CHAPTER XXIII
A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW (1350-1450)
The return of the Papacy to Rome was an event of importance both for Italy and the Catholic Church. Had it remained in France, it must have dwindled and shrunk, like Antæus, kept away from its source of strength. Nevertheless, the Papacy was no longer what it once had been; it cannot serve us now as a central channel for the course of Italian history, and will rank no higher than the first of half-a-dozen little channels, which we must pursue separately.
The returning Pope found his territory in greater obedience than he deserved; for a brilliant Spanish cardinal, Albornoz who had been sent some time before had reduced almost all the cities to subjection (1353-67); even Bologna, successfully disputed with the Visconti, acknowledged papal dominion. But there was neither peace nor tranquillity. Everywhere turbulence and murmurous threatenings rumbled; and worse was to come. The very year after the return from the Babylonish Captivity the Great Schism rent the Church asunder for forty years. There were two parties in the College of Cardinals, the French and the Italian, with little love lost between them. The Italians were in control and elected Urban VI (1378-89), a domineering, cruel, most unpastoral person, who insulted the foreign cardinals, and so angered them that they left Rome, declared his election illegal, and elected one of themselves as Pope in his stead. This anti-pope, attended by his troop of cardinals, returned to Avignon. Christian Europe divided in two: some countries recognized Urban, others recognized the anti-pope. Thus the schism began, and prepared the way for the next great split of Christian Europe into Catholics and Protestants. There were now two sources of apostolic succession, two supreme rulers, and two systems of taxation. Misbehaviour and confusion at the top lowered the moral tone of the whole Church. The Curia in Rome was scandalously venal. Indulgences were sold; offices were bestowed for money. Nobody in Rome respected the Pope, hardly anybody respected the clergy.
All Christendom felt that reformation was necessary, and that, first of all, the schism must be closed. Thereupon some outward deference was paid to public opinion; the Roman Pope went so far as to make ostensible overtures to his rival at Avignon, and he of Avignon bowed and smiled most politely in return. Friendly greetings went to and fro, and a meeting was talked of. It became obvious, however, after a time, that neither Pope had the slightest intention of abdicating in the other's favour. Christendom remained insistent, and the two batches of cardinals took the matter into their own hands. They held a Council at Pisa, which deposed both Popes, and elected a third (1409), but, as the other two Popes refused to acknowledge their deposition, matters were worse than before. The situation recalled the old days when a German Emperor had come down to Rome and had deposed three rival Popes together. The need seemed to revive the past. The Emperor Sigismund (1410-37) assumed to speak as the head of Christendom. He summoned an Ecumenical Council to meet at the city of Constance, on the Lake of Constance, to judge the schismatic quarrel and to consider the general state of the Church. Other troubles besides schism had begun to appear. The failure of Rome to satisfy the conscience of Europe had borne fruit. Heresy had appeared. In England, Wyclif (1327-84) had denounced the higher clergy for greed and arrogance; he had disavowed allegiance to the divided Papacy, and had opposed the doctrine of transubstantiation. In Bohemia, Jerome of Prague rejected the temporal jurisdiction of priests, and John Huss asserted that Constantine had done great wrong when he endowed Pope Silvester with lands and temporal power.
Christendom responded to the Emperor's call. Prelates and scholars of the highest character and standing assembled at Constance (1414). It was a great occasion, and belongs to the history of Europe. This Council, the seventeenth Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church (1414-18), deposed all three Popes, and elected a Roman, of the House of Colonna, Martin V (1417-31), and so closed the schism and restored unity to the Church. The more difficult matter of crushing heresy was not so readily dealt with. The two reformers, Jerome of Prague and John Huss, refused to recant or modify their views. They were condemned and handed over to the secular arm for punishment; and the Emperor, heedless of the safe-conduct he had given, burnt them at the stake (1415-16).
