BOOK VIII.
FROM THE DEATH OF POPE BONIFACE VIII TO THE
END OF THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE,
A.D. 1303-1418.
CHAPTER III.
JOANNA OF NAPLES—RIENZI—LAST YEARS OF CLEMENT VI.
A.D. 1343-1352.
ROBERT, who from the year 1309 had reigned over the
kingdom of Apulia, or Naples, with a reputation for wisdom and political skill
unequalled among his contemporaries, lost his only son, Charles, in 1328 and,
seemingly from a wish to compensate the elder branch of his family for its
exclusion from the Neapolitan throne at an earlier time, he resolved to bestow
his granddaughter Joanna, who had thus become his heiress, on one of its
members. For this purpose, Andrew, the second son of Robert’s nephew,
king Charobert of Hungary, was chosen, and
the marriage took place in 1333, when the bridegroom was seven and the bride
five years old. Andrew remained at Naples in order that he might be duly
trained up for his future dignity; but the roughness of his character, which
the Italians ascribed to his Hungarian birth, refused to yield to the southern
culture, and he grew up rude, passionate, and headstrong. On the death of
Robert, in 1343, Joanna, to whom her grandfather had already caused an oath of
allegiance to be taken, succeeded to the throne; but intrigues were busily
carried on by members of the royal family, and a Hungarian faction, headed by
a friar named Robert, attempted to make itself supreme at Naples. Andrew
endeavoured, through the interest of his brother Lewis, king of Hungary, to
obtain the pope’s consent that he should be crowned, not as consort, but as
king by hereditary right; and he indiscreetly uttered threats of the
punishments which he intended to inflict on all who had offended him, as soon
as he should be established in the kingdom. He also suspected his wife of
infidelity, and the mutual ill-feeling which arose from this and other causes
was artfully fomented by interested courtiers. A conspiracy was formed against
Andrew, and, while residing with the queen and a hunting-party at the Celestine
convent of Aversa, he was decoyed from his chamber and strangled, on the night
of the 18th of September 1343. By desire of the Neapolitan nobles an inquiry
was made as to the murder, and some of the persons who had been concerned in
it were put to death, or otherwise punished. But Joanna herself was suspected,
and when she sent a bishop to Lewis of Hungary, entreating his protection for
herself and for the child with whom she had been pregnant at the time of his
brother’s death, he replied in a letter which, with unmeasured severity,
declared his belief of her guilt.
On the death of his posthumous nephew, Lewis claimed
the Apulian kingdom as his inheritance, and invaded it, displaying at the head
of his army a banner on which was painted the murder of Andrew. He also sent an
embassy to the pope, with a request that he might be crowned as heir of Sicily
and Apulia; but his envoys were unable to obtain a public audience, as it was
alleged that he was connected with the excommunicated Lewis of Bavaria. In the
meantime, Joanna, yielding (as it was said) to the entreaties of her subjects,
who dreaded a Hungarian rule, married her cousin Lewis of Taranto, who had been
suspected of criminal intimacy with her during the life of her former husband,
and of a share in the guilt of his death; and by this she appeared to confirm the
imputations which had been cast on her. The pair withdrew from Naples before
the approach of the Hungarian force, and fled by sea to the queen’s territory
of Provence, where she was received at Avignon with great honour, all the
cardinals going out to meet her. Clement, who had already pronounced a general
excommunication against the murderers of Andrew, at the request of Lewis,
appointed a commission of three cardinals to investigate the case, but without
any definite result; he granted a dispensation for the queen’s second marriage,
and endeavoured to mediate between her and the king of Hungary. After a time
Lewis withdrew from Apulia, where he had inflicted severe punishment on many
who were suspected of a share in his brother’s murder. Joanna and her husband
were requested by a party among her subjects to return and, in order to provide
money for this purpose, she agreed to sell Avignon to the pope for a price far
below its real value, in consideration (as was believed) of the favours which
she had received or might still desire from him in the matter of Andrew’s
murder. In 1351 the king of Hungary again appeared in southern Italy; but
Joanna and her husband were able, by the help of one of the mercenary bands
which were then at the service of any power that would pay them to make so
vigorous a resistance that a truce was concluded. By this the question was
referred to the pope and cardinals for arbitration, with the understanding
that, if Joanna were found guilty of the crime imputed to her, she should
forfeit the kingdom, and that if acquitted, she should retain peaceful
possession, but should reimburse the Hungarian king for the expenses of the
war. The decision of Clement was in her favour, and she and her husband were
crowned by a papal legate on Whitsunday 1352.
