BOOK VII.
FROM THE ELECTION OF INNOCENT III TO THE DEATH
OF BONIFACE VIII,
A.D. 1198-1303.
CHAPTER IV.
FROM THE ELECTION OF POPE GREGORY X TO THE DEATH OF
NICOLAS IV.
A.D. 1271-1292
After the death of Clement IV, the papacy was vacant
for nearly three years, as the cardinals, eighteen in number, who were
assembled at Viterbo, were divided into two parties, and could not be brought
to agree in the choice of a successor. At last it was resolved, by the system
which was afterwards styled compromise, to delegate the power of
election to three members of each party; and these, on the 1st of September
1271, chose Theobald, formerly archdeacon of Liége.
Theobald, although a member of the family of Visconti of Piacenza, had been
preserved from the spirit of Italian faction by spending the greater part of
his life in foreign countries. He had been deprived of his archdeaconry through
the envy of the bishop of Liége, and received the
news of his election at Acre, where he was engaged in the crusade under Edward
of England. The pope took leave of the east with the words of the Psalmist, “If
I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning!” and returned
to Europe with the resolution to stir up its warriors once more for the
recovery of the Holy Land. After having been consecrated and crowned at
Rome, on the 27th of March 1272, by the name of Gregory X, he followed the
example of his predecessor by taking up his residence at Viterbo. Edward,
finding his force insufficient for any great undertakings, concluded a truce
with the Saracens for ten years, ten months, and ten days, and set sail for
Europe. On landing at Trapani, he was informed of his father’s death; and as he
proceeded by land to take possession of his kingdom, he was received with great
honour by the pope at Orvieto.
While the papacy was vacant, Charles of Sicily, who
had used his influence to prolong the interregnum, had so much increased his
power as to become the arbiter of Italy. Gregory could not but see that his
predecessors had seriously hampered the Roman see by connecting it with such a
champion, and that the objects which Charles now aimed at were very different
from his own. While Charles was wholly intent on his private interests; while
he grounded his hopes of power in Italy and Sicily on the policy of encouraging
the native factions to mutual fury; while his ambition suggested schemes for
gaining possession of the empire of Constantinople, to which he had acquired
for his family a nominal title by marrying one of his sons to the daughter of
the dispossessed Baldwin II—Gregory desired to unite all Christendom—the
Italian states and their factions, the nations of western Europe, and the
Christians of the east—in a grand common effort for the recovery of the Holy
Land. As no hope of this could be entertained so long as Europe was unsettled,
the pope resolved to provide some counterpoise to the exorbitant influence of
Charles, who, through the weakness of his nephew Philip, had come to be
regarded as the virtual head of his powerful family; and the time seemed to
have arrived for the revival of the imperial dignity from the long abeyance
into which it had fallen. The late popes had continued the equivocal policy of
Alexander IV as to the claims of Richard and Alfonso; and while the English
prince’s influence had been lessened by the exhaustion of his treasures, and by
his long absence from Germany in consequence of having been made prisoner at
the battle of Lewes (may 14, 1264), Alfonso had never taken any active measures
to assert his pretensions to the German crown. On the death of Richard, in
1272, Alfonso applied to the pope, and desired that a time might be appointed
for his coronation as emperor; but Gregory told him in reply that he had not
acquired any fresh rights by his rival’s death. A new king of Germany was to be
elected, and the part which Gregory took in the affair significantly shows the
extent to which the papal power had grown. He urged the Germans to choose a
king from among themselves; he discouraged the pretensions of Ottocar of Bohemia, who, although the most powerful prince
in Germany, was liable to the objection that he belonged to the Slavonic race;
he even threatened that, if the Germans should neglect to do their duty, he
would, with the consent of his cardinals, take order for the filling of the
vacant throne. The cities of Germany resolved that, if the princes should agree
in the choice of a king, they would obey him, but that, in case of a double
election, they would not acknowledge either claimant. On the 29th of September
1273, Rudolf, count of Hapsburg, was chosen at Frankfort, not only by the seven
electors, but by an assembly of all the princes; and it was in vain that the
king of Bohemia, whose representatives had been shut out from the election,
attempted to question the result of it. Rudolf was a petty independent
prince, fifty-five years of age, who had been recommended by his valour, his
frankness, affability, honesty, and other popular qualities, while he was not
so powerful as to give cause for apprehension that he might revive the
authority which emperors in former days had exercised. Attempts were afterwards
made to trace his pedigree to Charlemagne, to the Merovingians, and even to
connect him with the Anicii of ancient Rome through
the strange channel of the Jewish Pierleoni; but to
these genealogies no credit is to be given. The new king was crowned at
Aix-la-Chapelle on the 24th of October, by Engelbert, archbishop of Cologne;
and, when a sceptre could not be found for the investiture of the feudatories,
and some of them were on this account inclined to refuse the oath of fealty,
Rudolf produced a strong and general impression by using the crucifix as a
substitute.
With a view to the enterprise which he had so much at
heart, Gregory, on the 1st of April in his first year, issued a summons to a
general council, which was to meet in the next year but one; and, as there
could be little hope of raising the nations beyond the Alps except by holding
it on their side of the great mountain barrier, a later citation fixed on Lyons
as the place of assembly.
