BOOK VIII. 

FROM THE DEATH OF POPE BONIFACE VIII TO THE END  OF THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE,  A.D. 1303-1418.

 

CHAPTER IV.

FROM THE ELECTION OF POPE INNOCENT VI. TO THE DEATH OF GREGORY XI. A. D. 1352-1378.

 

AT the death of Clement VI the cardinals had reason to suppose that John, who in 1350 had succeeded to the crown of France, would endeavour to set up a pope of his own nomination; and, notwithstanding their devotion to the French interest, they resolved to preserve a show of independence by making their election before any intimation of the royal will could reach them. It seemed as if John Birelli, general of the Carthusian order, were about to be chosen; but cardinal Talleyrand warned his brethren that the Carthusian, if he were to become pope, would reduce them to primitive simplicity of living, and would degrade their splendid horses to drag the waggon or the plough. The cardinals then determined to choose one of their own number, under a system of capitulation such as had sometimes been practised in elections of bishops, and had lately been usual in the elections of emperors. Every member of the college was to swear that, if chosen, he would make no new cardinals until the college should be reduced to sixteen; that he would never raise their number to more than twenty; that he would not create, depose, or arrest any cardinal without the consent of the whole body; and that he would make over to the cardinals one-half of the revenues of the Roman church. By these terms the future pope would have bound himself to become a tool of the cardinals; and, although all took the oath, some of them did so with the reservation “provided that these laws be agreeable to right”.

On the 18th of December the choice of the cardinals fell on Stephen Aubert, a Limousin, bishop of Ostia, a man eminent for his learning in civil and ecclesiastical law, who styled himself Innocent VI. Soon after his election, the new pope took advantage of the reservation which he had made in swearing to the late agreement, by declaring that he had found such engagements to be contrary to the decrees of some former popes; and also that they were void for attempting to limit the power which God had bestowed on St. Peter and his successors. And the cardinals, who seem to have become aware of the evils which might result from such capitulations, acquiesced in this determinations

Innocent betook himself earnestly to the work of ecclesiastical reform. He did away with the system of reserves, and in his bull for that purpose he dwelt on the mischiefs which had arisen from them—such as the neglect of pastoral care, the dilapidation of churches, and the decay of hospitality. He abolished many of the corruptions of the court, and did much to restrain the extortion of his officials. He suppressed the scandalous abuse by which prostitutes had been allowed, on payment of a tax to the papal treasury, to ply their trade at Avignon. He insisted on an abatement of the excessive luxury in which the cardinals had indulged, and himself set an example in this respect; and those members of the college who offended him by their laxity of life were awed by threats that he would remove the court to Rome. The bishops who haunted Avignon were compelled to return to their dioceses. He discouraged pluralities: there is a story that when a favourite chaplain, who held seven benefices, asked for some preferment in behalf of a nephew, Innocent desired him to give up to the young man the best of his own preferments; and, as the chaplain showed dissatisfaction at this, he was further required to resign three other livings, each of which the pope bestowed on a poor clerk. Innocent was careful in the disposal of his patronage; and, although he is charged with too great fondness for advancing his own relations, it is admitted that in general the kinsmen whom he promoted did him no discredit.

Innocent was able to act with an independence unknown to the earlier Avignon popes; for king John, weakened by the disastrous war with England, in which he himself was made a captive at Poitiers, was unable to exercise a control like that of Philip the Fair, or of his own father, Philip of Valois.

