Part 6 (1/2)

These letters show the temper on both sides. Outwardly, however, peace was observed, and Frederick really went on the promised crusade; and, though in Syria he found Patriarch, Templars, Hospitallers, and Franciscans all turned against him, he succeeded in making a treaty by which Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem were ceded to him, and he crowned himself king in Jerusalem. In the mean time hostilities had broken out in Italy. Frederick incited the Roman barons to drive the Pope from Rome, and the Pope preached a crusade against Frederick. But both sides, having many cares within their respective jurisdictions, at length made peace, and Frederick was enabled to go back to his _consuetas delicias_, his wonted delights.

This phrase, which was used by the Pope, probably contained an innuendo, for gossip busied itself with Frederick's christianity and morals. He tolerated Saracens in his kingdom, lived on friendly terms with them, and preferred them in his army, for they were indifferent to excommunication; and gossip added that he liked Saracen ladies, hinted at a harem, and alleged that in Syria he had accepted the present of a troop of Moslem dancers. Gossip, spread by the glib tongues of mendicant friars, charged him with saying, ”If G.o.d had seen my beautiful Sicily, he would not have chosen that beggarly Palestine for His Kingdom,”

”There have been three great impostors who invented religions, and one of them was crucified.” Frederick's real offence in ecclesiastical eyes was that he wished to subordinate the spiritual to the secular power. It was natural, however, that pious folk should look askance at a prince who, while Christendom was fighting Islam, hobn.o.bbed with Mohammedans and seemed to find them more sympathetic than Christians.

Frederick's real _consuet delici_ were of another kind. In his Sicilian court we catch the first streaks of the dawn that was destined to brighten into the day of the Renaissance. He himself was a highly accomplished man, spoke Italian, German, Arabic, and Greek, and took an interest in mathematics, philosophy, and in general learning. But poetry was his favourite pleasure. The Italian language, recently emerged from dog Latin, had just begun to serve literary uses, and Frederick's court had the honour of producing the first school of Italian poetry. He, his sons Manfred and Enzio, his chief counsellor Pier della Vigna, and many poets and troubadours drawn thither by his fame, so far outstripped the rest of Italy that all Italian poetry, wherever written, was called Sicilian.

Sicily was the most civilized place in Europe, now that Southern France had been crushed by the Albigensian persecution. The old Greek stock kept some trace of their inheritance; the Arabs had brought their culture; the Normans had added chivalric ideas; the Crusades and commerce had enlarged the intellectual boundaries; and Frederick himself had extraordinary versatility. Mathematicians from Granada, philosophers from Alexandria, were as welcome as the troubadours from Provence.

Frederick looked after his own royal estates, managed his stud farm in Apulia, decided when brood mares should be fed on barley and when kept to gra.s.s. He was a great sportsman, too, and wrote a book on falconry.

He enacted a famous code of laws, far superior in many respects to existing legislation, which was conceived with the definite plan of exalting royal authority over feudal prerogatives and communal customs.

He deprived the barons of criminal jurisdiction; forbade private war, carrying weapons, etc; he limited trial by ordeal so far as he could, calling it ”a species of divination;” he made minute regulations in matters of business and behaviour, and maintained a paternal authority.

In fact, Sicily, with its culture, poetry, Moslems, and its unorthodox king, succeeded to the heretical position of Southern France. The Papacy felt instinctively that a civilization so happy in the good things of this world, so lax on many points of morality, so careless of the Roman ecclesiastical system, was a perpetual menace to it. In the nature of things, the peace that had been made with Frederick could not last long.

The breach happened in the North. The Lombard cities revolted. Frederick marched against them and won a victory (1237). Then was the zenith of his power; his very triumph was the cause of his undoing. All the Guelfs of Italy roused themselves for the struggle. The Pope took part, and a second time excommunicated Frederick, enumerating a score of sins. A later Pope held a council at Lyons (a place of safety), excommunicated Frederick again, and deposed him from his Imperial throne (1245). Then an anti-emperor was set up. Blow on blow fell upon Frederick. He was terribly routed at Parma, through carelessness. His gallant son Enzio, the poet, was captured by the Bolognese, who would not release him, though Frederick offered to put a rim of gold round the walls of their city. Enzio spent twenty-three years in prison and there died. Pier della Vigna, who ”kept both the keys of Frederick's heart,” was suspected of high treason and condemned to death. Frederick himself died in 1250, and the Pope shouted for joy at the news, ”Be glad ye Heavens, and let the Earth rejoice!” He had good reason, for the Church had lost its most dangerous enemy.