In order to forward his designs as to the east,
Gregory attempted to effect a reconciliation between the Greek church and his
own. The old religious enmity between the Greeks and the Latins had naturally
been embittered by the Latin conquest of Constantinople. Reproaches of heresy
had been bandied on both sides, and, although political interest had often
tended to draw the Greeks and the papacy together, the questions of doctrine
had continued to prevent a reconciliation. Missions had been sent to mediate between
the two communions; but their labours had always been abortive. Each party
threw the blame of the schism on the other, and the Latins insisted that all
concessions should come from the opposite side, or at the utmost would only
allow some nugatory indulgences, such as that the Greeks should not be
compelled to pronounce the article of the double procession in their public
service, provided that they all believed it, and that all books which
maintained the opposite opinion were burnt. But for these difficulties, Vatatzes—who in a reign of thirty-three years gradually
extended his sway from the Turkish frontier on the east to the Adriatic on the
west, while Constantinople alone remained isolated in the hands of the
Latins—would probably have been able to get himself acknowledged by Rome; and
he was the more inclined to seek reconciliation with the western church,
because he had incurred the censure of the Greek clergy by his infidelity to a
contract of marriage with a natural daughter of the emperor Fredericks But it
was in vain that Vatatzes proposed a compromise
founded on the analogy of secular negotiations—that the Latins should give up
their creed if the Greeks would consent to respect their sacrament..
Theodore Lascaris II, the
son and successor of Vatatzes, died in 1258, leaving
the empire to a boy eight years of age, named John, whom he placed under the
guardianship of the patriarch Arsenius and of the protovestiary George Muzalon. On the death of Muzalon,
who was slain in a tumult, three days after the late emperor’s funeral, his
place was filled by Michael Palaeologus, the most eminent of the Greek nobles
as to birth and reputation; but Palaeologus, not content with the position of a
guardian, a regent, or even of a colleague in the empire, procured himself to
be crowned without admitting John to a share of the honour, and, after having
achieved the reconquest of Constantinople, received the crown afresh in St.
Sophia’s, (Dec. 25,1261) while John was blinded and imprisoned. For this
Michael was excommunicated by Arsenius, although his name was still retained in
the public prayers; and his entreaties for absolution, although supported by
ecclesiastics of high authority whom he had drawn into his interest, were
sternly declared by the patriarch to be unavailing unless he would make a
satisfaction equal to the greatness of the offence. “Do you require that I
should abdicate the throne?” asked the emperor, kneeling in penitential form at
the feet of Arsenius; and, as he spoke, he began to unbuckle his sword, the
ensign of secular power. But the eagerness with which the patriarch caught at
it alarmed him; he declared that he had only intended to try the spirit of
Arsenius, who, instead of aiding a sinner in his repentance, as the canons
prescribed, had wished to dethrone him; and charges of irregularity were
brought against the patriarch—among other things, that he had allowed the
sultan of Iconium and some companions to bathe in the laver of the church. Arsenius—whose
character may be inferred from his boast that he possessed nothing but a cloak,
a pyx, and three pieces of gold, which he had earned by transcribing the
Psalms—refused to appear before the tribunal which was appointed to try him; he
was deposed by a synod, and banished to the island of Proconnesus,
where he died without having relented towards Palaeologus. For forty-six years
the deprived patriarch’s followers—a party which, unlike such parties in
general, increased in numbers—held aloof from the communion of the emperors,
defying both threats and attempts at conciliation.
The pope was very desirous to gain the cooperation of
Michael for the crusade, while the eastern emperor was equally desirous to
protect himself by an alliance with the pope against the disaffected clergy of
his own church, against his Bulgarian neighbours, and most especially against
the designs of Charles of Sicily, which he had already tried to avert by an
embassy to St. Lewis. Letters were therefore interchanged in a friendly tone,
and a mission of Franciscans, headed by Jerome of Ascoli, who were sent by
Gregory to Constantinople, found the task of negotiation easy. The venerated
names of the confessor Maximus, of Cyril of Alexandria, and even of Athanasius,
were alleged to prove that the differences were merely verbal. The Greek
clergy, although for the most part strongly averse from union with the Latins,
were coerced by the imperial power, which regarded all opposition as treason;
one of the most eminent among them, John Veccus,
after having declared that there were heretics who were not so styled, and that
among these were the Italians, was converted by imprisonment and study to admit
their soundness in the faith. The patriarch Joseph (whose intrigues had
persuaded Germanus, the successor of Arsenius, to resign), was opposed to
union; but, by an understanding with the emperor, he withdrew into a monastery,
to await the event of the negotiations, and a Greek embassy, headed by the
ex-patriarch Germanus, was sent to the council of Lyons, with splendid gifts
for St. Peter. They carried also a letter from the emperor, in which he owned
the primacy of Rome, and professed the Latin creed, but requested that the
Greeks might be allowed to use their creed as before the separation of the
churches, and to retain such usages as were not contrary to the authority of
Scripture, councils, and fathers, or to the Roman faith.
The second council of Lyons—the fourteenth general
council, according to the Roman account—met in the cathedral church of St. John
on the 7th of May 1274. In respect of numbers, no such imposing assembly had
yet been seen; the Latin patriarchs of Constantinople and Antioch were present,
with upwards of five hundred bishops, and more than a thousand inferior
dignitaries; while the laity were represented by King James of Aragon, and by
ambassadors from all the principal states of the west. But, if these numbers
greatly exceeded those of the former council which had been held at the same
place, the contrast in the purpose and spirit of the two assemblies was yet
more remarkable. Under Innocent IV, the great object of the council was to
excommunicate the foremost sovereign of Christendom; under Gregory X it was to
establish between all Christians a general reconciliation and peace.