In the meantime Italy was a prey to disorder. While every division of the country had its own little tyrant, the Milanese family of Visconti had gained such a predominance in the north that the ancient parties of Guelfs and Ghibellines forgot their enmities in order to combine against a foe who threatened them all. On the death of Lucchino Visconti, in 1348, the lordship of Milan fell to his brother John, who was already archbishop of the city. By violently seizing on Bologna, a city which belonged to the pope, he incurred threats of excommunication and deprivation from Clement VI; but by bribing the king of France and other powerful intercessors, including that pope’s favourite, the countess of Turenne, he was afterwards able to make terms, and was allowed to retain the place for twelve years, on condition of paying tribute. It is said that, when required by a legate to choose between the characters of archbishop and secular prince, he desired that the message might be repeated in the face of his clergy and people; and when this was done on the following Sunday, after he had celebrated mass with great pomp, he rose from his throne, holding in one hand his crosier, and in the other his drawn sword—“These”, he said, “are my arms spiritual and temporal; and with the one I will defend the other”. He signified, however, his willingness to appear at Avignon; but the proceedings of his harbingers, who set about hiring all the houses that could be got in the city and for leagues around it, as if to lodge an overwhelming train, alarmed the pope to such a degree that the archbishop’s visit was excused.

The citizens of the Italian republics, devoting them­selves to the accumulation of wealth, ceased to cultivate the art of war, and relied for their defence on the mercenary bands which now, under the name of free companies, overran both France and Italy. These companies were at first composed in great part of soldiers who, by the conclusion of peace between France and England, had found their occupation gone. They admitted into their ranks men of various nations, and enlisted themselves in the service of any power that could afford to hire them—keeping their contract faithfully so long as it lasted, but holding themselves at liberty to go over to an opposite party at the end of the term; and when not thus engaged, they plundered and ravaged on their own account. Among the captains of such mercenaries the most famous was Sir John Hawkwood, an Englishman, who, after having distinguished himself in the French wars, passed into Italy, and there served for thirty years under the Visconti, the pope, and lastly under the republic of Florence, which at his death com­memorated him by a colossal equestrian portrait, still existing in the cathedral. Hawkwood had the reputation of being the most skilful commander of his age; and in our own day he has been characterized by an eminent historian as “the first real general of modern times; the earliest master, however imperfect, in the science of Turenne and Wellington”. Avignon was repeatedly threatened by these companies, which laid waste the country around it; and the popes endeavoured to protect themselves, some­times by uttering anathemas, sometimes by engaging the aid of princes and nobles, but more successfully by the payment of large sums of money, by which the adventurers were persuaded to transfer themselves to some other quarter. Thus Innocent in 1362 bought off the “White company”, which thereupon crossed the Alps, at the invitation of the marquis of Montferrat, and engaged in the wars of Italy. With a view to defence against such assailants, Innocent fortified his palace and the city of Avignon—enclosing within the walls an extent of ground which left room for the future increase of the place.

Rome had been in a state of confusion since the time of Rienzi’s withdrawal, in January 1348. With a view to recovering his power over the city, and over the territory of the church, Innocent in 1353 sent into Italy an army under Giles Albornoz, cardinal of St. Clement, a Spaniard, who had been a knight in his youth, and afterwards archbishop of Toledo—a man eminent both for military and for political talents. With this legate was joined Rienzi, who had been released from prison, and invested with the dignity of senator, in the hope that he might be able to resume his influence over the Romans, and that he would use it in the interest of the papacy. But although the citizens, weary of anarchy, appear to have begged that their former tribune might be restored to them, and received him with enthusiasm, he speedily forfeited their favour by his misconduct. The faults which had led to his earlier fall were repeated in a worse degree than before. The people were oppressed by heavy taxes levied on the necessaries of life. His power was exercised with caprice and cruelty; and especial distrust was excited by the death of one Pandulf, whose only crime was the possession of influence, and by that of Walter de Montreal, a famous Provencal condottiere, who, from having been formerly a knight of St. John, was commonly styled Brother Moreale. This man had offended against the public peace by acts which pope Innocent describes as worse than the outrages of Holofernes or of Totila; but his brothers had laid Rienzi under great obligations by advancing sums of money which were necessary to the fulfilment of his mission; and when the senator, in disregard of this, treacherously decoyed Moreale into his power, tortured him and put him to death, the victim’s faults were for­gotten in indignation at the manner of his end. Meanwhile Rienzi’s personal habits became grossly sensual; he fed immoderately on sweetmeats, drank strong mixed wines at all hours, and showed the effect of these indul­gences in the swelling of his body, which a contemporary likens to that of a fatted ox or of an abbot of unreason. His reputation was lowered by failure in an attempt to take the fortress of Palestrina from the Colonnas. Rome became impatient of his yoke, and his oratory had lost its power over the multitude. A rising took place, there were cries for his death, and Rienzi was arrested while attempting to escape in disguise. For an hour he was exposed to the derision of the mob, who then fell upon him, cut him to pieces, and treated his remains with indignities which showed the violence of their exasperation against him. Although, however, the attempt to turn Rienzi to account had utterly failed, the legate Albornoz, a man of a very different stamp, conducted his affairs with such skill that he succeeded in recovering Bologna and the Romagna, with almost all the other ecclesiastical territories.

