proximity must diminish the reverence which his name and his decrees impressed on a barbarous world. This difference has not escaped the notice of our philosophic historian: "though the name and authority of the court of Rome were so terrible in the remote countries of Europe, which were sunk in profound ignorance, and were entirely unacquainted with its character and conduct, the pope was so little revered at home that his inveterate enemies surrounded the gates of Rome itself and even controlled his government in that city; and the ambassadors, who, from a distant extremity of Europe, carried to him the humble, or rather abject, submissions of the greatest potentate of the age, found the utmost difficulty to make their way to him and to throw themselves at his feet "15 of Gregory 1086-1305 Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was exposed successors to envy, their power to opposition, and their persons to violence. VII. A.D. But the long hostility of the mitre and the crown increased the numbers, and inflamed the passions, of their enemies. The deadly factions of the Guelphs and Ghibelines, so fatal to Italy, could never be embraced with truth or constancy by the Romans, the subjects and adversaries both of the bishop and emperor; but their support was solicited by both parties; and they alternately displayed in their banners the keys of St. Peter and the German eagle. Gregory the Seventh, who may be adored or detested as the founder of the papal monarchy, was driven from Rome, and died in exile at Salerno. Six-and-thirty of his successors, 16 till their retreat to Avignon, maintained an unequal 15 Hume's History of England, vol. i. p. 419. The same writer has given us, from Fitz Stephen, a singular act of cruelty perpetrated on the clergy by Geoffrey, the father of Henry II. "When he was master of Normandy, the chapter of Seez presumed, without his consent, to proceed to the election of a bishop; upon which, he ordered all of them, with the bishop elect, to be castrated, and made all their testicles be brought him in a platter." Of the pain and danger they might justly complain; yet, since they had vowed chastity, he deprived them of a superfluous treasure. 16 From Leo IX. and Gregory VII. an authentic and contemporary series of the lives of the Popes, by the Cardinal of Arragon [Nicolò Roselli (ob. A.D. 1362)], Pandulphus Pisanus, Bernard Guido, &c. is inserted in the Italian historians of Muratori (tom. iii. p. i. p. 277-685), and has been always before my eyes. [This collection of Lives, printed by Muratori under the false title of the Cardinal of Aragon, is contained in the Liber Censuum sanctæ Romanæ Ecclesiæ (which is noticed above, vol. vi. p. 194 note). The Lives were also published, as Acta Vaticana, by Baronius in his Annales ecclesiastici (scattered about under the various years); and his text is said to be better than that of Muratori. There is a new edition of the Liber Censuum (put together A.D. 1192 by Cencius Camerarius) by P. Fabre. On the whole subject cp. Fabre's Etude sur le Liber censuum de l'église romaine, 1892.] VOL. VII.-15 A.D. 1090 contest with the Romans; their age and dignity were often violated; and the churches, in the solemn rites of religion, were polluted with sedition and murder. A repetition 17 of such capricious brutality, without connection or design, would be tedious and disgusting; and I shall content myself with some events of the twelfth century, which represent the state of the Paschal II. popes and the city. On Holy Thursday, while Paschal officiated 1118 before the altar, he was interrupted by the clamours of the multitude, who imperiously demanded the confirmation of a [A.D. 1116] favourite magistrate.18 His silence exasperated their fury; his pious refusal to mingle the affairs of earth and heaven was encountered with menaces and oaths, that he should be the cause and the witness of the public ruin. During the festival of Easter, while the bishop and the clergy, barefoot and in procession, visited the tombs of the martyrs, they were twice assaulted, at the bridge of St. Angelo and before the Capitol, with volleys of stones and darts. The houses of his adherents were levelled with the ground; Paschal escaped with difficulty and danger; he levied an army in the patrimony of St. Peter; and his last days were embittered by suffering and inflicting the calamities of civil war. The scenes that followed the election of his successor Gelasius the Second were still more