Volume 6 Part 36 (1/2)

[Footnote 7: Consult Selden's t.i.tles of Honor, in his works, (vol. iii.

p. 457--466.) A hundred years before Petrarch, St. Francis received the visit of a poet, qui ab imperatore fuerat coronatus et exinde rex versuum dictus.]

[Footnote 8: From Augustus to Louis, the muse has too often been false and venal: but I much doubt whether any age or court can produce a similar establishment of a stipendiary poet, who in every reign, and at all events, is bound to furnish twice a year a measure of praise and verse, such as may be sung in the chapel, and, I believe, in the presence, of the sovereign. I speak the more freely, as the best time for abolis.h.i.+ng this ridiculous custom is while the prince is a man of virtue and the poet a man of genius.]

[Footnote 9: Isocrates (in Panegyrico, tom. i. p. 116, 117, edit.

Battie, Cantab. 1729) claims for his native Athens the glory of first inst.i.tuting and recommending the alwnaV--kai ta aqla megista--mh monon tacouV kai rwmhV, alla kai logwn kai gnwmhV. The example of the Panathenaea was imitated at Delphi; but the Olympic games were ignorant of a musical crown, till it was extorted by the vain tyranny of Nero, (Sueton. in Nerone, c. 23; Philostrat. apud Casaubon ad loc.u.m; Dion Ca.s.sius, or Xiphilin, l. lxiii. p. 1032, 1041. Potter's Greek Antiquities, vol. i. p. 445, 450.)]

[Footnote 10: The Capitoline games (certamen quinquenale, _music.u.m_, equestre, gymnic.u.m) were inst.i.tuted by Domitian (Sueton. c. 4) in the year of Christ 86, (Censorin. de Die Natali, c. 18, p. 100, edit.

Havercamp.) and were not abolished in the ivth century, (Ausonius de Professoribus Burdegal. V.) If the crown were given to superior merit, the exclusion of Statius (Capitolia nostrae inficiata lyrae, Sylv. l. iii.

v. 31) may do honor to the games of the Capitol; but the Latin poets who lived before Domitian were crowned only in the public opinion.]

[Footnote 11: Petrarch and the senators of Rome were ignorant that the laurel was not the Capitoline, but the Delphic crown, (Plin. Hist.

Natur p. 39. Hist. Critique de la Republique des Lettres, tom. i. p.

150--220.) The victors in the Capitol were crowned with a garland of oak eaves, (Martial, l. iv. epigram 54.)]

[Footnote 12: The pious grandson of Laura has labored, and not without success, to vindicate her immaculate chast.i.ty against the censures of the grave and the sneers of the profane, (tom. ii. notes, p. 76--82.)]

The ceremony of his coronation [13] was performed in the Capitol, by his friend and patron the supreme magistrate of the republic. Twelve patrician youths were arrayed in scarlet; six representatives of the most ill.u.s.trious families, in green robes, with garlands of flowers, accompanied the procession; in the midst of the princes and n.o.bles, the senator, count of Anguillara, a kinsman of the Colonna, a.s.sumed his throne; and at the voice of a herald Petrarch arose. After discoursing on a text of Virgil, and thrice repeating his vows for the prosperity of Rome, he knelt before the throne, and received from the senator a laurel crown, with a more precious declaration, ”This is the reward of merit.”

The people shouted, ”Long life to the Capitol and the poet!” A sonnet in praise of Rome was accepted as the effusion of genius and grat.i.tude; and after the whole procession had visited the Vatican, the profane wreath was suspended before the shrine of St. Peter. In the act or diploma [14] which was presented to Petrarch, the t.i.tle and prerogatives of poet-laureate are revived in the Capitol, after the lapse of thirteen hundred years; and he receives the perpetual privilege of wearing, at his choice, a crown of laurel, ivy, or myrtle, of a.s.suming the poetic habit, and of teaching, disputing, interpreting, and composing, in all places whatsoever, and on all subjects of literature. The grant was ratified by the authority of the senate and people; and the character of citizen was the recompense of his affection for the Roman name. They did him honor, but they did him justice. In the familiar society of Cicero and Livy, he had imbibed the ideas of an ancient patriot; and his ardent fancy kindled every idea to a sentiment, and every sentiment to a pa.s.sion. The aspect of the seven hills and their majestic ruins confirmed these lively impressions; and he loved a country by whose liberal spirit he had been crowned and adopted. The poverty and debas.e.m.e.nt of Rome excited the indignation and pity of her grateful son; he dissembled the faults of his fellow-citizens; applauded with partial fondness the last of their heroes and matrons; and in the remembrance of the past, in the hopes of the future, was pleased to forget the miseries of the present time. Rome was still the lawful mistress of the world: the pope and the emperor, the bishop and general, had abdicated their station by an inglorious retreat to the Rhone and the Danube; but if she could resume her virtue, the republic might again vindicate her liberty and dominion. Amidst the indulgence of enthusiasm and eloquence, [15]