In 1354 the emperor Charles, with the pope’s sanction, proceeded into Italy for his coronation. He found that the formidable archbishop of Milan, John Visconti, had died in consequence of a surgical operation, and been succeeded in his secular power by his three nephews, of whom the eldest, Matthew, was soon after poisoned by his brothers Bernabò and Galeazzo, because his excessive dissoluteness endangered the interests of the family. Charles received the iron crown at Milan on the Epiphany, 1355, and, leaving Bernabò Visconti as his vicar (an appointment which greatly offended the pope), he continued his progress towards Rome. The smallness of the force by which he was accompanied—a mere escort of three hundred horsemen—disarmed the suspicion of the Italians, and, because of his very weakness, Charles was everywhere received with an extraordinary show of respect; even the rigid Guelf republicans of Florence did homage, and bound themselves to the payment of tribute. At Pisa he was strengthened by the arrival of those Germans whose duty required them to attend the emperor on such expeditions, so that he found himself at the head of a considerable force, composed of the Rower of the German nobility. A condition by which he had pledged himself not to enter Rome before the day of the coronation, had been in so far relaxed by the pope that, on arriving on Thursday in the holy week, he was allowed to visit the churches and the cardinals as a pilgrim. But his solemn entry was deferred until Easter-day, when he and his empress were crowned in St. Peter’s by the cardinal-bishop of Ostia; and on the same day, agreeably to his engagement, he again left the city. Without having made an attempt to recover any rights of the empire which had been invaded, or to establish any authority over Rome, Charles returned northward so hastily, and with so little display, that his journey almost resembled a flight; and Petrarch, who had urged him to revive the glories of Rome, and had been summoned to meet him at Mantua on his way to the coronation, expressed strongly the bitter disappointment of the hopes which he had rested on the emperor. In July 1355 Charles arrived again in Germany, enriched by the money which he had levied on the Italian cities, but without having increased his reputation.

Charles had announced from Piacenza that, if he should be permitted to return to Germany, he intended to do some good thing for the benefit of the kingdom and, in fulfilment of this promise, he summoned a diet to meet in January 1356 at Nuremberg, where the document known as his Golden Bull was enacted as a fundamental law of the empire. By this bull many circumstances of the election to the crown were settled—the forms to be observed, the duties of the chief officers, the time within which an election must take place after a vacancy, the election at Frankfort, and the coronation at Aix-la-Chapelle. By a provision which doubtless originated in Charles’s own rare knowledge of languages, it was ordered that, whereas the empire consisted of various nations, the sons of the lay electors should, from their seventh to their fourteenth year, be instructed in Italian and Slavonic. But the bull was chiefly important as determining to whom the right of sharing in the election should belong. For as to this there had been much difficulty and uncertainty, from the circumstance that the rule of inherit­ance by primogeniture had not been established in the families of the lay electors, and that consequently their territories were liable to be broken up among several heirs, each of whom might claim the electoral suffrage. By the “golden bull” it was settled that in every case the vote should be attached to a certain portion of territory, which was to be regarded as the electoral land, and that this portion should descend according to the order of primogeniture. The claim of the pope to interfere with the election was not mentioned at all; and it was assumed that in Germany, at least, the king or emperor had full power from the time of his election, so as to need no confirmation in his office. The “priests’ emperor” had secured the crown against the pretensions of the papacy; and Innocent was greatly annoyed at the result.