The long absence of the popes from Rome had been
disastrous in its effects on the city. Although still an object of pilgrimage,
it no longer enjoyed the wealth which had been drawn to it by the residence of
the court, and by the resort of persons from all quarters for official
business. Even the pilgrims were often plundered on the way by robbers, or by
the bands of mercenary soldiers which beset the roads. The churches were
falling into decay; the great monuments of antiquity were turned into fortresses,
or were left to utter neglect. While the popes were usually elected, each in
his private capacity, and for his own life, to the nominal dignity of senator,
the city was a prey to anarchy, and to the contentions of the great families.
In these circumstances some romantic spirits felt themselves thrown back on the
memories of an earlier time, regarding less the veneration which was attached
to Rome as the religious capital of Christendom than the fame of its ancient
republican and imperial grandeur. Thus Dante had desired to see Rome the seat
of the papacy and of the empire; and now Petrarch, the foremost man of his age
in poetry and general literature, endeavoured from time to time, by letters
both in prose and in verse, which found circulation wherever the Latin language
was understood, to stir up both emperors and popes to make Rome again their
residence. Petrarch was decorated with the laurel crown in the Capitol on
Easter-day 1341, having received at the same time an offer of that tribute to
his genius from the university of Paris and from the Roman senate, and having
chosen to be so honoured by the representatives of ancient greatness rather
than by the body which, in his own time, was most distinguished in the
cultivation of literature.
Among the spectators of this ceremony it is probable
that there was one in whom the romantic feeling which has been described was
soon to find a remarkable expression; indeed, it has been supposed that his
enthusiasm had drawn nourishment from the sight of the great poet wandering
among the monuments of Rome’s former majesty on an earlier visit to the city.
Nicolas, who, from a popular corruption of his father’s name, is commonly
called Rienzi, was born about the year 1314, in the region named Regola, which extends along the left bank of the Tiber,
adjoining the Jewish quarter of Rome. His father was a tavern-keeper, his
mother a washerwoman and water-carrier; and although, in the later part of his
life, he professed to be an illegitimate offspring of the emperor Henry VII, it
is certain that this attempt to glorify his paternal descent at the expense of
his mother’s reputation was merely the invention of a diseased vanity.
Rienzi was educated for the profession of a notary;
but his delight was in the study of the old Roman authors,—of Livy, Caesar,
Cicero, Boethius, and the poets,—and he acquired an unusual skill in reading
and interpreting ancient inscriptions. From brooding over these records of the
past he conceived visions, which he attempted to realize with an amount of
success which for a time was wonderfully great, and might have been far greater
and more lasting but for his own utter inadequacy to the part which he attempted
to act; and the anarchy into which Rome had fallen was especially brought home
to him by the circumstance that his brother was killed in an affray, and that
no redress was to be obtained from the great families which then exercised the
powers of government.
In 1342-3 Rienzi was one of the deputation sent by the
Romans to beg that pope Clement would return to their city; and it is said that
his eloquence won the admiration of the pope himself, while it is certain that
he excited the enthusiasm of Petrarch, who afterwards found reason to regret
that he had too easily allowed himself to be fascinated. The embassy, as we
have seen, was put off with fair words, and with a grant of the petition that
the jubilee should be celebrated every fiftieth year, instead of once in a
century; but this concession was hailed by Rienzi with a joy so extravagant
that he extolled Clement above the greatest of the ancient Roman worthies.