Petrarch, Italy, and Europe, were astonished by a revolution which realized for a moment his most splendid visions. The rise and fall of the tribune Rienzi will occupy the following pages: [16] the subject is interesting, the materials are rich, and the glance of a patriot bard [17] will sometimes vivify the copious, but simple, narrative of the Florentine, [18] and more especially of the Roman, historian. [19]

[Footnote 13: The whole process of Petrarch's coronation is accurately described by the abbe de Sade, (tom. i. p. 425--435, tom. ii. p.

1--6, notes, p. 1--13,) from his own writings, and the Roman diary of Ludovico, Monaldeschi, without mixing in this authentic narrative the more recent fables of Sannuccio Delbene.]

[Footnote 14: The original act is printed among the Pieces Justificatives in the Memoires sur Petrarque, tom. iii. p. 50--53.]

[Footnote 15: To find the proofs of his enthusiasm for Rome, I need only request that the reader would open, by chance, either Petrarch, or his French biographer. The latter has described the poet's first visit to Rome, (tom. i. p. 323--335.) But in the place of much idle rhetoric and morality, Petrarch might have amused the present and future age with an original account of the city and his coronation.]

[Footnote 16: It has been treated by the pen of a Jesuit, the P. de Cerceau whose posthumous work (Conjuration de Nicolas Gabrini, dit de Rienzi, Tyran de Rome, en 1347) was published at Paris, 1748, in 12mo. I am indebted to him for some facts and doc.u.ments in John Hocsemius, canon of Liege, a contemporary historian, (Fabricius Bibliot. Lat. Med. aevi, tom. iii. p. 273, tom. iv. p. 85.)]

[Footnote 17: The abbe de Sade, who so freely expatiates on the history of the xivth century, might treat, as his proper subject, a revolution in which the heart of Petrarch was so deeply engaged, (Memoires, tom.

ii. p. 50, 51, 320--417, notes, p. 70--76, tom. iii. p. 221--243, 366--375.) Not an idea or a fact in the writings of Petrarch has probably escaped him.]

[Footnote 18: Giovanni Villani, l. xii. c. 89, 104, in Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, tom. xiii. p. 969, 970, 981--983.]

[Footnote 19: In his third volume of Italian antiquities, (p. 249--548,) Muratori has inserted the Fragmenta Historiae Romanae ab Anno 1327 usque ad Annum 1354, in the original dialect of Rome or Naples in the xivth century, and a Latin version for the benefit of strangers. It contains the most particular and authentic life of Cola (Nicholas) di Rienzi; which had been printed at Bracciano, 1627, in 4to., under the name of Tomaso Fortifiocca, who is only mentioned in this work as having been punished by the tribune for forgery. Human nature is scarcely capable of such sublime or stupid impartiality: but whosoever in the author of these Fragments, he wrote on the spot and at the time, and paints, without design or art, the manners of Rome and the character of the tribune. * Note: Since the publication of my first edition of Gibbon, some new and very remarkable doc.u.ments have been brought to light in a life of Nicolas Rienzi,--Cola di Rienzo und seine Zeit,--by Dr. Felix Papencordt. The most important of these doc.u.ments are letters from Rienzi to Charles the Fourth, emperor and king of Bohemia, and to the archbishop of Praque; they enter into the whole history of his adventurous career during its first period, and throw a strong light upon his extraordinary character. These doc.u.ments were first discovered and made use of, to a certain extent, by Pelzel, the historian of Bohemia. The originals have disappeared, but a copy made by Pelzel for his own use is now in the library of Count Thun at Teschen. There seems no doubt of their authenticity. Dr. Papencordt has printed the whole in his Urkunden, with the exception of one long theological paper.--M.

1845.]

