Part 15 (1/2)
Meanwhile Manfred was doing everything to meet the new attack. But there was no patriotism among the Italians of the south. Frederick II in founding his strong monarchy had alienated n.o.bles and the cities; the clergy, of course, were his bitter foes. All seemed to think that Charles' advent would bring freedom and peace. They were soon to be disabused. On Charles' march southwards Manfred, relying solely on Germans and Saracens, met him at Benevento, but was beaten and fell in the fight (February 26, 1266). Charles entered Naples and the papal aims seemed attained. Charles was their va.s.sal for Sicily, and was now obliged to lay down his office of senator. The German influence in Italy was destroyed; the ”German” Empire was a thing of the past. But the Romans still kept the Pope at arms' length. In 1252 they had for the first time introduced a foreign senator in the Bolognese Brancaleone who, before his death in 1258, was twice overthrown and restored to power. Thus the election of Charles was no new departure.
And as his successor was chosen Henry, brother of Alfonso the Wise of Castile, t.i.tular King of the Romans. He maintained the interests of the commune against the Pope, and then, from hatred to Charles, the Ghibelline cause against the papal party. The Ghibellines found a rallying ground in Tuscany, and sent to Germany for Conradin. The boy, now fourteen years of age, was welcomed by the senator in Rome; but his forces were utterly defeated by Charles at Tagliacozzo on August 23, 1268. Conradin fled, but was captured and executed.
[Sidenote: Schemes of Charles.]
This time it was Charles, and not the Pope, whose success was the obvious fact. Whether the Pope interceded for the last of the Hohenstaufens or approved his execution, is a matter of some doubt.
But Charles was now elected senator of Rome for life, and Clement offered no opposition to this violation of the original agreement.
Moreover, on Clement's death (November, 1268), the divisions among the Cardinals a.s.sembled at Viterbo prolonged the vacancy in the papal chair for nearly three years. During that time Charles developed the most ambitious schemes. With the Ghibelline position he took up the Ghibelline aims. Thus the papal plans for reviving the Crusades were nothing to him, but he desired to obtain for himself the crown of Jerusalem; and since Constantinople had been recovered by the Greeks in 1261, while on the one side he make a treaty with the Latin ex-Emperor, Baldwin II, whereby the reversion of the Byzantine throne should go to the King of Sicily, on the other side the papal project for an union of the Greek and Latin Churches was an obstacle to his hostile design. Charles, in fact, began to equip an expedition against Constantinople. Louis IX for the moment checked his brother's schemes and took him off on the crusade from which Louis himself was not to return. The diversion of the expedition from Palestine or Egypt to Tunis is generally attributed to the influence of the King of Sicily, whose Norman predecessors had once held the north coast of Africa: but this charge can scarcely be maintained, for the crusade thither interfered with his schemes against Constantinople, which were resumed immediately on his return to Europe.
[Sidenote: Gregory X (1272-6).]
But again Charles was destined to meet with a serious check. When at length the Church obtained a new Pope it was no servile henchman of Charles who was elected. Gregory X, a Visconti of Piacenza, had spent his life outside Italy, and was with Edward I of England in Palestine when he was chosen. He was the first Pope since Honorius III, who set before himself the promotion of a crusade as his primary object. As an indispensable prerequisite of this be desired to promote the union of the Latin and Greek Churches. It was these unselfish objects of his which enabled him to check both Charles' power and his schemes. There was a still further point. The fall of the Hohenstaufen had destroyed the imperial house, and had left the Papacy not only isolated but face to face with one who was proving himself ”a burdensome protector.” The equilibrium of Europe had been seriously shaken. The election of two rival Kings of the Romans had not helped to restore it. But now Richard of Cornwall, who had tried to a.s.sert his position, was dead, and Gregory refused to recognise the claims of Alfonso of Castile. But Louis IX was dead also, and Charles would be likely to influence his nephew the new King of France more than he had ever influenced his high-souled brother. It was necessary to find a new King of the Romans who might be a counterpoise in Europe, and perhaps even in Italy, to Charles. Thus encouraged and almost coerced by the Pope, the German princes elected Rudolf Count of Hapsburg (September 1273), a man of ”popular qualities” who was not too powerful.