In order to avoid any recurrence of the quarrels as to
precedence which had disturbed the former council, the pope ordered that the
members should take their seats promiscuously; and at the first session, in a
sermon from the same text which Innocent III had chosen at the Lateran council
of 1215, he proposed as the three great subjects of deliberation, a subsidy for
the Holy Land, the union of the Greeks, and the reformation of morals. The
subsidy was carried, although the pope found but little response to his own
enthusiasm, and was obliged to have recourse to private conferences with
archbishops and other prelates in order to secure this object. Edward of
England had resisted his urgent entreaties that he would attend the council
before returning to his own dominions, and throughout his whole reign was too
much engrossed by his interests at home to renew the attempt for the recovery
of the Holy Land. But, although the dean of Lincoln brought forward at the
council a representation of the exhausted state of the kingdom, he did not
venture on any decided opposition to the proposed measure; and the clergy of
England joined with those of other countries in promising a tithe of their
revenues for six years towards the holy war.
The Greek ambassadors appeared, and were received with
great marks of honour. The controversial skill of the two great theologians
Bonaventura and Thomas of Aquino, who had been invited to appear at the council
as champions of the western faith, was found needless; for the Greeks admitted
everything—the Latin doctrines and usages, and the primacy of the Roman see.
Five days after their arrival, the pope celebrated mass on the feast of St.
Peter and St. Paul, in the presence of all the prelates; and, after the Nicene
creed had been chanted in Latin, it was repeated in Greek by the Greek and
Calabrian bishops, who, when they came to the article of the double procession,
sang it thrice “with solemnity and devotion.” The reconciliation of the two
churches was formally ratified at the fourth session of the council, when
the long-disputed article was again chanted twice, and the great logothete,
George Acropolita, professed, in the name of the
emperor and of the empire, a firm and unalterable adherence to the faith of the
Roman church. At the same session, the survivor of two ambassadors who had been
sent by a khan of the Mongols appeared, and at the next session, ten days
later, he and his companions were baptized. There were, however, some who
regarded the professed mission of these Tartars with suspicion, and their
baptism led to no such results as the more sanguine of the Latins had expected.
Envoys from Rudolf of Hapsburg appeared at the
council, and requested the pope to confirm his election. They bound their
master by solemn engagements to all that had been promised by Frederick II or
by any other emperor—that he renounced the jus exuviarum,
that he allowed freedom of elections and appeals to Rome, that he would not
attack the property of the church, or take any office or dignity in the Roman
state—more especially in the city of Rome—without the pope’s permissions In
reply to this application, Gregory in the following September confirmed the
election of Rudolf, in words which by their ambiguity were intended to
insinuate a claim to the right of nominating the king of the Romans.
At the sixth and last session of the council, on the
17th of July, the pope inveighed strongly against the vices of prelates, and
earnestly exhorted them to reform themselves.
Among thirty-one canons which this assembly produced,
was one as to the election of popes—intended to prevent a recurrence of any
such delay as that which had taken place on the last vacancy. This canon, after
professing to follow the rules of earlier date, and especially the decree of
Alexander III, in the third Lateran council, orders that the cardinals, without
waiting more than ten days for the absent members of their body, shall meet for
the choice of a successor, each of them attended by one clerk or lay domestic
only, and shall be shut up in one “conclave,” which shall not be divided by any
walls or curtains; that they shall hold no communication with the world
outside, and that anyone who shall withdraw shall not be readmitted, unless his
withdrawal were caused by manifest sickness; that their food shall be supplied
through a window; that, if the election be not made within three days, their
provisions shall be limited to one dish at dinner and one at supper for the
next five days; and after that time, to bread, wine, and water. This canon, not
unnaturally, was very unacceptable to the cardinals, who endeavoured to draw
the bishops into opposition to it; but the pope succeeded in gaining the
bishops, and by their votes the new regulation was carried.
Rudolf wrote to thank the pope for the favour which
had been shown to him, and expressed his intention of going on a crusade, more
especially because his father had died in the Holy Land. Gregory, by a threat
of excommunication, and by the offer of a tenth of ecclesiastical income for
the war against the Moors, prevailed on Alfonso to give up his pretensions to
the German crown; and on his return to Italy, the pope had an interview with
Rudolf at Lausanne. The king confirmed all that had been done by his representatives
at Lyons; he took the cross, with his wife and children, and made arrangements
for receiving the imperial crown in St. Peter’s at Whitsuntide following. He
engaged to help the pope towards the recovery of all his territory, including
Corsica and Sardinia; to respect the privileges which Lewis the Pious and Otho
I were supposed to have granted to the Roman church; to aid in retaining the
kingdom of Sicily for the Roman see, and to give up all claim to the exarchate
of Ravenna, the Pentapolis, the territories of Ancona and Spoleto, and the
inheritance of the countess Matilda. Thus Gregory had gained from the empire
more than any of his predecessors. By his forcing one claimant to withdraw his
pretensions, and by the part which he took in the election and confirmation of
the other, it seemed as if the choice of an emperor were virtually in the hands
of the pope. All the forged or doubtful privileges in favour of the papal see,
from the time of Lewis the Pious downwards, were acknowledged as valid and
binding; and the pope was owned as temporal lord of all the territories which
had formerly been subjects of contention.
In addition to these important gains, Gregory had
accomplished, as it seemed, the pacification of the west, the reconciliation of
the Greek church and empire to Rome, and the combination of all Christian
nations for a new crusade. But in the midst of his triumphs, he was arrested by
sudden death at Arezzo, on the 10th of January 1276, and the effect of his
labours was in great measure lost. The crusading spirit had long been
declining, and the loss and suffering which had attended the late attempts of the
saintly Lewis had tended yet further to damp the ardour for the holy war. The
author of a treatise drawn up with a view to the council of Lyons, mentions
seven causes why Christians were lukewarm as to the crusade, and finds it
necessary to combat seven classes of persons who spoke against such
enterprises. And a troubadour of the time, after lamenting the death of king
Lewis, curses the crusades, and the clergy for promoting them; he even
reproaches the Almighty for their ill success, and, after much invective
against the pope and the priests, he expresses a wish that the emperor and the
French would lead a crusade against the clergy, to whom he ascribes the
destruction of the Christian chivalry.
