphemous beast' and worse. But Frederick, infidel as he was, had enough Christian and knightly sentiment to agree with the noble words of Odysseys: 'It is an unholy act to triumph over the dead.' The influence of Frederick's Sicilian court on literature will be touched upon later. I shall not attempt here to give what journalists call an 'appreciation' of his character. His was one of those richly composite natures which defy analysis. His best qualities came from his Norman mother. A huge Life has been published by M. Bréholles (at the cost of the Duc de Luynes). He tries to prove that Frederick regarded himself as a kind of Messiah; but the Biblical expressions used by Frederick (e.g. when he called his birthplace 'Bethlehem' and told Pier delle Vigne to 'feed his sheep') may be explained by the usage of the age. Undoubtedly he was a free-thinker, a cosmopolitan in religion, with a strong penchant for Oriental forms of thought and Oriental habits, such as concubinage; and there is no reason to doubt that he used to speak of Moses, Christ, and Mohammed as three deceived deceivers whose religion he could better; and we cannot be surprised that Dante in the Inferno condemns him to a fiery tomb as a heresiarch. But what is surprising is that Frederick was himself strictly Catholic and a zealous persecutor of unorthodoxy, and, if Dante does not calumniate him, invented a most cruel form of torture and death for such heretics (see Inf. xxii, 66). It reminds one of Poggio's story of the brigand who had many unpardoned murders on his conscience, but came at the risk of his life into a town to obtain absolution for having drunk a few drops of milk in Lent.

18 See table, p.383. Henry, Frederick's son by Isabella of England, had been made viceroy of Sicily. He died about the same time as his father. Pope Innocent offered (!) the crown of Sicily to Charles of Anjou and Richard of Cornwall, both of whom refused it. He then persuaded Henry III of England to let his little son, Edmund of Lancaster, aged eight, assume the title. But Henry showed no inclination to respond when called upon by Popes to assert his son's claim by force and to conquer Sicily.

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19 The first time anyone less than an Emperor or Pope was crowned in St. Peter's. On his arrival Charles had very coolly quartered himself in the Lateran, but he received a most indignant letter from the Pope and had to clear out.

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20 See the wonderful passage (Purg. iii) in which Manfred himself relates all this to Dante, who met him, in spirit, in the Antipurgatory. The description of the young prince, 'fair-haired and handsome and of aspect gentle, save that a wound had cleft one of his eyebrows,' has always reminded me of that vision of Prince Edward which (in Shakespeare's Richard III) appeared to his murderer, Clarence: 'Then came wandering by A shadow like an angel, with bright hair Dabbled in blood . . . .'

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21 Astura, where Cicero had a villa and first took refuge in his flight, is now an island of ruins amid malarious swamps. Walls of the Frangipani castle still exist, and a single tower. In the dim distance looms the Circeian Cape.

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22 In the neighbouring church of S. Croce is a porphyry pillar that is aid to have stood on the spot where Conradin was beheaded.

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23 Dante alludes to the fact that Henry's heart was sent to England in a golden vase and was 'reverenced on the bank of the Thames.' The vase is said to have been placed on the tomb of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey.

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24 He is called Imperador even by Dante (Purg. viii, 94), although never crowned by the Pope. In a retired glade of the Mount of Purgatory Rudolf sits sad and solitary, as 'one who had neglected to do his duty' — viz.  to take a proper interest in Italy and be crowned at Rome. Not far off, in an amicable company, is our Henry III, 'the king of the simple life,' and Charles of Anjou singing hymns (through his 'masculine nose') out of the same hymn-book as his mortal foe, Peter of Aragon. See Fig. 48 and explanation.

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25 Florence, though Guelf, proved so recalcitrant to the Pope that he laid it under interdict, and being compelled by a flood to cross the Arno by a Florentine bridge, he only suspended the ban for a few hours — till he had passed through the city. The terms Guelf and Ghibelline had quite lost their original papal and imperial significations. Here we have Popes favouring the German Emperor and hostile to the Florentine Guelfs. The papal policy was, of course, never really on the side of republican liberty.

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26 Had he succeeded, in his designs, says Gregorovius, he would have made his nepotes kings of Tuscan and Lombardy. 'Son of the She-bear [Orsa], so greedy to advance my cubs, that on earth I pocketed wealth and here I pocketed myself,' is how he describes himself to Dante, who puts him, as Simonist, in Malebolge, upside down in a hole with his feet alight. Hearing Dante speaking Italian, he exclaims, 'Art thou already here, Boniface!' mistaking him for Pope Boniface VIII, who was destined (in 1303) to be thrust head-foremost into the same hole and to be followed later by Clement V, who removed the seat of the Papacy to Avignon.

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27 Heir also of the throne of Hungary, through his mother, Mary of Hungary. He married Clemence (the bella Clemenza of Par. ix, 1, unless this was his daughter), daughter of Rudolf of Habsburg, and died 1295, fourteen years before his father's decease. His brother Robert of Calabria succeeded to the Angevin throne of Naples. Charles Martel was a very dear friend of Dante's, who met him at Florence — and later in heaven (see Par. viii).