To follow the proceedings of this interesting Council more fully would take us too far into papal affairs. It must suffice to say that the Reformation can be sniffed in the air. Rome had not done its elementary duties as head of Christendom, and Christendom insisted on a change and on reform; but Rome was powerful and would not submit. Two parties appear, the reformers and the papists. The former wished to purify the Roman Curia and the whole Church, and to give the Papacy a republican character,—to make the Pope a president, as it were, and the College of Cardinals a senate. The latter liked the old easy ways and wished the Pope to be absolute monarch. The papal party by dexterous politics foiled the plans of the reformers and prevented change of any kind, although no doubt it acted less from desire to obstruct reform than to prevent the anti-monarchical party from getting control of the Church and using the prestige of reform to attack the papal autocracy. From this time on the papal party consistently pursued this course, and therefore reformation came not from Rome, but from Germany, and instead of being a reform from within, came practically as an attack from without, and caused the permanent schism of the Reformation. We must now leave the Papacy, which follows its wilful course—via Babylonish Absenteeism, Schism, and refusal to reform—and steers directly towards the rocks of the Reformation, and betake ourselves to the other parts of Italy.
The Kingdom of Naples would have been badly off at best under its light-mannered queen, Joan I (1343-81), but it became involved in the papal schism, and got into a wretched plight. The queen rashly took sides with the Avignon Pope, and the irascible Roman Pope vowed vengeance. He set her cousin, Charles, who belonged to the Durazzo branch of the House of Anjou, on the throne in her stead. The story is a miserable mixture of treasons, battles, and vulgar crimes. Charles got possession of the unfortunate queen and strangled her, and he and his heirs fought her adopted heirs for years. Each side hired mercenaries. John Hawkwood was there, and other notable leaders. Poor Naples, taxed, robbed, and ravaged by rival kings, their favourites, and mistresses, rolled rapidly from bad to worse. Exception must be made in favour of Charles's son Ladislaus (1390-1414), a bold, enterprising soldier, who played a part in the affairs of Italy like that of his ancestor, Charles of Anjou. But he failed in not leaving a son to inherit the crown, and was succeeded by his sister, another Queen Joan (1414-35), likewise light-mannered. There is nothing memorable to grace her career, except the presence of a soldier of fortune, once a Romagnol peasant, Muzio Attendolo, better known as Attendolo Sforza (strength). His son was Francesco Sforza, destined to a brilliant career in Milan. The queen did one thing, however, for which we, who clutch at any unification of Italian history, must thank her. She adopted, not wholly of her free will, Alfonso of Aragon, King of Sicily, and so brought about, though for a few years only, the reunion of the Two Sicilies.
With regard to Sicily we need say nothing except that the royal House, which still had a strain of Hohenstaufen-Norman blood, died out, and that Sicily passed as a marriage portion to the crown of Aragon, and became a mere appanage of that kingdom (1409). Finally, as I have said, King Alfonso was adopted as heir to the second Queen Joan, and took part in the civil wars that devastated Naples. Then began the long struggle of Spaniard against Frenchman (the Neapolitan House of Anjou was still French), which was destined to be so disastrous to Italy. Alfonso conquered and was acknowledged King of the Two Sicilies by his suzerain the Pope (1443). Thus for a time the Southern Kingdom was united and at peace. It is a happy moment to leave it and go northward, in the hope of finding greater moral and intellectual activity, if not greater tranquillity and order.
To the northeast, Venice had been growing in power; but with the growth of her power the number of her enemies and their bitterness towards her had grown. Her possessions on the mainland, wrested from Verona, brought her into hostility with Padua; her Adriatic possessions, Istria and Dalmatia, made her an enemy of Hungary; her coastwise empire and trade in the Levant made Genoa her deadly rival; and her imperial expansion entangled her in war after war. Both the war with Padua and that with Hungary told upon her, but the struggle with Genoa was far worse. During the last grapple, known as the war of Chioggia (1378-81), Venice was reduced to narrow straits, and but for her great admirals, Vettor Pisani and Carlo Zeno, would have been defeated. Genoa never recovered from the losses she sustained; but Venice regained her strength, and renewed her conquests on the mainland. She conquered Padua (1404) and strangled the last heirs of the House of Carrara, though they were prisoners of war; she seized Verona, and set a price on the heads of the last of the Scaligers, though they had been her allies. Her chief expansion on the mainland of Italy was under the Doge Francesco Foscari (1423-57), when she annexed Bergamo and Brescia, and carried her western boundary to the river Adda. For the sake of convenience we may divide the life of Venice into four stages: first, her lusty youth, which closed with the profligate capture of Constantinople and the piratical dismemberment of the Byzantine Empire (1204); second, her vigorous prime, which lasted till she annexed Italian territory, threw in her lot with Italy, and from being almost an Oriental outsider became an Italian state (1338); third, her glorious maturity, which continued till the League of Cambrai, when almost all Europe united to destroy her (1508); and fourth, her long period of ebbing fortune, during which she slipped slowly into decrepitude. In the present chapter we deal with the earlier part of her maturity, when Venice was contesting with Milan for primacy in power and importance.
