III.
The Ghibelline victory over the Guelphs of Florence in 1249, with all its violence and bloodshed, was by no means an assured triumph. The Ghibellines had destroyed free institutions and exiled a vast number of adversaries; aided by the Imperial vicar, Giordano Lancia and his eight hundred men, they were absolute masters of Florence; nevertheless, the populace, the burghers, and the greater part of the citizens still remained Guelphs. Besides, Pope Innocent IV. roused so many enemies against the emperor in Italy, that the latter's success was destined to a speedy decline. The Florentine exiles were biding their time in neighbouring strongholds, and above all in the Castles of Montevarchi and Capraia in the upper and lower Val d'Arno. From these points they made frequent skirmishing expeditions, clearly showing that they had by no means lost hope of soon re-entering the city. Accordingly, the conquerors had to be perpetually on the alert against them to provide against some sudden attack restoring them to power.
Therefore Ghibellines and Germans marched against Montevarchi; but almost the whole storming force was killed or captured. This defeat opened the eyes of the Florentine Ghibellines to the danger of their position, and decided them to lay regular siege to the Castle of Capraia, headquarters of the principal Guelphs, chiefs of the party or League, as it was called at the time, directing all the movements of the rest. Although the beleaguering force greatly outnumbered their own, the besieged decided on an obstinate defence, and the Ghibellines were bent on winning the castle either by violence or starvation. But they would have failed to accomplish this but for the arrival of reinforcements from the emperor, who, having been compelled to raise the siege of Parma, had now advanced into Tuscany. But, in spite of these fresh foes, hunger alone drove the Guelphs to surrender. Their leaders were given up to Frederic II., who was then at Fucecchio. He carried them with him to the kingdom of Naples, and, according to the Florentine chroniclers, had them barbarously blinded, beaten to death with clubs, or drowned in the sea, with the exception of one alone, whose life was spared after his eyes had been torn out.
By this time the emperor was irritated and exhausted by the continual wars thrust on him by the Papacy. He had enjoyed no peace since the day (June 24, 1243) when Sinibaldo de Fieschi ascended the Chair of St. Peter as Pope Innocent IV. This pontiff had pronounced his deposition at the Council of Lyons in 1245. He had then secretly excited many conspiracies against him, and attempted more or less to ensure their success. The emperor had been led to suspect his most devoted friend and secretary, Pier delle Vigne, of complicity in one of these plots. Accordingly this faithful servant was thrown into the tower of San Miniato al Tedesco, condemned to lose his eyes, and then transferred to another prison in Pisa, where he dashed out his brains against the wall. Frederic's spirit was alternately cowed and irritated by the hostility he encountered; for, with all his philosophy and unbelief, he greatly dreaded the thunders of the Vatican. He sought reconciliation with the Pope, wished to return to the East to fight the infidels; and Innocent chose that moment to rouse all the Guelph cities against him, thus again forcing him to fly to arms to support the Ghibelline cause and maintain his own sway over Italy.
This he was unable to effect without recurring, as we have seen, to incredible excesses of violence, which naturally increased the number of his enemies on all sides. The Guelphs of Germany had already refused to acknowledge the authority of his son Corrado, whom he had sent as his representative. The army commanded by the emperor in person had been routed at Parma. All the Guelph cities of Romagna, with Bölogna at their head, marched a powerful force against the Ghibellines under King Enzo, another of Frederic's natural sons, and defeated them at the battle of Fossalta on May 26, 1249. Enzo himself was captured and carried in triumph to Bologna, where he remained a prisoner till his death in 1271. But the emperor did not live long enough to feel this last blow. On December 13, 1250, he ceased to breathe in a castle near Lucera in Apulia, and his death completed the downfall of the Ghibelline party in Florence and throughout Italy. For religious hatred was now combined with political enmity against this party. Not only because the Ghibellines combated the Pope, but still more, because the various heresies gradually spreading through Italy found many followers in their ranks, in consequence of frequent marks of tolerance and favour received from the emperor. The heretical poison now slowly infecting the Italian social body was a grave anxiety to the Popes. The Albigenses had first roused attention and found adherents in Provence, where native bards had devoted their talents to attacking the Roman Court. But the religious orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic were bent on crushing the new creed. Innocent III. had founded the Holy Inquisition for the same purpose, and St. Dominic, at the head of mobs thirsting for heretic blood, had ordained the massacre of the Albigenses and ravaged all Provence. Some fugitives, however, had escaped into Italy, to spread the same hatred against Rome, the same poison of heresy. In fact, the Paterini, opposed to the Pope, denying the virginity of the Madonna, and having no belief in transubstantiation or other dogmas of the Catholic faith, found followers everywhere and held public gatherings. The Epicurean, Averrhoistic, and other philosophical tenets were rapidly propagated among Italian scholars. For some time, during the most brilliant period of the Imperial Court in Sicily, all this intellectual and religious turmoil seemed to be chiefly centred at Palermo. For there Frederic II. had gathered about him a throng of scholars, troubadours, poets of every kind, Mussulmans, Greek schismatics, Provençal Albigenses, and materialistic philosophers; and although a crusader and persecutor of heretics, took singular delight in this mixed society, in whose midst, and in a storm of sarcasm, doubt, and hatred of priests, Italian poetry first sprang to life, and later on, in the Divine Comedy, gave forth so great a wealth of earnest faith and lofty aspiration. In the meantime, however, heresy and scepticism were current throughout the Peninsula. The Paterini quickly obtained many converts among the Ghibellines in Florence, and the Pope established the Inquisition there for the trial and punishment of backsliders. In 1244 Fra Pietro of Verona, moved by religious fury rather than zeal, came to stir the orthodox spirit by his inflammatory sermons; and founded the Society of the Captains of Holy Mary or of Faith, composed of men and women vowed to the extermination of heretics. Public feeling caught fire in 1245, and a real battle between Catholics and heretics raged in the Florence streets. Both at Santa Felicità and in the space by the Croce al Trebbio, where a column still commemorates the ill-fated event, the Captains of the Faith, robed in white, bearing the badge of the cross, and commanded by their big, strong, dare-devil chief, Friar Pietro of Verona, routed the Paterini and drove them from Florence. In reward for this sanguinary triumph the friar was appointed Inquisitor of Tuscany, and subsequently of Lombardy as well. There in the north, between Milan and Como, he finally met his death at the hands of men wearied of his persecutions. This gained him the title of a martyred saint, and he was known henceforth as St. Peter—Martyr of Verona.[241]