Nor was the agreement with the Greeks more successful
than the project of a crusade. Michael Palaeologus, indeed, endeavoured to
enforce it: the patriarch Joseph was superseded by the Latinizing John Veccus; the Gospels were read in Latin as well as in Greek
at the religious services of the court; the western patriarch was prayed for as
“supreme high-priest of the apostolical church, and ecumenical pope”; and the
emperor, although he secretly complained of the pride of the Latins, employed
the most violent and cruel measures for enforcing conformity—violence and
cruelty the less excusable because his motives for the course which he took
were merely political. Ambassadors were sent to assure the pope that all was
well, and, on being admitted to his presence, they found Charles of Sicily on
his knees before him, entreating his permission to attack the Greeks, and
gnawing his ivory-headed staff in rage at Gregory’s refusal. But Michael found
that the truce with Sicily, which he had procured through the pope’s mediation,
was dearly bought at the price of the disaffection of his own subjects, who
execrated him as a heretic and an apostate, and threatened the stability of his
throne.
Within a year after the death of Gregory, three popes
in succession were raised to the chair. The first of these, Peter of Tarentaise, bishop of Ostia, and a Dominican, had
distinguished himself by writing a commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences,
although not without incurring suspicions of heterodoxy. After a pontificate of
five months, under the name of Innocent V, he was succeeded by a nephew of
Innocent IV, Ottobuoni Fiesco,
cardinal-deacon of St. Adrian, who had been engaged as legate in England during
the war of the barons, and had rendered his legation memorable by a set of
canons passed at a council held under him in 1168. From the name of his titular
church, Ottobuoni styled himself Adrian V; but he did
not live to be consecrated, or even to be ordained to the priesthood, and it is
said that, when congratulated on his election, he answered, “Would that you
came to a cardinal in health, rather than to a dying pope!”. The - chief act of
his pontificate, which lasted only five weeks, was to release his countrymen
the Genoese from an excommunication which had been inflicted on them at his own
desire by Gregory.
Adrian was succeeded by a Portuguese named Peter, who
had formerly been archbishop of Braga, but having been deprived of the revenues
of his see by king Sancho II, had been preferred to the bishopric of
Frascati by Gregory X. John XXI (for this was the name which he assumed) was
eminent for his scientific knowledge, which procured him the reputation of an
astrologer. A writer of the time tells us that he was hasty in speech and
careless of appearances, and that his affability served to render his indiscretions
the more notorious. His dislike of monks was undisguised; and the monastic
writers regard the manner of his death as a judgment on him for this offence.
He had, it is said, persuaded himself by astrological calculations that he was
to live long; but within little more than eight months after his election, as
he was surveying with pride and joy a lofty building which he had raised at
Viterbo—according to some, an observatory for the cultivation of his favourite
science—it suddenly fell and crushed him, so that, although he was extricated
from the ruins, and was able to receive the last sacraments, he died on the
sixth day.
In all the late elections, the cardinals had found the
severe regulation of the council of Lyons an inconvenience. Adrian had intended
to modify it, and on his death the cardinals announced that it was suspended by
his authority. John XXI had revoked the decree, or suspended it afresh; but the
people of Viterbo—who regarded it as a wholesome safeguard against intrigues
and long delays—after six months had passed from the death of John, shut the
cardinals up in the town-hall of their city until they should agree on the
election of a successor.
The choice of the cardinals, who were only seven in
number, fell at length on John Gaetano, cardinal of S. Nicolas, a member of the
great Roman family of Orsini, who took the name of Nicolas III. The new pope
was the son of a tertiary of the Franciscan order, to which he had been devoted
from infancy, and as a member of the order he had been employed as an
inquisitor into heresy. From his union of personal graces with great abilities
and various acquirements, he had got the title of Il Composto—the
accomplished; but he cared more for the interests of the papacy than for those
of the church; his patronage was distributed among his own family, with an
utter disregard of public spirit; and the corruption which he encouraged in his
court has drawn on him the reprobation of Dante. From Viterbo, where the late
popes had lived, Nicolas transferred the papal residence back to Rome, where,
besides executing important works at the Lateran and St. Peter’s, he began the
vast structure of the Vatican palace.
Nicolas was resolved to check the power of Charles of
Anjou, who is said to have provoked him by refusing the proposal of a family
connection, with the insulting remark—“Does he think that, because he has red
stockings, his blood is fit to mix with ours?”, and for the means of humbling
the dangerous neighbour whom the papacy had raised up for itself, he looked to
the new king of the Romans, Rudolf of Hapsburg. Rudolf since his election had
greatly increased in strength. The activity of his movements had made his power
felt in every quarter of Germany; he had recovered fiefs which had been
alienated from the crown, had destroyed many of the castles which bristled
throughout the land, and had done away with the terror of the predatory little
tyrants who occupied them. His most formidable opponent, Ottocar of Bohemia, had gradually sunk before him, and at last had been killed in
battle in August 1278. It was well for Rudolf that the successors of Gregory X
did not inherit that pope’s interest in the crusade, and that he was
consequently at liberty to employ himself in the works which were necessary for
the consolidation of his power and the suppression of anarchy at home. He had
put off from time to time the expedition to Rome for the purpose of receiving
the imperial crown, and he had required that Charles should resign the
vicariate of Tuscany, with which he had been invested during the abeyance of
the empire. Charles, however, declared that he would not resign either this
dignity or the senatorship of Rome except to the
pope; and Nicolas requested that Rudolf would not come into Italy until the
difficulty should have been settled. Nicolas skillfully took advantage of his position to play Rudolf and Charles against each other.