During all this period the oligarchy had been tightening its hold on the government, and was now absolute and secure. One last attempt had been made to overthrow it, but had easily been put down. No one knows exactly what led to the conspiracy, or what was the exact purpose of the conspirators. The ringleader was the Doge himself, Marino Faliero, one of the old nobility. The story is that he wished to revenge himself for a gross insult from a young nobleman, and it seems likely that a personal quarrel had some connection with a general plot which aimed to overthrow the oligarchy, and substitute a government of the old nobility supported by the people. The plot was betrayed. Nine of the conspirators were hanged from the windows of the Ducal Palace. Faliero's head was cut off, his portrait in the hall of the Ducal Palace was painted out, and in the blank space was written: "This is the place of Marino Faliero, beheaded for his crimes."
The oligarchy did not fail in its duty to itself, but neither did it fail in its duty to the state. Commerce was the life of Venice; and the oligarchy tended it with the utmost care. The famous Venetian arsenal was the foster-mother of that commerce. There the money-getting ships were built and equipped: caracks with three decks and great depth of hold, galleasses with high forecastle and poop, galleys with long rows of oars and lateen sails, all of different builds to suit the rough Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, or the safer Adriatic.
Riches, a firm rule, and the security of an island home, showed visibly in Venice. Instead of fortresses with massive walls and solid towers, light, elegant palaces, decked with gay balconies and incrusting marbles, lined the canals. All revealed tranquillity and prosperity; and the adoption of Gothic architecture in place of Byzantine, and in especial the long Gothic arcades of the Ducal Palace (1300-40), testified how Venice had turned her face from the East to the West. In contrast with Sicily and Naples, rolling down hill separately or together, and with the troubled Papal States, Venice appears altogether happy and successful as she passes from the fourteenth into the fifteenth century.
Milan we have brought to the dignity of a dukedom, for which Gian Galeazzo Visconti (1378-1402), the amiable nephew of the too-confiding Bernabò, paid the price of 100,000 sequins to the fount of honour, the ultramontane Emperor. This nephew, despite a moral inadequacy in his family relations, was in many respects an excellent ruler. He reduced the more burdensome taxes (in one city, it is said, he cut them down from 12,000 florins to 400), and abolished others altogether. He corrected abuses, reorganized the administration of justice, and enacted wise laws. He understood the pride of the Milanese in their city, and laid the foundations of the great Gothic cathedral on a scale to gratify that pride; he began the beautiful church of the Cistercian monks, the Certosa, at Pavia; he completed the palace at Pavia, whither he transported his famous collection of books and an equally famous collection of holy bones. He had the family ambition, and annexed Vicenza, Verona, Padua, Siena, Assisi, Perugia, Pisa, and Bologna. Rumour said that he aspired to a kingdom of Lombardy, and even of all Italy. But Venice and Florence were too powerful for the success of his plans. Venice, perhaps, might have regarded herself as still too much detached from Italy to care to oppose him single-handed; but the doughty burghers of Florence were zealously democratic and would not endure any suggestion of foreign dominion. They had fought the Pope, when they suspected him of designs on their city, and now they organized a league against Gian Galeazzo. Perhaps it would have been a most fortunate thing for Italy if the Duke of Milan had been able to consolidate all Italy, or even all the North, in one kingdom. Centuries of suffering, of ignominy, of foreign domination might have been avoided; but then, perhaps, the great intellectual harvest, that gave Italy for the third time primacy over Europe, would not have attained its full growth. These are idle speculations, for Gian Galeazzo died in his prime (1402), and the universal dominion of Milan became an academic question. Nevertheless, one cannot withhold a sensation of regret. There was undoubted brilliance in Gian Galeazzo; whatever he did was done royally. His ambitions were high, planned always on a large scale. His purchases of the French king's daughter and of the ducal title were splendidly prodigal. The design of the cathedral was noble and bold. It was an endeavour to give the Gothic style an Italian character. In this it is easy to find symbolism. The Gothic style represented the Ghibelline cause, as well as Teutonic blood and influence, whereas the Italian represented the Guelf cause and also Latin blood. The high-aspiring Gian Galeazzo wished to use both Teutonic and Italian elements as the materials for his kingdom. In view of his intellectual gifts, one readily slurs over his moral inadequacy, if that term may be applied to traits which would have done honour to Iago; in fact, prior to Cæsar Borgia, he was the most distinguished example of the type of intellectual, murderous Italian, which exercised so powerful an attraction over the wild fancy of the Elizabethan dramatists.