[Sidenote: Second Council of Lyons.]
The success of the papal policy was to be advertised to Europe in a second Council of Lyons (May-July, 1274). This was attended by five hundred bishops and innumerable other clergy. An opportunity was taken to issue a canon, the object of which was to prevent the recurrence of the long vacancy in the papal see which had preceded Gregory's election. It was decreed that ten days after the death of the Pope the Cardinals should meet and should be confined in one conclave until a choice had been made. All intercourse with the outside world was forbidden; the food was to be supplied through a window, the amount of it being diminished after three days; while a further diminution was to take place five days later. The duty of supervision was entrusted to the magistrates of the city in which the election might be held.
Despite the stringent resistance of the Cardinals the canon was pa.s.sed with the aid of the bishops; and although it was more than once suspended, it has continued to direct the procedure at papal elections to the present day.
[Sidenote: Union of Eastern and Western Churches.]
But the real object of the meeting of the Council was that it should witness the reconciliation of the Eastern Church with the Western.
More than two centuries earlier (1054) the long jealousy of Rome and Constantinople had ended in the rupture of communion between the Christians of West and East; and the Crusades and the Latin Empire of Constantinople had prevented any real attempt at re-union. But just now circ.u.mstances were favourable. Michael Palaeologus, who had reconquered Constantinople for the Greeks and made himself Emperor, was in difficulties at home with a section of the clergy, and, threatened by the designs of Charles of Sicily, he coerced the Greek clergy into accepting the union with the Western Church, which gave the only chance of such help as would hold Charles in check. An emba.s.sy of Greeks appeared at Lyons; and although Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas were present to argue the case for the Western Church, no persuasion was needed. The Greeks expressed a readiness to accept the primacy of Rome, the doctrine that the Holy Ghost proceeded from both Father and Son (whereas they had maintained His procession from the Father alone), and all the customs of the Western Church. It seemed as if at length a crusade were really possible. The chief sovereigns of Europe had taken the cross, and Gregory had even persuaded Charles of Sicily and the Greek Emperor to sign a truce.
[Sidenote: Nicholas III (1277-80).]
But it was not to be. Gregory's death (January 10, 1276) undid all his work. Charles of Sicily alone rejoiced at the vacancy, and made desperate efforts to secure the nomination to the Papacy again. But two nominees died in quick succession; and when on the death of John XXI after a similarly short reign, Charles again interfered, he was met by the election of Nicholas III of the family of Orsini, who returned to Rome and spent the three years of his pontificate in neutralising Charles' power. For this purpose he used the new King of the Romans. Charles was forced to resign the vicariate of Tuscany, which was made over to Rudolf. Charles also resigned the senators.h.i.+p of Rome which he had held for ten years. To this Nicholas got himself elected, and issued a decree by which he hoped to make it impossible for any foreign prince to be elected, or for anyone to hold the post for more than a year without the papal favour.
[Sidenote: Revival of the Empire.]
But Nicholas was only able to give a German prince once more a footing in Italy because Rudolf had been effectually barred from reviving the Hohenstaufen claims. Already at the Council of Lyons the envoys of Rudolf had appeared and in his name had taken the oaths previously exacted from Otto IV and Frederick II. Rudolf had subsequently met Pope Gregory at Lausanne in 1275, and had confirmed the act of his representatives. Thus Gregory obtained from a crowned German King an acknowledgment of all the claims advanced by the Papacy since the days of Charles the Great. Rudolf was too busy ever to visit Rome; but in negotiations with regard to his coronation as Emperor, Nicholas III exacted the confirmation of all that was promised to Gregory, and this included especially the lands of the old Exarchate and the district of Pentapolis, which had never yet been actually in the hands of papal officers.
[Sidenote: Martin IV (1281-5).]
Dante has banned the memory of Nicholas as the simoniacal Pope. He certainly used his enormous patronage to enrich his own family. But his death (August, 1280) nearly proved fatal to the freedom of Europe; for Charles at length obtained his own nominee to the Papacy in the person of a Frenchman, Martin IV, who proceeded to hand over to the King for life the Roman senators.h.i.+p conferred upon the Pope. All the work of the preceding Popes was undone. The temporary union of the Churches was dissolved by the excommunication of the Greek Emperor on the pretext that he had not carried out his promises; and Charles, who had obtained a footing in the Greek peninsula and made a league with Venice, prepared to start on his expedition against Constantinople.