With the death of Frederick the Empire came to its end. The name of Holy Roman Empire continued till 1806, and from time to time for several hundred years German kings came down across the Alps to receive the Imperial crown, but on Frederick's death the old medival Empire practically ceased; and Italy, instead of being an Imperial province, became a series of independent states.

The end of the Hohenstaufens themselves reads like the last act of a b.l.o.o.d.y Elizabethan tragedy. Within a few years the only survivors among Frederick's descendants were his lawful heir, a baby, Conradin, and an illegitimate son, Manfred. Manfred, who had inherited the charm, the address, the energy and brilliance of his father, succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng himself in the Two Sicilies, at first as regent for his nephew, and afterwards, for in those troubled times a regency was precarious, as king in his own right. But the Popes were resolved not to undergo a repet.i.tion of the danger they had experienced from Frederick, and laid their plans to destroy the last of the ”viper's brood,” as they called Frederick's family. They followed the old precedent, set in the days when the Papacy had been in danger from the Lombards, and invited a French prince, Charles of Anjou, brother to St. Louis, to come and depose Manfred, and offered him the crown of the Two Sicilies. The crafty, capable, deep-scheming Charles accepted, and came amid great rejoicing among the Guelfs. Rome made him Senator. Florence made him _podest_; in fact, all Guelf Italy was at his feet. The Pope proclaimed a crusade against Manfred, collected t.i.thes and taxes for the holy purpose, and provided Charles with an army. Manfred was defeated and killed (1266), and two years later, the valiant Conradin, a lad of sixteen, who came down in the mad hope of regaining his kingdom, was also defeated, taken prisoner, and, after a mock trial for treason, put to death. Thus the Papacy prevented the union of the Two Sicilies with the Empire, and thus the House of Anjou supplanted the last of the Hohenstaufens at Palermo and Naples.

CHAPTER XV

THE FALL OF THE MEDIVAL PAPACY (1303)

We are now coming out of the Middle Ages, and the dawn of a new era grows more and more apparent. The Empire, embodiment of an old outworn theory, has already fallen, and its victorious rival, the Papacy, in so far as it embodies the medival idea of a theocratic supremacy, is tottering, and it, too, will soon fall before the unsympathetic forces of a new age. So long as the Papacy stood untouched, it looked as potent and sovereign, and spoke with as lofty a tone, as in the days of Innocent; but a hundred years had wrought great changes, and at a push it tumbled and fell.

Hints had already been dropped that the dread thunderbolt, the curse of Rome, which had helped win the proud position of lords.h.i.+p over Europe, had become mere _brutum fulmen_. Excommunication had been so prodigally used for political purposes that educated men no longer believed that it was really the curse of heaven. Moreover, Europe had not been standing still. The vigorous, compact kingdom of France had come into being, and flushed with a sense of power and importance, determined to take that part in European politics which it regarded as its due. In angry self-confidence the young kingdom confronted the overweening Papacy, savagely tore off its giant's robe, and laid bare its real weakness.

Boniface VIII (1294-1303) was the pontiff under whom the papal empire came to its end. He was a vigorous, energetic, arrogant, eloquent, handsome man, with a wide knowledge of law, diplomacy, and politics. In the cathedral at Florence there is a large statue of him, calm and dignified, almost heroic. He sits with his rochet and tiara on, his right hand raised with two fingers extended as if blessing,--an unusual occupation,--and looks far more of this world than of the other. His contemporary, the Florentine historian, Villani, a Guelf, says: ”He was great-minded and lordly, and coveted much honour, ... and was much respected and feared for his learning and power. He was very grasping for money in order to aggrandize the Church and his own relations, making no shame of gain, for he said that he might do anything with what belonged to the Church.... He was very learned in books, very wary and capable, and had great common sense; he had wide knowledge and a good memory, but was extremely cruel and haughty with his enemies and adversaries, ... more worldly than befitted his exalted station, and he did many things displeasing to G.o.d.” Dante, pa.s.sionately Ghibelline, calls Boniface ”prince of the new Pharisees” and sends him to h.e.l.l.

