his death; with his ashes, his sect was dispersed; his memory still lived in the minds of the Romans. From his school they had probably derived a new article of faith, that the metropolis of the Catholic church is exempt from the penalties of excommunication and interdict. Their bishops might argue that the supreme jurisdiction, which they exercised over kings and nations, more specially embraced the city and diocese of the prince of the apostles. But they preached to the winds, and the same principle that weakened the effect, must temper the abuse, of the thunders of the Vatican.

tion of the

A.D. 1144

The love of ancient freedom has encouraged a belief that as Restoraearly as the tenth century, in their first struggles against the Senate. Saxon Othos, the commonwealth was vindicated and restored by [1143] the senate and people of Rome; that two consuls were annually elected among the nobles; and that ten or twelve plebeian magistrates revived the name and office of the tribunes of the commons.40 But this venerable structure disappears before the light of criticism. In the darkness of the middle ages, the appellations of senators, of consuls, of the sons of consuls, may sometimes be discovered." They were bestowed by the iii. p. i. p. 441, 442). [The circumstances of the death of Arnold of Brescia are dark; it happened near Soracte, not in the city. Cp. Gregorovius, op. cit. iv. 544. A new and important source was discovered not many years ago-an anonymous Latin poem entitled Gesta Friderici imperatoris in Italia, describing the Lombard wars of Frederick Barbarossa up to the battle of Carcano in A.D. 1160. (It has been proposed to ascribe the authorship to Thadeus de Roma.) It was published in 1887 (Gesta di Federico I. in Italia) by E. Monaci, as vol. i. of the Fonti per la storia d'Italia. But the passage relating to Arnold of Brescia was printed in 1878 in vol. i. of the Archivio della Società Romana di storia patria.]

40 Ducange (Gloss. Latinitatis mediæ et infimæ Etatis, DECARchones, tom. ii. p. 726) gives me a quotation from Blondus (decad. ii. l. ii.): Duo consules ex nobilitate quotannis fiebant, qui ad vetustum consulum exemplar summæ rerum præessent. And in Sigonius (de Regno Italiæ, 1. vi. Opp. tom. ii. p. 400) I read of the consuls and tribunes of the xth century. Both Blondus, and even Sigonius, too freely copied the classic method of supplying from reason or fancy the deficiency of records.

41 In the panegyric of Berengarius (Muratori, Script. Rer. Ital. tom. ii. p. i. p. 408), a Roman is mentioned as consulis natus in the beginning of the xth century. Muratori (dissert. v.) discovers, in the years 952 and 956, Gratianus in Dei nomine consul et dux, Georgius consul et dux; and in 1015, Romanus, brother of Gregory VIII., proudly, but vaguely, styles himself consul et dux et omnium Romanorum senator. [No such body as a Senate existed in Rome from the 8th to the 12th century; and the word Senatus frequently occurring not only in chronicles but even in Acts of Councils signifies merely the Roman nobility. For example Benzo describes a meeting of the adherents of the Imperial party in A.D. 1062 as an "assembly of the Senate". Thus senator meant a noble. But it was sometimes assumed as a title in a more pregnant sense, implying municipal authority, as when Alberic styled himself omnium Romanorum Senator; and his father-in-law Theophylactus had already borne the title Consul or Senator of the Romans, and the

44

43

emperors, or assumed by the most powerful citizens, to denote their rank, their honours 42 and perhaps the claim of a pure and patrician descent; but they float on the surface, without a series or a substance, the titles of men, not the orders of government; and it is only from the year of Christ one thousand one hundred and forty-four, that the establishment of the senate is dated, as a glorious æra, in the acts of the city. A new constitution was hastily framed by private ambition or popular enthusiasm ; nor could Rome, in the twelfth century, produce an antiquary to explain, or a legislator to restore, the harmony and proportions of the ancient model. The assembly of a free, of an armed people will ever speak in loud and weighty acclamations. But the regular distribution of the thirty-five tribes, the nice balance of the wealth and numbers of the centuries, the debates of the adverse orators, and the slow operation of votes and ballots could not easily be adapted by a blind multitude, ignor

son of Theophylactus was called Son of the Consul, and his wife Theodora the Senatrix. Compare Gregorovius, op. cit. iii. p. 293-5. Though there is no reason to suppose that the Romans elected consuls annually in this age (10th century), it seems that "a Consul of the Romans was elected as Princeps of the nobility from its midst; confirmed by the Pope; and placed as a Patricius at the head of the jurisdiction and administration of the city". Gregorovius, ib. p. 253. The Counts of Tusculum used to style themselves Consuls and Senators of the Romans. Gregorovius, iv. p. 138.]