There seemed every prospect of his success.
[Sidenote: Sicilian Vespers]
But Charles' brutality had been imitated by his French officials; and the rising known as the ”Sicilian Vespers” in March, 1282, cleared the French out of Sicily and finally overthrew all Charles' plans. The fleet prepared for Constantinople had to be turned against the rebel islanders. The Pope, thinking to play the game of his royal master, refused to mediate; the Sicilians thereupon declared that from St.
Peter they would turn for aid to another Peter, and offered the crown to Peter, King of Aragon, the husband of Manfred's daughter, Constance, who for some years had welcomed Sicilian refugees at his court and had been ready for the summons. The Pope deprived Peter of his hereditary dominions and bestowed them on Charles' great nephew Charles of Valois, a son of Philip III of France; but the Aragonese fleet under Roger di Loria defeated Charles' fleet and captured his son and heir Charles the Lame. On January 7, 1285, Charles himself died, and was followed to the grave very shortly by Pope Martin IV.
The same year saw also the death of Philip III of France and of Peter of Aragon. Pope Honorius IV followed the policy of his predecessor, and to him succeeded Nicholas IV. It was during his pontificate that the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, the result of the First Crusade, was finally wiped out by the capture of Acre (1291), and the little stir made by this event affords a measure of the decay of the crusading spirit.
[Sidenote: Celestine V (1294).]
On the death of Nicholas the division among the Cardinals reflecting the jealousies of the Roman families of Orsini and Colonna, caused a vacancy in the papal office for more than two years. Then by a sudden whim, which in the event of a successful result would have been called an inspiration, the name of a hermit, Peter, whose austerities in his cell on Monte Murrone in the Abruzzi had won him great reverence, was suggested apparently in all sincerity to the wearied and perplexed Cardinals. He was elected and took the t.i.tle of Celestine V. In accordance with the desire of Charles II of Naples, he took up his abode at Naples. But he was utterly unfit for his high office, and after a pontificate of less than four months (August to December, 1294) he resigned, thus perpetrating that ”great refusal” which won Dante's immortal phrase of scorn. How far his act was due to the machinations of Cardinal Gaetani is uncertain. At any rate Gaetani had evidently obtained Charles' sanction beforehand to his own elevation, which took place ten days later. But the new Pope did not intend that anyone should be his master. For the moment he and Charles needed each other, and it was agreed between them that Sicily should be recovered for Charles, while Celestine should be given into the keeping of his successor lest he should become a centre for disaffection.
[Sidenote: Boniface VIII (1294-1303).]
Boniface VIII--such was the name of the new Pope--returned to Rome escorted by Charles II and his son, Charles Martel of Hungary; and his coronation surpa.s.sed that of all previous Popes in magnificence. The late Pope was soon secured and placed in a tower on the top of a mountain, where he died in 1296. It was not so easy for Boniface to fulfil his part of the compact with regard to Sicily. James, the son of Peter of Aragon, agreed to surrender Sicily on the understanding that the new Pope would withdraw the award of Aragon made by Martin IV to a French prince, and confirm it him. But the Sicilians refused to return to their French ruler and found a champion in James' younger brother Frederick, who was their Governor. He was crowned King of Sicily at Palermo in 1296. Charles II was too feeble to make any real headway against Frederick, and even the t.i.tle of Standard-bearer of the Church conferred by the Pope on James of Aragon, did not keep Frederick's brother permanently on the papal side. In 1301 Boniface fell back upon the French prince Charles of Valois, to whom Pope Martin had given Aragon, and sent for him to attack ”the new Manfred”
in Sicily. Charles having first failed in an attempt to appease the Florentine factions, pa.s.sed on to the south, and here Frederick ultimately forced him to peace and a recognition of his t.i.tle as King of Sicily (1302). At first Boniface would not ratify a peace from which all reference to Pope or Church had been omitted; but in 1303 circ.u.mstances caused him to accept it, though he exacted as a condition that Frederick should acknowledge himself a papal va.s.sal.