After a pontificate of nearly ten years, Innocent died on the 12th of September 1362. Twenty cardinals assembled for the choice of a successor; but they were unable to agree as to the promotion of one of their own body, and their choice fell on William de Grimoard, a native of the diocese of Mende, and abbot of the Benedictine monastery of St. Victor at Marseilles. The new pope, Urban V, who was sup­posed to have been elected under a special influence of the Holy Ghost, had attained the age of sixty, was respected alike for his sanctity and for his learning, and had exerted himself greatly in the service of the church. Like his predecessor, he showed himself an enemy to the corruptions of the court, to simony, pluralities, and non-residence. He took away from the houses of the cardinals the privilege of sanctuary, which had been much abused. As pope he retained the monastic dress and the simplicity of monastic habits but, while thus sparing of expense on himself, he laid out vast sums for the benefit of the church, as on the restoration of the Roman churches and palaces, the erection and endowment of a monastery and a college at Montpellier, and the encouragement of learning by maintaining a thousand students in various universities, and by liberally supplying them with books. He chose his cardinals for their merit alone, whereas the late popes had limited their choice to such persons as were devoted to the French interest. Nor did he fall into the usual fault of en­riching his own kindred, whether laymen or clergy, at the expense of the church; for only two of his near relatives were advanced to the prelacy, and of these it is said that both were deserving, and that one was promoted at the special request of the cardinals.

The south of France continued for a time to be infested by the free companies; but at length they were put down under this pontificate. In Italy, however, the evil endured longer, and the country suffered greatly from the power, the tyranny, and the ambition of Bernabò Visconti, who was now the head of his family. Innocent had proclaimed in 1356 a crusade against the Visconti for detaining certain cities which belonged to the church; but the design was marred by the misconduct of the preachers, who endeavoured to make a profit for themselves out of the indulgences which they were authorized to offer, and the payments for exemption from service.

Bernabò showed himself especially hostile to the clergy. For instance, it is said that he seized a priest who had been sent to preach the crusade, put him into an iron cage, and roasted him to death on a gridiron; and that he caused some Franciscans to be shod with iron, like horses, the nails being driven into their feet. He declared himself to be both pope and emperor within his own dominions; he tore up papal letters, and imprisoned the bearers of them; Urban himself when sent to him as legate by pope Innocent, had been forced to swallow the bull which he carried, with the leaden seal and the string by which it was attached to the parchment;  and he compelled a priest of Parma to utter an anathema against Innocent and the cardinals. The pope denounced him excommunicate, authorized his wife to separate from him as a heretic and unbeliever, formed an alliance against him with the emperor and with some Italian states, and put off, in favour of a crusade against Bernabò, one in which king John of France and many of his nobles had enlisted themselves for the recovery of the Holy Land. But Bernabò was able to hold his ground, and the pope was glad at length to conclude a peace with him, by which Bologna was recovered for the papacy, while Urban undertook to mediate for him with the emperor.

Urban before his election had been strongly in favour of restoring the papal residence to Rome, and he was now entreated to act on the desire which he had expressed. The emperor Charles urged him; the Romans invited him to take up his abode among them; Peter, a prince of Aragon, who had become a Franciscan, brought the authority of visions in support of the return; and Petrarch renewed the suit which he had so often made to preceding popes. The poet represents the desolate state of Rome, where the holiest and most venerable buildings lay in heartrending decay, while the pope lived in ease and splendour on the banks of the Rhone. He dwells on the beauty of Italy, which wanted nothing but peace, while he sneers at Avignon as the “native country of the winds”. He even argues from Urban’s name the duty of returning to the city. He endeavours to gain over the cardinals, whom he supposes reluctant to tear themselves away from the wines of Burgundy, by assuring them that Italy too has its delicious wines, and that in any case they will be able to import the other vintages. In a loftier strain Petrarch admonishes Urban by a comparison between the ancient capital of Christendom and the French city which had become infamous for its vices from the time when the popes made it their residence; and, after setting forth the terrors of the judgment-day and of the account to be then exacted, he asks the pope whether he would rather choose to rise with the notorious sinners of Avignon, or with St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Stephen and St. Laurence, and the thousands of other saints whose relics or whose memories were connected with Rome.