In a quarter of the city which was inhabited only by mechanics and Jews, the marriage of an innkeeper and a washer woman produced the future deliverer of Rome. [20] [201] From such parents Nicholas Rienzi Gabrini could inherit neither dignity nor fortune; and the gift of a liberal education, which they painfully bestowed, was the cause of his glory and untimely end. The study of history and eloquence, the writings of Cicero, Seneca, Livy, Caesar, and Valerius Maximus, elevated above his equals and contemporaries the genius of the young plebeian: he perused with indefatigable diligence the ma.n.u.scripts and marbles of antiquity; loved to dispense his knowledge in familiar language; and was often provoked to exclaim, ”Where are now these Romans? their virtue, their justice, their power? why was I not born in those happy times?” [21] When the republic addressed to the throne of Avignon an emba.s.sy of the three orders, the spirit and eloquence of Rienzi recommended him to a place among the thirteen deputies of the commons. The orator had the honor of haranguing Pope Clement the Sixth, and the satisfaction of conversing with Petrarch, a congenial mind: but his aspiring hopes were chilled by disgrace and poverty and the patriot was reduced to a single garment and the charity of the hospital. [211] From this misery he was relieved by the sense of merit or the smile of favor; and the employment of apostolic notary afforded him a daily stipend of five gold florins, a more honorable and extensive connection, and the right of contrasting, both in words and actions, his own integrity with the vices of the state. The eloquence of Rienzi was prompt and persuasive: the mult.i.tude is always p.r.o.ne to envy and censure: he was stimulated by the loss of a brother and the impunity of the a.s.sa.s.sins; nor was it possible to excuse or exaggerate the public calamities. The blessings of peace and justice, for which civil society has been inst.i.tuted, were banished from Rome: the jealous citizens, who might have endured every personal or pecuniary injury, were most deeply wounded in the dishonor of their wives and daughters: [22] they were equally oppressed by the arrogance of the n.o.bles and the corruption of the magistrates; [221] and the abuse of arms or of laws was the only circ.u.mstance that distinguished the lions from the dogs and serpents of the Capitol. These allegorical emblems were variously repeated in the pictures which Rienzi exhibited in the streets and churches; and while the spectators gazed with curious wonder, the bold and ready orator unfolded the meaning, applied the satire, inflamed their pa.s.sions, and announced a distant hope of comfort and deliverance.

The privileges of Rome, her eternal sovereignty over her princes and provinces, was the theme of his public and private discourse; and a monument of servitude became in his hands a t.i.tle and incentive of liberty. The decree of the senate, which granted the most ample prerogatives to the emperor Vespasian, had been inscribed on a copper plate still extant in the choir of the church of St. John Lateran. [23] A numerous a.s.sembly of n.o.bles and plebeians was invited to this political lecture, and a convenient theatre was erected for their reception. The notary appeared in a magnificent and mysterious habit, explained the inscription by a version and commentary, [24] and descanted with eloquence and zeal on the ancient glories of the senate and people, from whom all legal authority was derived. The supine ignorance of the n.o.bles was incapable of discerning the serious tendency of such representations: they might sometimes chastise with words and blows the plebeian reformer; but he was often suffered in the Colonna palace to amuse the company with his threats and predictions; and the modern Brutus [25] was concealed under the mask of folly and the character of a buffoon. While they indulged their contempt, the restoration of the _good estate_, his favorite expression, was entertained among the people as a desirable, a possible, and at length as an approaching, event; and while all had the disposition to applaud, some had the courage to a.s.sist, their promised deliverer.

[Footnote 20: The first and splendid period of Rienzi, his tribunitian government, is contained in the xviiith chapter of the Fragments, (p.

399--479,) which, in the new division, forms the iid book of the history in x.x.xviii. smaller chapters or sections.]

[Footnote 201: But see in Dr. Papencordt's work, and in Rienzi's own words, his claim to be a b.a.s.t.a.r.d son of the emperor Henry the Seventh, whose intrigue with his mother Rienzi relates with a sort of proud shamelessness. Compare account by the editor of Dr. Papencordt's work in Quarterly Review vol. lxix.--M. 1845.]

[Footnote 21: The reader may be pleased with a specimen of the original idiom: F da soa juventutine nutricato di latte de eloquentia, bono gramatico, megliore rettuorico, autorista bravo. Deh como et quanto era veloce leitore! moito usava t.i.to Livio, Seneca, et Tullio, et Balerio Ma.s.simo, moito li dilettava le magnificentie di Julio Cesare raccontare.

Tutta la die se speculava negl' intagli di marmo lequali iaccio intorno Roma. Non era altri che esso, che sapesse lejere li antichi pataffii.