scandalous to the church and city. Cencio Frangipani,19 a potent and factious baron, burst into the assembly furious, and in arms: the cardinals were stripped, beaten, and trampled under foot; and he seized, without pity or respect, the vicar of Christ by the throat. Gelasius was dragged by his hair along the ground, Gelasius II. A.D. 1118, 1119 [Frangipane] 17 The dates of years in the margin may, throughout this chapter, be understood as tacit references to the Annals of Muratori, my ordinary and excellent guide. He uses, and indeed quotes, with the freedom of a master, his great Collection of the Italian Historians, in xxviii. volumes; and, as that treasure is in my library, I have thought it an amusement, if not a duty, to consult the originals. 18 [The magistrate meant is the Prefect of the City (cp. below, p. 237), the criminal judge of Rome. His election often caused party conflicts. Paschal wished a son of Pierleone to be chosen, and the riot was marked by an attack on the fortress of the Pierleoni near the theatre of Marcellus.] 19 I cannot refrain from transcribing the high-coloured words of Pandulphus Pisanus (p. 384): Hoc audiens inimicus pacis atque turbator jam fatus Centius Fraja pane, more draconis immanissimi sibilans, et ab imis pectoribus trahens longa suspiria, accinctus retro gladio sine more cucurrit, valvas ac fores confregit. Ecclesiam furibundus introiit, inde custode remoto papam per gulam accepit, distraxit, pugnis calcibusque percussit, et tanquam brutum animal intra limen ecclesiæ acriter calcaribus cruentavit; et latro tantum dominum per capillos et brachia, Jesu bono interim dormiente, detraxit, ad domum usque deduxit, inibi catenavit et inclusit. buffeted with blows, wounded with spurs, and bound with an iron chain in the house of his brutal tyrant. An insurrection of the people delivered their bishop; the rival families opposed the violence of the Frangipani; and Cencio, who sued for pardon, repented of the failure rather than of the guilt of his enterprise. Not many days had elapsed when the pope was again assaulted at the altar. While his friends and enemies were engaged in a bloody contest, he escaped in his sacerdotal garments. In this unworthy flight, which excited the compassion of the Roman matrons, his attendants were scattered or unhorsed; and, in the fields behind the church of St. Peter, his successor was found alone and half dead with fear and fatigue. Shaking the dust from his feet, the apostle withdrew from a city in which his dignity was insulted and his person was endangered; and the vanity of sacerdotal ambition is revealed in the involuntary confession that one emperor was more tolerable than twenty.20 These examples might suffice; but I cannot forget the sufferings of two pontiffs of the same age, the second and third of the name of Lucius. The former, as he ascended in battle-array to Lucius II. assault the Capitol, was struck on the temple by a stone, and 112 1144, expired in a few days; 21 the latter was severely wounded in Lucius III. the persons of his servants.22 In a civil commotion several of 1185 his priests had been made prisoners; and the inhuman Romans, reserving one as a guide for his brethren, put out their eyes, crowned them with ludicrous mitres, mounted them on asses, with their faces to the tail, and extorted an oath that in this wretched condition they should offer themselves as a lesson to the head of the church. Hope or fear, lassitude or remorse, the characters of the men and the circumstances of the times, might sometimes obtain an interval of peace and obedience; and the pope was restored with joyful acclamations to the Lateran or Vatican, from whence he had been driven with threats and 20 Ego coram Deo et Ecclesiâ dico si unquam possibile esset, mallem unum imperatorem quam tot dominos (Vit. Gelas. II. p. 398). [Henry V., called in by the Frangipani, appeared in Rome on 11th March, 1119. Gelasius escaped to Gaeta. Gregorovius appropriately observes that "the flight to Gaeta was repeated 729 years later in the history of Pius IX." (iv. 383).] [Godfrey of Viterbo, in Muratori, vii. p. 461.] 22 [The sources for this outrage on Lucius III. (who finally sought the emperor's protection at Verona, where he died) are: Sigebertus Gemblacensis, Auctarium Aquicinense, ad ann. 1184 (Bethmann's ed. of Sigibert in the Monum. Germ. Hist. vi. p. 300 sqq. has superseded all others); Albertus Stadensis (= Annales Stadenses, in Mon. Germ. Hist. xvi.) ad 1183.] A.D. A.D. 1181 |