On the other hand, Nicolas Oreme, an ecclesiastic attached to the French court, argued in behalf of Avignon and of France, insisting especially on the superiority of that country in literary fame. But Petrarch indignantly rejoined that many of the men to whom France owed its renown in letters were of Italian birth, as Peter Lombard, Thomas of Aquino, Bonaventura, and Giles Colonna; and, as he had been blamed for calling Gaul a place of exile, he justified the phrase by referring to the banishment of Herod and of Pilate.

In May 1365 the emperor Charles visited Avignon, professedly in order to concert measures for the crusade; but the visit resulted in an agreement that both the pope and the emperor should go to Rome in the next year but one. The cardinals were opposed to the removal of the court; but Urban, who had never been a member of the college, set light by their opposition, and is said to have made two new cardinals by way of showing his power April 30, over them. On this they took alarm, and while some of them reluctantly accompanied him, breaking out into lamentations and reproaches as they put to sea, others made the journey by land, although five stubbornly remained at Avignon.

On landing at Corneto he was met by the legate Albornoz, to whose prudence and warlike skill the papacy had been indebted for the recovery of much of its temporal power, but this eminent man died at Viterbo during Urban’s stay there. The insolence of a cardinal’s servant, who washed a favourite dog in a public fountain, excited the populace of Viterbo to a tumult, in which cries of “Death to the church!” were raised, and it was suspected that the outbreak was contrived by the cardinals in the hope of disgusting the pope with Italy.

At Rome, however, he was welcomed with enthu­siasm; and within a year from the time of his arrival he received the homage, not only of the queen of Naples and of the king of Cyprus, but of the emperors both of the west and of the east. John Palaeologus, whose object was to obtain the aid of the western Christians against the Turks, acknowledged in all points the faith of the Roman church and the claims of the papacy. Charles behaved towards the pope with the deepest show of reverence : he led his horse from the gate of St. Angelo to St. Peter’s, and then officiated as deacon at a mass celebrated by Urban, who placed the crown on the head of the emperor’s fourth wife. But we learn from an eye-witness that, while the clergy were exulting over this subordination of the temporal to the spiritual dignity, other persons viewed with deep disgust a scene which they regarded as a humiliation of the empire. The pope himself was disappointed at finding that Charles, instead of carrying out an alliance against Bernabò Visconti, made peace with him on condition of receiving a large sum of money. In like manner the emperor allowed himself to be bought off by various cities on his way homewards; and, as after his former visit, he returned to Prague with the general contempt of the Italians.

Urban’s favourite place of residence was Monte Fiascone, which he preferred to Rome on account of its quiet and of its more salubrious air; and there, in September 1368, he increased the preponderance of the French party among the cardinals by adding six Frenchmen to the college, while of other nations there were only one Italian and one Englishman.

After three years spent in Italy, the pope announced his intention of returning to Avignon. To the Romans, who remonstrated, he expressed gratitude for the peace which he and the members of his court had enjoyed among them, and assured them that he would still be with them in heart; but he alleged the necessity of public affairs—a plea which, although it might have been war­ranted by the renewal of war between France and England, is supposed to have really meant that the French cardinals would no longer endure to be at a distance from the de­lights of Avignon. St. Bridget of Sweden, whose oracles exercised a powerful influence on the age, solemnly warned the pope that, if he returned to France, it would be only to die; Peter of Aragon added his monitions to the same purpose; and these prophetic threats were supposed to be fulfilled when Urban’s arrival at Avignon was followed within three months by his death. In his last sickness he formally retracted anything (if such there were) that he might have taught or said contrary to the faith of the church. The general reverence for his character was expressed in a belief that miracles were done at his grave and it is supposed that his canonization, which was solicited by Waldemar III of Denmark and others, was prevented only by the troubles which soon after came on the papacy.