Boniface's chief enemies, as was usual in the case of a Pope who had enemies, were Romans. If the Papacy had been able to reduce Rome to real obedience, its history would have been different. The rebellious commune and the rebellious barons were constantly on the watch for favourable opportunities to revolt, or, as they regarded it, to a.s.sert their rights and liberties, and Boniface's first struggle came with the great House of Colonna. The Colonnas were haughty; he was imperious.

They hinted that he was not legally Pope; he excommunicated them, proclaimed a crusade, captured and destroyed their fortresses in the Campagna, and made them deadly enemies. This victory was achieved at a price thereafter to be paid in full. But for the time Boniface was triumphant, and seemed, to himself at least, to sit as high as the great Innocent a hundred years before.

In the year 1300 he originated the custom, ever since observed, of a papal jubilee to celebrate the centennial year. For centuries Palestine had been the destination of pilgrims, and the holy character of Rome had been pa.s.sed by, but, now that Palestine was completely lost, Rome rea.s.serted herself as the pilgrims' city, and crowds again visited the Roman basilicas. Eager to encourage a practice which he saw would increase the prestige and the income of the Holy See, Boniface issued his Bull of Jubilee which promised remission of sins to all pilgrims who should visit the basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul during the year.

Pious folk came from everywhere; on an average there were two hundred thousand at a time. They gave their offerings so generously that, as an eyewitness says, ”Day and night two priests stood beside the altar in St. Paul's, holding rakes in their hands, raking in the money.” It was noticed, however, that there were no kings or princes in the throng.

That year was the summit of Boniface's prosperity.

In the mean time the quarrel with France had already begun. The French king, Philip the Fair, who was the personification of the new lay spirit, enacted a series of laws against the clergy, and, going counter to the accepted doctrine of clerical immunity from secular taxation, levied taxes upon them. This step was portentous. Boniface answered by absolutely forbidding both taxation and payment of taxes. The King of France not only persisted in taxation, but also forbade the exportation of any money from his kingdom, and so deprived the Pope of all his French revenues. Other angry words and acts followed, and a papal bull was publicly burnt in Paris.

Boniface, who had a marked predilection for vehement language, issued a bull, which deserves to be quoted as it sums up the extreme papal doctrine and also incidentally reveals how completely he misunderstood the drift of public opinion. ”We are compelled, our faith urging us, to believe and hold--we do firmly believe and simply confess--that there is one holy and Apostolic Church, outside of which there is neither salvation nor remission of sins.... In this Church there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism.... Of this one and only Church there is one body and one head,--not two heads as if it were a monster,--Christ, namely, and the Vicar of Christ, St. Peter, and the successor of St. Peter....

We are told by the word of the gospel that in this His fold there are two swords,--namely, a spiritual and a temporal.... Both swords ... are in the power of the Church; the one, indeed, to be wielded for the Church, the other by the Church; the one by the hand of the priest, the other by the hand of kings and knights, but at the will and sufferance of the priest. One sword, moreover, ought to be under the other, and the temporal authority to be subjected to the spiritual.... That the spiritual exceeds any earthly power in dignity and n.o.bility we ought the more plainly to confess the more spiritual things excel temporal ones.... A spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is judged by no one. This authority, moreover, even though it is given to man, and exercised through man, is not human but rather divine, being given by divine lips to Peter and founded on a rock for him and his successors through Christ Himself; the Lord Himself saying to Peter: 'Whatsoever thou shalt bind,' etc. Whoever, therefore, resists this power thus ordained by G.o.d, resists the ordination of G.o.d. Indeed, we declare, announce, and define, that it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”