Rienzi returned to Rome with the official character of
papal notary, and resumed his old studies, while his indignation at the
oppression of the nobles (who mocked at his ideas as the fancies of a crazy
enthusiast) became more vehement than ever. He endeavoured to excite the
patriotic feeling of the people by various means, such as expounding
inscriptions which attested the glory and liberty of former days, and by
exhibiting a picture which, in the midst of many other symbols, displayed Rome
under the figure of a majestic matron, clothed in tattered garments, with dishevelled hair,
weeping eyes, and hands crossed on her breast, kneeling on the deck of a ship,
which was without mast or sail, and appeared about to sink. On the first day of
Lent 1347, he announced by a placard on the church of St. George in the Velabro
that the Romans would “soon return to their ancient good estate”; and after
having held many meetings on the Aventine, in order to prepare the minds of the
citizens, he gave out at Whitsuntide that this good estate was come. Rienzi, at
the Capitol, assumed the title of tribune, with the pope’s legate, Raymond,
bishop of Orvieto, for his colleague; the laws of his government were
proclaimed, and forthwith he entered on the administration of the republic. A
strict and rigid system of police was enforced without respect of persons; the
fortresses of the nobles, both in the city and in the Campagna, were
demolished; the owners were compelled to swear to the observation of peace, and
long and bitter feuds were extinguished by a forced reconciliation of enemies.
The streets of Rome and the highways of its neighbourhood became, for the first
time since many years, safe the Romans, in the enjoyment of the unwonted
security, fancied themselves once more free. The tribune’s authority was
respected far beyond the bounds of his jurisdiction; his announcement of his
elevation, and his invitation to the Italian cities to combine for their common
country, were received with a respectful welcome: it is said that even the
sultan of Babylon was affected by the change which had taken place in the
government of Rome. Petrarch, watching with enthusiastic delight the course of
affairs in the city, congratulated the tribune and his people on having thrown
off the domination of foreigners, and exhorted them to profit by their
opportunities.
But very early Rienzi began to show that his
mind—vain, fantastic, and unsteady from the first—had become intoxicated by
success. With the title of tribune he combined others at once pompous and
inconsistent, including some which belonged to the imperial dignity. He claimed
a special influence of the Holy Ghost,—a pretension which, when taken in
connexion with the oracles of abbot Joachim and his school, was likely to
awaken suspicions of heresy; nay, he did not hesitate even to compare himself
to the Saviour. He levied new and heavy taxes, the proceeds of which, and of
the confiscations to which he subjected the wealthier citizens, were spent in
luxurious living, and on theatrical displays, in which he himself was the chief
figure. Among these exhibitions the most noted were his admission to the order
of knighthood after having bathed in rose-water in the porphyry vessel which
was traditionally believed to have been the font of Constantine’s baptism, and
his coronation with seven crowns, each of which was intended to bear particular
symbolical meaning. He promoted his own relations to all sorts of offices, in
which they disgraced themselves and him by their unfitness, and by their
extravagance of vulgar luxury; and his own indulgences in food and drink were
such that his figure became gross and bloated. He kept a train of poets to
celebrate his actions, and of jesters to amuse him. Fancying himself seated on
the throne of the Caesars, he summoned the pope to return to Rome, and the
rival claimants of the empire, together with the electors, to submit themselves
to his arbitration; and although this was unheeded, Lewis of Bavaria stooped to
entreat his mediation, with a view to reconciliation with the church, while
Lewis of Hungary and Joanna of Naples each endeavoured to enlist him as a
partisan in their contest.
But Rienzi’s errors became more and more palpable, and
speedily brought on his ruin. He treacherously arrested the chiefs of the
adverse nobles, as if on suspicion of a conspiracy; and, after having alarmed
them with the expectation of death, he not only set them free at the
intercession of some citizens, but loaded them with offices and honours.
The Colonnas and others, having collected
a force in their fastnesses among the mountains, attacked him under the walls
of Rome : and, when their blunders had given him a victory which his own
ability could not have gained for him, he abused it by cruel insults to the
dead, and was unable to profit by his success. Although he had throughout
professed the deepest reverence not only for religion, but for the papacy, the
pope had not unnaturally viewed his proceedings with jealousy. He was charged
with heterodoxy, and even with magic and the legate, who had once been his
colleague in power, but had separated from him on finding that Rienzi intended
to use him merely as a tool, pronounced an anathema against him. Pipin,
count palatine of Minerbino and Altamura, a
Neapolitan noble, who had been banished from his own country, and had become
the head of a band of mercenaries, having been summoned to appear before the
tribune on account of his violent acts, proceeded to attack him; and Rienzi,
who had forfeited the affection of the people by his misconduct and tyranny,
did not venture to stand his ground, but fled in abject terror. After having
been sheltered for a time by the Orsini in the castle of St. Angelo, he
privately made his escape from Rome, and found a refuge among the
fanatical fraticelli of the Apennines,
while the churches resounded with the papal denunciations of him, and Rome
relapsed into a state of anarchy worse than before.