From Rudolf he obtained an acknowledgment of his sovereignty over the
territories mentioned in the compact with Gregory X, with some which were not
included in that document. The old spurious privileges were all admitted by the
emperor-elect as binding; and when one of his officials had exacted an act of
homage to him from the inhabitants of some Italian towns—including the great
city of Bologna—Rudolf, on receiving a complaint from Nicolas, withdrew his
claim and allowed a new oath to be taken to the pope. The condition of these
cities, indeed, was substantially one of republican independence, while in some
cases the emperor still retained power over them; but Rudolf's cession fell in
with the papal policy, which aimed at gaining a nominal sovereignty in the hope
that this might at some future time become real.
Having gained so much from Rudolf, and procured
through him a confirmation of the act by the princes of Germany, the pope
required Charles to resign the vicariate of Tuscany, and also the senatorship of Rome, as the ten years for which they had
been granted were at an end. It was evident that by compliance Charles would be
reduced from the position which he had occupied as great arbiter of Italy; yet,
with a readiness which surprised Nicolas himself, he acquiesced, partly (as it
would seem) out of fear lest he should throw the pope into Rudolf’s interest,
and partly in order that, by ceding something in Italy, he might forward his
designs on the eastern empire. Nicolas on this got himself chosen senator for
life, and decreed that no one should be appointed to that office for more than
a year, except with the pope’s sanction. With a like view to curbing the power
of Charles, Nicolas laboured to reconcile the factions of the Italian cities.
He established the sovereignty of the papal power over Rome, and succeeded in
acquiring a greater amount of political influence than any of his predecessors
had for many years enjoyed. But in the midst of his prosperity, his career was
cut short by a stroke of palsy at Soriano, in the diocese of Viterbo, on the
22nd of August 1280.
His death was the signal for violent tumults in Rome,
which ended in the appointment of two senators, chosen from the rival houses of
Orsini and Anibaldi. Charles of Sicily was bent
on procuring the election of a pope who would reverse the policy of the
last. There were long and fierce debates among the cardinals; and, as the Lyons
decree was not put in force (although it had been re-enacted by Nicolas), it
became known how the individual members of the college were affected. The
people of Viterbo, gained by Charles, imprisoned the chiefs of the Orsini
party; and, after a vacancy of six months, Feb. 22, the election was declared
in favour of Simon of Brie, a Frenchman of humble origin, who from a canonry of
Tours had been promoted to the cardinalate of St. Cecilia. In honour of the
great saint of Tours, the new pope took the name of Martin IV. Martin showed
himself an undisguised and unqualified partisan.
His hatred of the Germans was expressed in a wish that
they might be frogs in a marsh, and that he himself might be a stork, or that
they might be fish in a pond, and that he might be a pike; and, on the other
hand, he was an abject tool of Charles of Sicily. When, after having
excommunicated the people of Viterbo for their late disobedience, he removed to
Orvieto, the king also took up his abode there, that he might have the pope
under his eye and at his command. The college of cardinals was increased by six
nominees of Charles, and when Martin had procured himself to be chosen senator
of Rome, although with an express declaration that the dignity was bestowed on
him for his personal merits, and although Nicolas III had expressly decreed
that it should not be held by any sovereign prince, or other person of
considerable independent power, he transferred it to the king of Sicily as his
deputy.
Charles’ designs on the East were now far advanced,
and were favoured by the circumstances of the Byzantine empire. While Michael
Palaeologus made himself hateful to his own subjects and drove them into schism
by the violent means which he employed to enforce the union with the Latin
church, the popes complained that he was too slow in performing his
engagements. John XXI, in 1277, sent ambassadors to urge that the Greeks should
give a substantial proof of their agreement by reciting the creed like the Latins.
Michael showed them two of his own near relations who were in prison for
opposing the agreement; he gave up to them two other men of high rank, whom he
had imprisoned for the same offence; and he returned a letter agreeable to the
pope’s wishes, which was rendered more imposing in appearance by a number of
fictitious signatures. But the pope restored the two prisoners, saying that
they had been wrongfully accused; and the relations of the churches were not
improved by the result of the mission. The Latinizing patriarch Veccus was able to effect but little in the work of
reconciliation, and after a time was compelled to withdraw into a. cloister in
consequence of having incurred the emperor’s displeasure. Under Nicolas,
Michael had been in favour at Rome, on account of the common enmity to Charles;
but Martin, the devoted slave of Charles, excommunicated and anathematized the
eastern emperor, under the pretext that he had failed to fulfill his promises
to the church, although the sentence was really dictated by the political
interest of the king of Sicily. To this the emperor replied by excluding the
pope’s name from the offices of the Greek church; and on his death, which took
place in the same year, the disagreement between the east and the west became more
flagrant than before. The new emperor, Andronicus, declared that in consenting
to his father’s measures he had acted under constraints He bestowed on Michael
a funeral of the humblest kind, unaccompanied by any religious rites, and the
widowed empress, Theodora, was required to subscribe a promise that she would
never ask for such rites in behalf of her husband. Churches which had been
infected by the Latinizing worship were subjected to a solemn purification;
councils were held, which deposed and banished the patriarch Veccus, chiefly on the ground of his opinion as to the
procession of the Holy Spirit, restored his predecessor Joseph, and condemned
to the flames all books which favoured the union of the churches. In these
circumstances, it became important to conciliate the party of the Arsenites, which still kept up its separation; and, after
much negotiation, they proposed that the question between them and the church
should be decided by an ordeal. After an attempt to obtain a judgment by
enclosing the books of the Arsenites with the body of
St. John Damascene had been frustrated by the emperor’s precautions against
fraud, it was agreed that the books which contained the arguments in favour of
each party were to be cast into a fire; if one book escaped, its partisans were
to be acknowledged as in the right; if both should be burnt, the parties were
to be reconciled on equal terms. Contrary to the expectation of the Arsenites, the fire impartially consumed their book as well
as the other; and thereupon the emperor, accompanied by the chief members of
the schism, hastened on foot, through stormy weather, to the residence of the
patriarch Gregory, at whose hands they all received the holy eucharist. But
next day the Arsenites regretted that they had
allowed themselves to be hurried into this reconciliation; and the schism was
not healed until, in the year 1312, the body of the inflexible patriarch was
translated with honour to Constantinople, and the people after having submitted
to penance, were absolved from the sins of their forefathers.