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28 The Angevin Kings of Naples and South Italy came to an end in 1442, when le bon roi René was dispossessed by the Spanish Alfonso, who thus became King of the Two Sicilies. Caltabellotta is in West Sicily, not very far from the gigantic ruins of Selinus. The (Saracen) word means 'Castle of the Cork-oaks.'

29 When visiting Gregory X in Lyon to obtain sanction for his new Order he astonished that pontiff by hanging up his monk's cowl on a sunbeam. Frescos at Aquila depict his miracles.

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30 Dante anyhow believed this, for he accuses Boniface of having not feared to win by trickery the beautiful Lady (i.e. the Church).

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31 As is well known, Dante brands Celestine (it is doubtless this Pope, though not named) as having made through cowardice the great refusal, and places him amidst the vast multitude of ignoble spirits who never were alive and are condemned to rush to and fro for ever in pursuit of a fluttering flag over the dark plain of the Acheron (Inf. iii)

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32 In Dante's poem (Inf. 27) Guido of Montefeltro, whom the poet puts among the flame-tortured Evil-Counsellors, describes how he was once a great Ghibelline leader against Charles of Anjou (of whose Frenchmen he at Forli made a bloody heap) and how he became Franciscan monk at Assisi, and how Boniface got hold of him and extracted from him the treacherous device by which Palestrina was captured: on which account his soul, claimed by St. Francis, was snatched away to hell by a 'black cherub.' Palestrina, the ancient Praeneste, is •twenty miles south-east of Rome. It was famous for its Temple of Fortune (destroyed by Sulla), which was raised aloft on huge terraces. Relics of these survive. In the castle Conradin was a prisoner. The place was rebuilt by the Colonna, and again destroyed by a Pope in 1436. Since 1630 it has been once more in the hands of the Colonna family. Stephen Colonna, exiled by Boniface, took part, as a very old man, in the Rienzi tumults.

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33 It is noticeable that no princes seem to have come — a significant fact. Gregorovius says that Charles Martel of Hungary was the only exception. But as he died in 1295, and as Dante saw him in heaven on April 1, 1300, there seems to be some mistake.

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34 The last date that the elder Villani mentions is April 11, 1348, and in alluding to the Great Plague of that year (so well known through Boccaccio's Decamerone) he wrote, 'This pestilence lasted till . . .' meaning to fill in the date later; but he never did so, as he himself died of the plague.

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35 He was at Rome, sent by the Florentines on an embassy to Boniface. He never saw Florence again.

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36 Contrast the state of things in Germany. Although Albert of Habsburg (and Austria) had overcome his rival, Adolf of Nassau, his authority was supported by no national sentiment. Dante accuses him of neglecting Italy, but he was too much occupied with the disintegration of his own realm and with such revolts as that of the Swiss (W. Tell!); and Boniface was not far wrong when he scornfully exclaimed to Albert's envoys: "Imperator! . . . Imperator sum ego!'

37 Among the Gaetani strongholds was the famous Tomb of Caecilia Metella, the battlements of which are said to have been erected by Boniface.

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38 Gross exaggerations as to his treatment are to be found in some writers, such as the Englishman Walsingham (c. 1400). It is however, very remarkable how Dante, who 'drags his enemy Boniface round the walls of the fiery city of Dis as Hector was dragged round Troy,' trembles with indignation at the sacrilegious treatment of this same Pope by that 'modern Pilate,' that 'Pest of France,' as he calls King Philip (Purg. vii. 109; xx, 46, etc.; and for two celebrated passages in which Boniface is attacked by Dante see Inf. xix, 52‑84, and Par. xxvii, 19‑30).

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39 Dante describes Philip and Clement as a giant and his paramour. He also, as we have seen, thrusts Clement head-foremost into a hole in the infernal Malebolge together with Boniface and Nicholas III.

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40 In Purg. vi Dante sharply rebukes Albert for not mounting into the saddle of Empire and taming Italy — the restive and vicious filly.

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41 See p. 477. Charles the Lame had died in 1309 and Robert (his third son — for Charles Martel was nominally King of Hungary, and a second son had become cleric) was invested by Clement V at Lyon as King of the Sicilies.

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42 It will be remembered that the old Lateran basilica collapsed in 896, at the time of the citation of the corpse of Pope Formosus before a Synod. The new building had been burnt in 1308 and was now freshly rebuilt and perhaps already adorned with Giotto's frescos.

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43 The legate and the cardinals at first refused to act, but the Roman people, claiming that the imperial dignity was in their gift, and not that of the Pope, threatened them with death. Possibly Dante had in mind this failure of the dream of papal coronation in St. Peter's when he imagined a crown lying on an empty throne awaiting the advent of Henry in the highest heaven (Par. xxx, 137).

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44 Still nearer to S. Gimignano (Figs. 42 and 54) and Certaldo, the home of Boccaccio, whose father was a tradesman there. Boccaccio was born in this same year (1311), but probably at Paris.

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45 For a few facts connected with Dante's life see ch. iv. I have occasionally borrowed (with permission) from my edition of Dante's Inferno which was published by the Oxford University Press in 1874.

 

INSERT TABLE

EMPERORS AND POPES (1190‑1313)