Two years and a half after his flight from Rome,
Rienzi appeared at Prague, in consequence of a commission given to him by a
hermit named Angelo, who believed that he and Charles IV were destined to
reform the world. He obtained access to the emperor, and endeavoured to draw
him into the hermit’s schemes, but the wildness of his talk, which savoured of
the society in which he had lately been living, excited such suspicions that
Charles thought it well to commit him to the care of the archbishop of Prague,
by whom, in compliance with a request from the pope, he was after a time sent
to Avignon. The charge of heresy, however, was not prosecuted against him. His
life was spared, partly through the intercession of Petrarch, who, although
grievously disappointed in his career, still regarded him with interest and
sympathy, and partly in consequence of a mistaken belief that he was entitled
to the honours of a poet; and he was kept in confinement, which, according to
the notions of the time, was lenient, as he was bound only by a single chain,
and was allowed the use of books, especially of the Scriptures and of Livy. In
this condition he remained until circumstances brought him once more into
public life.
About the same time when Rienzi was in power at Rome,
a pestilence of oriental origin made its appearance in Europe, and raged
with unexampled virulence from Sicily to Iceland and even to Greenland. This
“Black Death” (as it was called) is said to have carried off at least a fourth
of the population in the countries which it visited. Among the places which
most severely felt its ravages was Florence, where the historian John Villani
was among its victims, and where its tragic details furnished an incongruous
framework for the lively and licentious tales of the “Decameron”. At Marseilles
it carried off the bishop and all his chapter, almost all the Dominican and
Minorite friars, and one-half of the citizens. At Avignon three-fourths of the
inhabitants are said to have died, among whom was cardinal Colonna, the chief
patron of Petrarch, with several other princes of the church, and the lady whom
the poet has made for ever famous under the name of Laura. So great was the
mortality in the city of the papal residence that the living were insufficient
to bury the dead, and the pope had recourse to the device of consecrating the
Rhone in order to receive the bodies which could find no room in the
cemeteries. In England the pestilence raged violently, and among its victims
was John de Ufford, whom the king, in his anger against the Canterbury
monks for having elected the learned schoolman Thomas Bradwardine without
the royal licence, had begged the pope to appoint by provision to the
archbishopric. After the death of his rival (who had not been
consecrated) Bradwardine was promoted by
the consent of all parties, and received consecration from the pope; but within
a few days after landing in England he too was carried off by the plague.
At Drontheim, all the members of the chapter
except one died; and the survivor elected a new archbishop, without any
interference on the part of the crown.
The moral effects of this visitation were not
altogether favourable. In many it produced a spirit of selfishness and
covetousness and a decay of charity. It is said that in Italy many of the
survivors, finding themselves easier in their circumstances through the
consequences of the pestilence, ran into all sorts of dissoluteness and
self-indulgence; while the lower classes of society, for a like reason, gave
themselves up to idleness and dissipation. In England, when such persons of the
labouring classes as had escaped death demanded an increased price for their
work, a royal decree forbade all servants, artisans, and the like, to receive
higher pay than in former years. In consequence of this, such persons found
that, as the cost of living was increased, their state was worse than before;
and their discontent was shared by the lower clergy. For a time the surviving
members of this class had found their services so much in request, as curates
or chaplains, that they had insisted on receiving four or five times as much as
before; and, in consequence of this, many laymen who had lost their wives by
the pestilence pressed into the ministry of the church, without any other
qualification than an imperfect knowledge of reading. But through this
multiplication of their numbers, combined with the increase of prices and with
the diminution of fees which followed on the decrease of population, the
condition of the lower clergy speedily became worse than it had ever been
before. Even on monastic discipline it is said that the Black Death told
unfavourably; as in many places the older and more experienced monks were
carried off and those who succeeded them were unable or unwilling to enforce
the rules with the strictness of former times. This great calamity was
naturally followed by outbreaks of superstitious terror. The Jews were
suspected of having poisoned the wells and infected the air; some of them were
tortured into a confession of these crimes, and multitudes of the unfortunate