While Michael was yet alive, Charles employed himself
in active preparations for a new conquest of Constantinople. He had engaged the
pope in his interest, had formed alliances with the Venetians and with his
nephew Philip of France, and was collecting ships and soldiers, when an
unexpected event compelled him to direct all his energies to objects nearer
home.
From the time of the French conquest, the Sicilians
had suffered oppressions of the most grievous kind. They were ground down by
exorbitant taxes, their lands and property were confiscated without a pretence
of justice, they were compelled to accept a debased coinage instead of their
genuine money, they were subjected to the arts of corrupt officials, they were
plundered and insulted by the dominant race, and their wives and daughters were
dishonoured. So crying were the evils of Charles’ government that they had
drawn on him earnest remonstrances, and even threats of ecclesiastical censure,
from Clement IV and Gregory X; and the sufferings of his subjects had lately
been aggravated by his preparations for war with the Byzantine empire—a war,
moreover, for which the Sicilians had no inclination, as their relations with
the Greeks were of a friendly character.
JOHN OF PROCIDA.
It is said that Conradin on the scaffold, in the
marketplace of Naples, threw down his glove among the crowd, and requested
that it might be carried to Peter, king or Aragon, whose wife Constance, the
daughter of Manfred, was regarded as the last representative of the
Hohenstaufen line. To Peter and his queen the oppressed Sicilians looked with
hope, while Constance was unremitting in her endeavours to stir her husband to
some enterprise for the recovery of the inheritance of her family, and many of
those who had been dispossessed by the French conquest found a welcome at the
court of Aragon. Among these was John, a nobleman of Salerno and lord of the
island of Procida, who by his skill in medicine (of which Salerno was the chief
school), and by his other gifts, had acquired the confidence of Frederick II
and of Manfred. By taking arms for Conradin he had incurred the forfeiture of
all his property, and it is said (although this appears very doubtful), that
his wife and daughter had been outraged by the conquerors. Burning with the
desire of revenge for these wrongs, John of Procida devoted himself for years
to the work of secret agitation. He sold all that he had received from the
bounty of the king of Aragon, and, sometimes in the habit of a monk or friar,
sometimes in a secular disguise, he repeatedly passed through Sicily,
whispering to eager ears the hope of vengeance and of liberty. He made his way
to Constantinople, where he engaged the emperor Michael in his projects, and
obtained from him a supply of money, with which he assured the doubtful
resolution of Nicolas III. In Spain, he found Alfonso of Castile disposed to
take part against Charles for refusing to release his brother Henry, formerly
the senator of Rome, who had been taken prisoner for his connection with
Conradin. Peter of Aragon readily entered into his plans, but took alarm in
consequence of the sudden death of Nicolas, so that John had again to visit
Constantinople, from which he returned with a large subsidy for the king. Peter
then began to make preparations, but when questioned as to them, at the
instance of Charles, by an emissary of the pope, he replied that if he thought
that one of his hands could tell the other his design, he would cut it off. The
ostensible destination of the armament was against the infidels of Africa, and
in the beginning of June 1282 Peter sailed for the African coast.
1268-82. THE SICILIAN VESPERS.
In the meantime, the revolution for which preparation
had so industriously been made, took place suddenly and as if by accident. On
Easter Tuesday 1282, as the inhabitants of Palermo were sauntering in great
numbers to celebrate vespers at a Cistercian church, a short distance from the
city, while others were dancing under the shade of trees near the road, an
insult offered by a French soldier to a high-born and beautiful maiden provoked
her betrothed, who accompanied her, to seize the assailant’s sword and kill him
on the spot. A cry of “Death to the French!” arose on every side. The fury
which had long been gathering intensity from suppression burst forth without
restraint. All the Frenchmen who were near the spot were massacred, and the
Sicilians, rushing into the city, slaughtered without remorse all who belonged
to the detested race—men, women, and children. Churches and monasteries were
invaded; monks and friars, as being the allies of the French, were especially
chosen for slaughter. Even Sicilian women who were pregnant by French husbands
were ripped up, in order to exterminate the race of tyrants; and it is said
that some Sicilians drank the blood of their enemies. The movement spread to
Messina and throughout the island; everywhere the natives rose in fury against
their oppressors, and in a short time no Frenchman remained alive in Sicily.
Having established a provisional government, the
citizens of Palermo sent a mission to the pope, entreating him in the humblest
manner to mediate with Charles. But Martin, enraged at the slaughter of his
countrymen, repulsed the envoys with scorn and with words of violent reproach.