42 As late as the xth century, the Greek emperors conferred on the dukes of Venice, Naples, Amalfi, &c. the title of aтоs, or consuls [consul?] (see Chron. Sagornini, passim); and the successors of Charlemagne would not abdicate any of their prerogatives. But, in general, the names of consul and senator, which may be found among the French and Germans, signify no more than count or lord (Signeur, Ducange, Glossar.). The monkish writers are often ambitious of fine classic words. [The title consul was borne in the 12th century, denoting the judiciary and ruling magistracy. Cp. Gregorovius, op. cit. iv. 459.]

43 The most constitutional form is a diploma of Otho III. (A.D. 998), Consulibus senatus populique Romani; but the act is probably spurious. At the coronation of Henry I. A.D. 1014, the historian Dithmar (apud Muratori, Dissert. xxiii.) describes him, a senatoribus duodecim vallatum, quorum sex rasi barbâ alii prolixâ mystice incedebant cum baculis. The senate is mentioned in the panegyric of Berengarius (p. 406).

44 [Just before this revolution the Romans had been involved in a war for the possession of Tivoli. The place had surrendered to the Pope, and they had demanded it from him. The revolution followed. "In 1143," says Gregorovius, "Rome made an attempt to form such an association of the different classes as had been formed in Milan, Pisa, Genoa, and other cities" (iv. p. 449). The lesser nobility joined the burghers, seized the Capitoline, declared themselves the Senate. Thus a free burgher class was established, and the despotism of the nobility who were the supporters of the Pope was overthrown: this is the significance of the revolution of 1143. The first civic constitution (1144) was framed under the influence of Jordan Pierleone.-Pope Lucius II. turned to Conrad III., but got no help. Then the Senate invited Conrad to come and rule in Rome (1149 or 1150). See Otto of Freisingen, i. 28.]

ment.

ant of the arts, and insensible of the benefits, of legal governIt was proposed by Arnold to revive and discriminate the equestrian order; but what could be the motive or measure of such distinction ? 45 The pecuniary qualification of the knights must have been reduced to the poverty of the times: those times no longer required their civil functions of judges and farmers of the revenue; and their primitive duty, their military service on horseback, was more nobly supplied by feudal tenures and the spirit of chivalry. The jurisprudence of the republic was useless and unknown; the nations and families of Italy, who lived under the Roman and barbaric laws, were insensibly mingled in a common mass; and some faint tradition, some imperfect fragments, preserved the memory of the Code and Pandects of Justinian. With their liberty, the Romans might doubtless have restored the appellation and office of consuls, had they not disdained a title so promiscuously adopted in the Italian cities that it has finally settled on the humble station of the agents of commerce in a foreign land. But the rights of the tribunes, the formidable word that arrested the public counsels, suppose, or must produce, a legitimate democracy. The old patricians were the subjects, the modern barons the tyrants, of the state; nor would the enemies of peace and order, who insulted the vicar of Christ, have long respected the unarmed sanctity of a plebeian magistrate.46

tol

In the revolution of the twelfth century, which gave a new The Capiexistence and æra to Rome, we may observe the real and important events that marked or confirmed her political independence. I. The Capitoline hill, one of her seven eminences,47 is

45 In ancient Rome, the equestrian order was not ranked with the senate and people as a third branch of the republic till the consulship of Cicero, who assumes the merit of the establishment (Plin. Hist. Natur. xxxiii. 3; Beaufort, République Romaine, tom. i. p. 144-155).

46 The republican plan of Arnold of Brescia is thus stated by Gunther:-
Quin etiam titulos urbis renovare vetustos ;
Nomine plebeio secernere nomen equestre,
Jura tribunorum, sanctum reparare senatum,
Et senio fessas mutasque reponere leges.
Lapsa ruinosis, et adhuc pendentia muris
Reddere primævo Capitolia prisca nitori.

But of these words.

reformations, some were no more than ideas, others no more than

47 After many disputes among the antiquaries of Rome, it seems determined that the summit of the Capitoline hill next the river is strictly the Mons Tarpeius, the Arx; and that, on the other summit, the church and convent of Araceli, the barefoot friars of St. Francis occupy the temple of Jupiter (Nardini, Roma Antica,