people suffered death. In some places the Jews were driven by despair to attack
the Christians; at Mayence they killed
about 200, and the act was avenged by a butchery of 12,000 Jews. The
persecution raged especially in the towns along the Rhine; and when the pope
threw his protection over the Jews, the age was so little able to apprehend any
good motive for such humanity that he was commonly supposed to have been
bribed. The end of the world was believed to be at hand. The fanaticism of the
flagellants, which had been first known in the preceding century, and of which
there had since been some smaller displays, was now revived. The flagellants
professed to have come into Germany from Hungary, and displayed a letter which
an angel was said to have brought down to Jerusalem, declaring the Saviour’s
wrath against mankind for profanation of the Lord’s day, for neglect of
fasting, for blasphemy, usury, adultery, and other sins. They went about
half-naked, singing, and scourging themselves; and they declared that the blood
which was thus shed was mingled with that of the Redeemer, and that it
superseded the necessity of the sacraments. When the Saviour’s passion was
mentioned in their hymns, they threw themselves on the earth “like logs of
wood,” with their arms extended in the form of a cross, and remained prostrate
in prayer until a signal was given to rise. They were under “masters” of their
own, to whom all that joined them were required to swear obedience, and their
behaviour towards the clergy was hostile and menacing. From Germany the
movement spread into France, but the king forbade the flagellants to approach
the capital, and the university of Paris pronounced their practices to be a
“vain superstition”. At the instance of the university, flagellancy was condemned by the pope, and at his
desire it was forbidden by the royal authority. Some of the flagellants carried
their fanaticism from the Low Countries into England; but the English looked on
their wild exercises with indifference, and suspected them of heresy.
In many towns the parochial clergy fled from the
pestilence, and their places were taken by the more courageous friars, who
visited the sick, administered the last sacraments, and performed the offices
of burial. This devotion was rewarded with large bequests, especially from
persons who had lost their natural heirs; and a complaint was made to the pope
by the cardinals and the secular clergy, who desired that the mendicant orders
should be suppressed for interfering with the parochial system of the church.
But Clement, according to a writer who himself belonged to the mendicant
brotherhood of Carmelites, rebuked the objectors severely. He asked them what
they themselves would preach if the monks were silent? He told them that if
they were to preach humility, poverty, and chastity, their exhortations would
be vitiated by the glaring contrast of their own pride and luxury, their
avarice and greed, and the notorious laxity of their lives. He reproached them
for closing their doors against the mendicants, while they opened them to
panders and buffoons. If, he said, the mendicants had got some benefit from
those whose deathbeds they had attended, it was a reward of the zeal and the
courage which they had shown while the secular clergy fled from their posts; if
they had erected buildings with the money, it was better spent so than in
worldly and sensual pleasures; and he declared the opposition to the friars to
be merely the result of envy. The rebuke carried weight from its truth, if not
from the character of the pope who uttered it.
Although the death of Lewis of Bavaria had removed a
great obstacle from the path of his rival Charles, the “priests’ emperor” found
that his difficulties were not yet ended. In going about the cities of
Germany, attended by clergy who offered the pope’s absolution from ban and
interdict, on condition that the people should renounce the late emperor and
all his family, he met with hostile demonstrations in some places. Thus at
Basel, when the bull announcing the terms of absolution was read, the mayor of
the city stood forward, and addressing the pope’s commissioner, the bishop of
Bamberg, declared that the citizens of Basel did not believe the emperor Lewis
to have been a heretic; that they were resolved to acknowledge as king and
emperor anyone who should be chosen by the electors, or by a majority of them,
without requiring the pope’s confirmation of the choice; that they would do
nothing contrary to the rights of the empire, but were willing to accept the
pope’s forgiveness of all their sins, if he should be pleased to bestow it. By
this firmness an unconditional absolution was extorted. In other towns the
emperor’s arrival was the signal for scenes of disorder. Many of the most
religious persons, such as the famous mystic John Tauler, of Strasburg,
regarded the pope’s proceedings against Lewis as unjust and invalid; and, as at
some earlier times, the impatience of the papal rule gave rise to a popular
expectation that the emperor Frederick II would reappear, to destroy the clergy
and the friars, and to restore the glories of the empire.