 

GREGORY XI. MASSACRE OF CESENA

 

On the 30th of December, Peter Roger, cardinal of Sta. Maria Nuova, was elected to the vacant chair, and took the name of Gregory XI. He was a nephew of Clement VI, by whom he had been advanced to the cardinalate at the age of seventeen or eighteen; but Clement, “lest he should seem to have conferred with flesh and blood”, had been careful to place the young cardinal under the best tutors, so that Gregory was respected for his learning in civil and in canon law, as well as for his modesty, prudence, and generosity. The chief defect noted in him was that same regard for family interests to which he had owed his own early promotion.

Gregory took an active part in the affairs of Italy, where Bernabò Visconti and his brother Galeazzo continued to be formidable. In 1372 a bull was issued by which they were excommunicated, their subjects were released from allegiance, and all Christians were invited to take part in a holy war against them. There were serious commotions in the papal states, where eighty towns threw off their subjection to Rome. Robert, cardinal of Geneva, was sent into the Romagna as legate, with a band of Breton mercenaries, whose acts of license excited the detestation of the people. At Cesena a rising took place, in which some hundreds of them were killed, and the rest were driven from the town. The legate, having secured the co-operation of the famous condottiere Sir John Hawkwood, persuaded the citizens to admit him peaceably, allowing that they had received great provocation from his troops, and even (it is said) swearing that no vengeance should be taken if they would lay down their arms. Having thus lulled them into security, he then gave loose to a massacre in which, according to some writers, three thousand perished, while others reckon the number at four, five, or even eight thousand. A thousand women were saved by the humanity of Hawkwood, who furnished them with an escort; but atrocious acts of cruelty were committed by the infuriated Bretons; and it is said that the cardinal overcame the scruples of Hawkwood and his men by desiring that all the inhabitants might be killed indiscriminately.

The Florentines, for their resistance to the papal authority, against which they had formed an extensive league, were put under ban and interdict in March 1376. It was even declared that they might be made slaves, and advantage was taken of this against many of them who were in England, while their old rivals of Genoa and Pisa, by scrupling to act on the permission, incurred the penalty of interdict against themselves. The Florentines entreated the mediation of St. Catharine of Siena, whose austerities were supposed to be connected with prophetic insight and she, having repaired to Avignon for the purpose of pleading their caused, used the opportunity to set before the pope the misgovernment of the ecclesiastical states, and to urge his return to Rome. The voice of Petrarch was no longer to be heard in the cause which he had so often advocated but St. Bridget of Sweden, who had seen the beginning of Gregory’s pontificate, had solemnly warned him, on the ground of revelations, that, unless he returned to Rome within a certain time, the States of the Church would be rent asunder, even as her messenger was charged to read the letter which he conveyed, and her prophetical authority had been inherited by her daughter, St. Catharine of Sweden, who now joined her representations to those of the virgin of Siena.

It is said that Gregory had vowed that, if he should be chosen pope, he would return to Rome; and, in addition to all other incitements, he was now convinced that his interest in Italy suffered, and was even in danger of being absolutely ruined, through his absence. The Bolognese had driven out the legate and all the papal officials; the sovereignty of the church was hardly anywhere acknow­ledged throughout the ecclesiastical states. It is said, too, that the pope was much influenced by the repartee of a bishop, who, on being asked by him why he did not go to his diocese, retorted the question on Gregory himself. In 1376 Gregory announced his intention of returning to Rome; and, although it was opposed by the French king, by his own relations, and by many of his cardinals, six of whom refused to leave Avignon, he set out on the 13th of September. After a tedious journey, performed partly by land and partly by sea, he landed at St. Paul’s on the 15th of January 1377, and his entrance into Rome was welcomed with great demonstrations of joy. The “Babylonian captivity” of seventy years was ended.

