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.

 

CHAPTER V.

CELESTINE V AND BONIFACE VIII, A.D. 1292-1303.