The Bavarian party, headed by Henry of Virneburg, who was still acknowledged by most of the
Germans as archbishop of Mayence, endeavoured to
set up an emperor of its own. The crown, after having been declined by some
German princes, was offered to Edward of England, whose fame had lately been
enhanced by the victory of Cressy; but Edward, in deference to the opinion of
his parliament, and fearing that the offer might be intended to divert him from
the prosecution of his designs on France, refused it. At length a champion was
found in count Gunther of Schwarzburg, in Thuringia,
a man of great renown for prowess, but of no considerable territory or power.
Gunther was elected by his partizans on the 30th of January 1349, was
displayed on the high altar of St. Bartholomew’s at Frankfort as king, and was
enthroned in the same city but he found few adherents, and after a time his
chief supporters were gained over to the side of Charles by means of
matrimonial alliances or other inducements. Gunther himself, who had been
attacked by a hopeless illness, was persuaded, although unwillingly, to resign
his pretensions, chiefly in consideration of a large sum of money. The Bavarian
party was conciliated by Charles’s undertaking to get the papal sanction for
the marriage of Lewis of Brandenburg with Margaret of the Tyrol and Lewis made
over to Charles the insignia of the empire, which had come into his hands at
his father’s death. Thus Charles acquired peaceable possession of his dignity,
to which, according to some writers, he submitted to be again elected, so that
the honour of the empire might be formally saved, although the acceptance of
the pope’s nominee proved that the electors were no longer inclined to oppose
the papacy.
The character of Charles as a sovereign is very differently
estimated by the Germans and by the Bohemians; but their estimates are not
inconsistent. To the Germans he appeared to neglect the empire for the
interests of his family, which he laboured to secure by marriages and peaceful
negotiations rather than by the more brilliant exploits which accorded with the
taste of the age while in his hereditary kingdom, which he had governed as his
father’s deputy while John was seeking adventures all over Europe, his name is
honoured above those of all other sovereigns for his good administration, and
for his patronage of literature and the arts. To him Prague was indebted for
its splendour as a capital and for the foundation of its university, which
drew to it a vast concourse of students, not only from the Slavonic countries,
but from all parts of Germany—as in that country no such institution yet
existed.
Notwithstanding the late mortality, and the dangers
which in a time of such disorder beset the ways, the jubilee of 1350 drew vast
multitudes of pilgrims to Rome. Many persons of the higher classes, indeed,
availed themselves of the dispensations which the pope offered to those who
should be prevented from undertaking the journey. And Edward of England,
although he granted licenses for the pilgrimage, forbade his subjects in
general to take part in it, alleging the necessities of war in answer to Clement’s remonstrances
on the subject. Yet Matthew Villani states that the number of those who visited
Rome from Christmas to Easter was 1,000,000 or 1,200,000, and that in the
season of the Ascension and Whitsuntide there were 800,000 more. The same
writer tells us that the streets leading to the churches which were to be
visited—St. Peter’s, St. Paul’s, and St. John Lateran—were so crowded as to
admit of no movement except with the stream of the multitude; and that the
Romans were extortionate as to the prices of lodging, food, fodder, and other
necessaries. Another chronicler, who was present, tells us that at the
exhibition of the Veronica many were crushed to death. The numbers of the
pilgrims must probably have been swelled by the serious impressions of the late
calamity; and while Matthew Villani describes them on their journey as
cheerfully braving the inconveniences of an unfavourable season, the interest
with which the more pious might view the decayed but venerable city, and the
relics of especial fame for holiness which were displayed before their eyes,
may be conceived from the fervent language of Petrarch. Yet, as to the result
of the pilgrimage, we may probably believe a contemporary chronicler’s
statement, that many came back from Rome worse than before.
On the 6th of December 1352 Clement suddenly died in
consequence of the bursting of a tumour, having in the preceding year mitigated
the law of papal elections by allowing that the cardinals, when shut up in
conclave, should have their portions of the room separated by curtains; that
each of them might have two attendants, who might be either clerks or laymen;
and that the rigour of the regulations as to the supply of food should be
abated on the third day.