Gregory, however, soon found that his course was beset with difficulties. Although the hostility of the Visconti had been appeased by a compact that Galeazzo should retain certain towns on consideration of paying a sum of money to the papal treasury, the differences with Florence still remained, and the nobles of Rome and of the ecclesiastical states were insubordinate. The pope could not feel himself at home in his capital. The ruinous state of the walls, the churches, the palaces, and other buildings, depressed him. The long absence of the court, and the anarchy of Rome, had produced an offensive rudeness in the manners of the citizens. Even his want of acquaintance with the language of his subjects—the meaning of which he could only guess at by the help of Latin, French, and Provençal—aggravated not a little the discomfort of Gregory’s position. It is believed that he meditated a return to Avignon, when he was seized with an illness, which, acting on a weak constitution, carried him off on the 27th of March 1378, at the age of forty-seven. His feeling towards the saints whose prophetical admonitions had influenced him in his removal to Rome is said to have been remarkably shown on his death-bed, when, holding the holy Eucharist in his hands, he warned those who stood around against the pretensions of enthusiastic men or women who uttered as revelations the fancies of their own brains.

A Florentine embassy had been well received at Rome but the terms of reconciliation which Gregory proposed were too severe to be accepted; and when the pope in turn sent some envoys to Florence, the citizens not only refused to submit to their proposals, but compelled the clergy to defy the interdict, which had until then been so far respected that the offices of religion had been performed with closed doors. The pope retaliated by aggravated denunciations; but at length certain terms of peace had been agreed on, when the death of Gregory put an end to the negotiation.

The eagerness of Charles IV to secure the imperial crown for his own family had furnished Gregory with an opportunity for asserting the papal claim to a control over elections to the empire. On the emperor’s pro­posing that his son Wenceslaus, then only seventeen years of age, should be chosen as king of the Romans, some of the electors (perhaps from a wish to hide their own dislike of the scheme) expressed an apprehension that the pope might object; and Charles, in contradiction to the principles asserted by the union of Rhense in 1338, and afterwards in his own golden bull, applied for the pope’s consent. The election of a son during his father’s lifetime was opposed to the Roman policy, which discouraged the idea of inheritance in the imperial crown, and even Rudolf of Hapsburg had failed in a similar request. But Gregory, in consideration of the advantage which the papacy might derive from the acknowledgment that his sanction was necessary, assented after some delay, although with the warning that his assent was not to become a precedent. Although Charles himself, in his golden bull, had charged the electors to give their votes gratuitously, and had pre­scribed that they should swear to do so, he was obliged to pay heavily, both in money and in capitulations, for his son’s election, and even to pledge or alienate some cities and territories which belonged to the imperial crown.

In another quarter Gregory obtained a success which was rather apparent than real. The long contest between the Angevine dynasty of Naples and the house of Aragon for the possession of Sicily was ended in 1372 by a treaty which Frederick of Sicily concluded with Joanna and her husband Lewis. By this, the island was to be held under the Apulian crown, on condition of paying tribute, and of furnishing soldiers in case of war; and the title ot king of Sicily was to belong to the sovereign of Apulia, while the actual ruler was to style himself king of Trinacria. The “Sicilian monarchy”, which, although originally sanctioned by a pope, had been a grievous offence to his successors, was to be abolished; and in other respects the treaty was greatly in favour of the papacy. But these terms were never carried into effect. The papal confirmation was not sought either by Frederic or by his daughter Mary, who succeeded him in 1377. Sicily never performed the feudal obligations which had been stipulated; and its sovereigns, so long as the island remained a separate kingdom, bore in their title the name, not of Trinacria, but of “Sicily beyond the Strait”.

 

 

CHAPTER V.

THE GREAT SCHISM OF THE WEST, TO THE END OF THE COUNCIL OF PISA.

A. D. 1378-1409.