Gian Galeazzo's death left his dukedom in a chaotic condition. A widow, a regent committee, and three boys were left to see the state, built up with so much care and astuteness, fall away piecemeal into the hands of the petty despots, who had been dispossessed during the process of integration. Venice took Verona, Padua, and other cities near by; the Papacy got back Bologna, Florence managed to secure Pisa. Thus the dukedom was carved up. The eldest son died soon, leaving behind him a memory of the pleasure he took in watching mastiffs tear his prisoners to pieces; but the second son, Filippo Maria (1412-47), inherited his father's craft and much of his ability. By means of two famous condottieri, Carmagnola, best remembered as the victim of Venetian anger, and Francesco Sforza, of whom we have heard in the Neapolitan service, he gradually restored the dukedom very nearly to its boundaries under his father. Filippo Maria was the last of his race, and we will leave him, engaged in speculation as to the best political use of his marriageable daughter Bianca Maria.
We must pass over the Counts of Savoy, now become dukes (1416), the marquesses of Monferrat and Saluzzo, and the lords of other petty territories, and turn our attention to Florence. Florence was always in a state of struggle, always engaged in exiling, deposing, or in some way suppressing aristocrats. Forced, in days of peril, to receive foreign lords as military leaders, she had managed to expel the last of them, one Walter of Brienne, a clever knave, who bore the odd title of Duke of Athens, which he had inherited from his grandfather, one of the gentlemen adventurers who had gone to the East. His father had been expelled from Athens, and the son was happily driven out of Florence. The burghers followed up their victory (1343) with new laws against the aristocrats, and held the government for a generation. Then first appears the name of Medici. One Salvestro dei Medici, as Gonfaloniere of Justice, the supreme officer in Florence under the existing constitution, proposed further laws in favour of the people. The lower classes, with whetted appetites, wanted more. The mechanics and artisans of the lower guilds, and more particularly the wool carders and combers (the Ciompi) of the great wool guilds, rose in riot, overturned the government, and put a wool-carder, Michele di Lando, at the head of the city (1378). Florence was democratic, but not so democratic as to submit to the rule of a wool-carder. The rich burghers would not stomach a plebeian any more than they would a king. A reaction set in, and the government passed into the very competent hands of an oligarchy of distinguished citizens. This oligarchy governed well. Its leaders, Maso degli Albizzi, and Niccolò da Uzzano, acted patriotically and wisely. They resisted the aggressions of Milan from the north, and of Naples (under that exceptional king Ladislaus) from the south, and made it their policy to maintain the balance of power in Italy. Under this oligarchy began the great development of art, known as the Renaissance, or, to be more exact in quoting the textbooks, the First or Early Renaissance. To that subject, which shall give us for a time at least a centre, and save us from these puzzling political subdivisions, we joyfully proceed; only remembering that at this period Italy has these main political divisions,—the Kingdom of Sicily, the Kingdom of Naples (the two temporarily reunited), the Papal States, the city of Florence, the duchy of Milan, and the city of Venice.