Charles, on receiving the tidings of the “Sicilian Vespers”, is said to have
uttered aloud a prayer that, if it were God’s pleasure that fortune should turn
against him, his decline might be gradual and gentle. But after this expression
of pious resignation, he resumed his usual severity. The fleet which he had
prepared for the expedition against Constantinople was recalled for the
chastisement of Sicily; and the people of Messina, on entreating him to make
terms, were told that they must submit their lives and persons to his will. On
receiving this answer, the Messinese resolved to
stand on their defence, protesting that they would rather die with their
families in their home than languish in foreign prisons; even the women, in the
general enthusiasm, carried stones, wood, and other materials to help in the
fortification of the city. The people of Palermo, on the return of their envoys
from the papal court, declared that, since St. Peter refused to protect them,
they would seek the aid of another Peter; and an embassy was despatched to the
king of Aragon, with the offer of the Sicilian crown. Peter, whose arms had not
achieved any great successes in Africa, was delighted to find himself thus
summoned to the island on which his eyes had long been fixed, and, in disregard
of all the monitions which the pope interposed by letters or by the mouth of a
legate, he was crowned at Monreale by the bishop of
Cefalu.
Peter formally announced his arrival to Charles, and
desired him to withdraw from Sicily; to which Charles replied by defying him as
a traitor. But the approach of the Aragonese force
compelled Charles to raise the siege of Messina, after he had carried it on for
two months, and had almost reduced the inhabitants to despair; and Roger de
Loria, a Calabrian who had entered into the service of Aragon, and was regarded
as the greatest naval commander of the age, soon after inflicted a total defeat
on the Provençal fleet. The firmness of Charles’ mind appeared to be unnerved
by his late calamities; he gnawed his ivory headed staff in impotent rage, and
his ancient prudence gave way to wildness and extravagance in forming schemes
for the recovery of his power. The pope had anathematized the people of Palermo
on Ascension-day 1282; and by later documents he included Peter in the
sentence, declared him to be deprived of his hereditary dominions, which he
affected to bestow on Charles of Valois, a son of the king of France, and
proclaimed a crusade for the recovery of Sicily. The tenths which had been
collected from several kingdoms for the holy war of the East were to be made
over to Charles as a loan; and many French knights, animated by a desire to
avenge the blood of their countrymen, took arms and crossed the Alps. But a
more summary method of deciding the quarrel was proposed—that it should be
referred to the judgment of God by a combat to be fought between the rival
kings, each with a hundred companions. The place named for this combat was
Bordeaux, in the territory of the king of England, who was to be invited to
preside, either in person or by proxy. The challenge was accepted, and although
Edward declined to take any part in the affair, while the pope strongly
denounced and forbade it, the chiefs on either side enlisted knights of renown
to share with them in the intended fight. But the expectations which had been
raised were disappointed by the result. Peter, who is said to have made his way
to Bordeaux in disguise, as his rival had treacherous designs against him,
appeared in the lists, and, after having ridden up and down, obtained from the
English king's seneschal a certificate of his appearance, and that Charles had
failed to meet him. Charles on another day went through a somewhat similar
farce, and each declared the other a dastard and dishonoured.
Charles on his return to Italy had the mortification
of hearing that his son Charles the Lame, prince of Salerno, having allowed
himself to be enticed into a sea-fight by Roger de Loria, in neglect of his
father’s injunction, and in defiance of the papal legate’s warnings, had been
defeated and taken; that two hundred of his companions had been put to death,
and that there were cries for the blood of the prince himself, in revenge for
the death of Conradin. The king in his anger affected to make light of the
loss, and, leaving his son a prisoner, to make over the succession to his grandson,
in whose honour he celebrated a tournament. At Naples, where he had reason to
suspect that many were disaffected to his government, he allowed his soldiers
to commit much slaughter, and hanged upwards of a hundred and fifty of the
principal citizens, as partisans of the king of Aragon. The agitations which he
had lately undergone produced a serious illness; and on the 7th of January 1285
he died at the age of sixty-seven, having seen the successes of many prosperous
years almost cancelled by a just retribution for his grievous offences against
humanity. On the 29th of March in the same year, pope Martin died at Perugia,
to which he had been driven from Orvieto, and the Sicilian crusade which he had
organized with the king came to nothing.
After a vacancy of only four days, the papal chair was
filled by Honorius IV, of the family of Savelli, an old man, who, although he
retained the full possession of his mental faculties, and is described as very
eloquent and persuasive in speech, was crippled by gout to such a degree that
in his great public functions he was obliged to make use of a machine which
raised and turned him as was required. Between the Guelf and Ghibelline
factions of Italy Honorius endeavoured to hold the balance evenly; in other
respects his policy was the same as that of his predecessors.
Philip of France carried the holy war which had been
proclaimed by pope Martin into the territories of Aragon. A legate had preached
the sacred cause in France with offers of indulgences even more ample than
usual; and the crusaders exhibited their confidence in their privileges by
excesses of cruelty, profanity, and lust. At Elne they slew all who had taken
refuge in the cathedral, without regard to age or sex or to the holiness of the
place. Girona was besieged until the defenders were compelled by hunger to
surrender; but within a week it was recovered by Peter, and the French had
suffered so severely from scarcity of provisions and from excessive heat that
Philip felt it necessary to begin his retreat. The French king died at
Perpignan on the 3rd of October; and on the 11th of November the king of Aragon
also died—whether from a wound or in consequence of a chill is uncertain.
Philip the Bold—an epithet for which historians have
in vain endeavoured to find a reason—was succeeded by his son Philip the Fair,
a youth of seventeen. Aragon fell to Alfonso, the eldest son of the late king,
and Sicily to his second son, James, against whom and his mother Constance
Honorius denounced his excommunication, while Alfonso was only able to escape a
like sentence by frequent missions to deprecate the papal displeasure.
On the death of Honorius, which took place on the 3rd
of April 1287, there was great difficulty as to the choice of a successors
Sixteen of the nineteen cardinals were shut up in St. Sabina’s on the Aventine,
which had been the late pope’s usual residence, and there six of them died,
while Jerome of Ascoli, general of the Franciscans and cardinal of Palestrina,
warded off the malaria which was fatal to his brethren by keeping up fires
through the hottest weather in all the rooms which he used. The vacancy was
ended by the election of Jerome as pope on the 22nd of February 1288, and in
remembrance of the pope to whom he owed his cardinalate he took the name of
Nicolas IV.