The coin

about four hundred yards in length and two hundred in breadth.
A flight of an hundred steps led to the summit of the Tarpeian
rock; and far steeper was the ascent before the declivities had
been smoothed and the precipices filled by the ruins of fallen
edifices. From the earliest ages, the Capitol had been used as
a temple in peace, a fortress in war: after the loss of the city,
it maintained a siege against the victorious Gauls; and the
sanctuary of empire was occupied, assaulted, and burnt, in the
civil wars of Vitellius and Vespasian." The temples of Jupiter
and his kindred deities had crumbled into dust; their place
was supplied by monasteries and houses; and the solid walls, the
long and shelving porticoes, were decayed or ruined by the lapse
of time. It was the first act of the Romans, an act of freedom,
to restore the strength, though not the beauty, of the Capitol; 49
to fortify the seat of their arms and counsels; and, as often as
they ascended the hill, the coldest minds must have glowed
with the remembrance of their ancestors. II. The first Cæsars
had been invested with the exclusive coinage of the gold and
silver; to the senate they abandoned the baser metal of bronze
or copper; the emblems and legends were inscribed on a more
ample field by the genius of flattery; and the prince was
relieved from the care of celebrating his own virtues.
The suc-
cessors of Diocletian despised even the flattery of the senate :
their royal officers at Rome, and in the provinces, assumed the
sole direction of the mint; and the same prerogative was
inherited by the Gothic kings of Italy, and the long series of
the Greek, the French, and the German dynasties. After an
abdication of eight hundred years, the Roman senate asserted

50

1. v. c. 11-16). [This conclusion is incorrect. Both the Tarpeian Rock and the Temple of Jupiter were on the western height; the Arx was on the eastern, which is now crowned by the Church of St. Maria in Aracoeli. For the determination of the site of the temple, a passage in the Graphia (a collection of ceremonial formularies which was perhaps drawn up for Otto III., in imitation of the Byzantine ceremonials) was of great importance: "On the summit of the fortress over the Porticus Crinorum was the Temple of Jupiter and Moneta". This portico belonged to the Forum olitorium; as was shown by excavations in the Caffarelli gardens. Pope Anaclete II. ratified to the Abbot of St. Maria the possession of the Capitoline hill.]

48 Tacit. Hist. iii. 69, 70.

49 [The old Tabularium, in the saddle between the two summits, became the Senate-house. Cp. Gregorovius, op. cit. iv. 477.]

50 This partition of the nobler and the baser metals between the emperor and senate must, however, be adopted, not as a positive fact, but as the probable opinion of the best antiquaries (see the Science des Médailles of the Père Joubert, tom. ii. p. 208-211, in the improved and scarce edition of the Baron de la Bastie).

fect of the

this honourable and lucrative privilege; which was tacitly renounced by the popes, from Paschal the Second to the establishment of their residence beyond the Alps. Some of these republican coins of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are shewn in the cabinets of the curious. On one of these, a gold medal, Christ is depictured, holding in his left hand a book with this inscription, "THE VOW OF THE ROMAN SENATE AND PEOPLE: ROME, THE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD"; on the reverse, St. Peter delivering a banner to a kneeling senator in his cap and gown, with the name and arms of his family impressed on a shield.51 III. With the empire, the præfect of the city had The prædeclined to a municipal officer; yet he still exercised in the city last appeal the civil and criminal jurisdiction; and a drawn sword, which he received from the successors of Otho, was the mode of his investiture and the emblem of his functions.52 The dignity was confined to the noble families of Rome; the choice of the people was ratified by the pope; but a triple oath of fidelity must have often embarrassed the præfect in the conflict of adverse duties.53 A servant, in whom they possessed but a third share, was dismissed by the independent Romans; in his place they elected a patrician; but this title, which Charlemagne had not disdained, was too lofty for a citizen or a subject; and, after the first fervour of rebellion, they consented without reluctance to the restoration of the præfect. About fifty years A.D. 1198after this event, Innocent the Third, the most ambitious, or at least the most fortunate, of the pontiffs, delivered the Romans

51 In his xxviith dissertation on the Antiquities of Italy (tom. ii. p. 559-569), Muratori exhibits a series of the senatorian coins, which bore the obscure names of Affortiati [ of strong gold], Infortiati, Provisini [from Provins, in Champagne], Paparini. [Those which are perhaps earliest have ROMAN. PRICIPE round the image of St. Peter, and SENAT. POPVL. Q.R. round St. Paul.] During this period, all the popes, without excepting Boniface VIII., abstained from the right of coining, which was resumed by his successor Benedict XI. and regularly exercised in the court of Avignon.

52 A German historian, Gerard of Reicherspeg (in Baluz. Miscell. tom. v. p. 64, apud Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, tom. iii. p. 265), thus describes the constitution of Rome in the xith century: Grandiora urbis et orbis negotia spectant ad Romanum pontificem itemque ad Romanum Imperatorem; sive illius vicarium urbis præfectum, qui de suâ dignitate respicit utrumque, videlicet dominum papam cui facit hominum, et dominum imperatorum a quo accipit suæ potestatis insigne, scilicet gladium exertum. [Contelorius, De præfecto Urbis.]

53 The words of a contemporary writer (Pandulph. Pisan. in Vit. Paschal. II. p. 357, 358) describe the election and oath of the præfect in 1118, inconsultis patribus loca præfectoria . . . laudes præfectoriæ. . . comitiorum applausum . juraturum populo in ambonem sublevant . . . confirmari eum in urbe præfectum petunt.

1816