Edward of England, who was connected with the royal
families both of France and of Aragon, had attempted to mediate between them,
and to procure the liberation of Charles the Lame, by proposing that the
Spaniards should renounce their pretensions to Sicily on condition of being
left in unmolested possession of Aragon; and, although Honorius had objected to
this compromise, as derogatory to the church, which had unreservedly espoused
the French interest, the English king had renewed his mediation during the vacancy
of the papal chair. In consequence of his intervention, Charles was at length
set free on condition that he should return to captivity unless he fulfilled
certain stipulations, and his three sons were given up as hostages for the
performance of this engagement. Nicolas declared his oath to be null, on the
ground that his captivity had originally been unjust—a pretext which would have
allowed the pope to release men from all the obligations of faith and honour he
declared that the kingdom of Sicily, having been conferred by the holy see,
could not be alienated in exchange for the sovereign’s personal freedom: and on
Whitsunday 1289 he crowned Charles as king of all that the house of Anjou had
acquired. He granted a tithe of ecclesiastical revenues to Charles for the
recovery of Sicily, and to Philip of France for the conquest of Aragon; he
denounced Alfonso for the hard terms which he had exacted, and even threatened
Edward if, as guardian of the treaty, he should attempt to enforce it. On the
other hand, Charles, in return for the favours of Rome, granted all that was
required of him as to the relations of the church with the state, and
acknowledged that he held his kingdom solely through the pope’s gift. It would
seem, however, that he scrupled to avail himself of the release from his oath;
but he had recourse to an evasion which, while it was without the pretext of a
religious sanction, was in nowise more respectable than that which the pope had
approved. He appeared on the frontier of Aragon, announcing his readiness to
give himself up on account of the non-fulfillment of
his engagement; and, as no one attempted to arrest him, he caused his
appearance and his offer to be recorded, professed to consider himself
discharged from his obligations, and demanded the restoration of his hostages.
The war of Sicily continued. Charles was not strong enough to recover the
island, while James, though his fleet, under Roger de Loria, held the mastery
of the sea, was not strong enough to expel the Aragonese from their possessions on the Italian mainland. Alfonso died in 1291, having
made his peace with the pope; and James succeeded to the kingdom of Aragon,
while the government of Sicily devolved on a younger brother, Frederick.
ACRE TAKEN BY THE SARACENS.
From time to time the popes, although chiefly
engrossed by the affairs of the West, had urged the sovereigns of Europe to
take the cross for the recovery of the Holy Land. Edward of England,
especially, had met with indulgence in many things which might have brought him
into collision with the church, because it was hoped that his renowned and
experienced valour would again be displayed on the soil of Palestine. But both
Edward and Philip the Bold regarded the crusade rather as a pretext for getting
into their own hands the tithes which the clergy contributed for it than in any
other light. The possessions of the Franks in the East had been continually
diminishing. Tripoli was wrested from them in 1289, and, partly in revenge for
the treacherous execution of some Arab merchants, Acre, the last remnant of the
Frankish kingdom, was again besieged in 1291, and fell into the hands of the
infidels. The grand-master of the templars was killed, the patriarch of
Jerusalem and the grand-master of the hospitallers were drowned in the attempt
to embark on board ship, and the total loss in slain and wounded is reckoned at
60,000. Nicolas endeavoured by earnest exhortations to stir up the West to a
new crusade but the day for such enterprises was over. Even the clergy showed
no zeal in the cause; those of France and England declared that peace must be
made between the princes of Christendom before a crusade could be preached with
any hope of success. The association of nations was at an end, and the spell
which for two hundred years had given the popes so great a power of control
over them had lost its efficacy.
Rudolf had continued to administer the affairs of
Germany with an honesty of purpose and a vigour which amply justified the hopes
of those who had chosen him; but he had never found leisure or inclination to
seek the imperial crown at Rome. At a diet held at Frankfort in 1291, he
expressed a desire that his son Albert might be elected as king of the Romans.
But, although this had usually been granted to reigning sovereigns of Germany,
the electors were plied with representations that by a compliance with Rudolf's
desire they would admit the principle of hereditary succession, and forego
their electoral rights. These representations, although really made in the
interest of the papacy by decretalists who were
imbued with the doctrines of Gregory IX, had their effect July 15, for the
time; and on Rudolf's death, which followed within two months, although Albert
was acceptable to most of the electors, he was set aside, chiefly through the
influence of his own brother-in-law, Wenceslaus of Bohemia, and Adolphus of
Nassau was chosen king. The electors, after the example which the popes had
given in their compacts with the emperors, encumbered the election with a
number of stipulations which greatly weakened the crown.
Nicolas had incurred a charge of Ghibellinism,
partly on account of having made peace with the house of Aragon, but more truly
on account of his close alliance with the family of Colonna, for which he had
deserted the rival party of the Orsini. In 1290 a member of this family was
chosen lord of Rome, and was carried about the city in an imperial chariot,
while the people hailed him as Caesar. Under the protection of the Colonnas, Nicolas ventured to remove from Rieti, where he
had at first lived, to Rome; and his devotion to the family was symbolized by a
caricature, in which he was represented as imprisoned in a column, so that only
his mitred head could be seen above it, and with two other columns before him,
denoting the two Colonnas who had been admitted into
the college of cardinals. Nicolas died in April 1292. He had, it is said,
confirmed the letters of John XXI by which the Lyons canon as to the election
of popes was revoked; and, whether thus formally abrogated or not, the decree
was treated as of no force in the vacancy which ensued.
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