The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 09

by Unknown

THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY

For about a half century Italy has been free from the intrusions of the emperors, but now early in the fourteenth century Henry VII crosses the Alps. Unlike some of his predecessors, he meets a rather hearty welcome from several of the cities and from the pope. The Florentines, on the other hand, do not welcome him, and his coming leads to the usual turmoils. His sudden death—perhaps from poison—dissipates all the hopes based on the imperial presence. His successor, Louis of Bavaria, also comes to Italy and in association with the great general Castruccio makes war upon the Florentines, who have been forced much against their will to put themselves under the leadership of the duke of Naples. The Florentines hold their own fairly well against the outside invaders, but find themselves unable to tolerate the tyranny within their walls, and end by expelling the tyrant.

A striking feature of the century is the abandonment of Rome by the popes, who retire to Avignon for more than seventy years, from 1305 to 1377, an interval famous ever since as the Babylonish captivity. During the absence of the popes the Romans fared but ill. Lacking the papal power which made their city a centre of world influence, they are given over to minor dissensions. The famous Rienzi—“The last of the tribunes”—makes an heroic effort to restore order just at the middle of the century, and for a time dominates the situation; only to be overthrown ingloriously after a brief period of authority.

In the north the Visconti make themselves dominant in Milan and interfere perpetually in general politics, striving to subordinate all Italy to their influence. Florence was brought into repeated conflicts with the successive rulers of this family, and it was in these contests that the great English general, Sir John Hawkwood came to the fore. Leader of a band of mercenaries,—soldier of fortune in the most literal sense of the word,—this famous warrior fought first against the Florentines, and subsequently in their service. Despite some reverses he gained a reputation which led Hallam to consider him the first great commander since Roman times. This estimate perhaps does Hawkwood something more than justice; it overlooks the great Castruccio, to go no further. But undoubtedly Hawkwood was a redoubtable leader, and he was among the first of a series of condottioria who gave distinction to Italian armies during the ensuing century.

Genoa and Venice are drawn into a disastrous warfare; in fact the various dominant cities of Italy are almost perpetually quarrelling. Even the great plague which sweeps over Italy in 1348, despite its devastations—so graphically described by Boccaccio—serves to give scarcely more than a temporary lull to the dissensions. The insurrection of the Ciompi, the Great Schism, and the outbreak of the war of Chioggia are dissensions that mark the later decades of the century.

But all these political dissensions sink quite into insignificance in comparison with the tremendous intellectual development of the time. As we have seen, the western world has been preparing for centuries for the development of an indigenous culture. Now the promise meets fruition. It required but the waft of a breeze from the East to fan the smouldering embers into flame. This vivifying influence came about partly through the emigration of large numbers of scholars from Constantinople; a migration incited chiefly by fear of the Turks. These scholars brought with them their love of the Greek classics and stimulated the nascent scholarship of Italy into a like enthusiasm. Soon there began and developed a great fashion of searching for classical manuscripts, and many half-forgotten authors were brought to light. It became the fashion to copy these manuscripts, as every gentleman’s house must now have a library. The revival of interest came about in time to save more than one classical author from oblivion, whose works would probably have perished utterly had they been subjected to another century of neglect. Such an author as Velleius Paterculus, for example, is known exclusively through a single manuscript, which obviously must have escaped destruction through mere chance; and everyone is aware how large a proportion of classical writers were not accorded even this measure of fortune. No doubt many authors were inadvertently allowed to perish even after this revival of interest, but the number must have been very small in proportion to those that were already lost.

But the revival of interest in the works of antiquity was by no means the greatest literary feature of the time. There came with it a creative impulse which gave the world the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, not to mention the lesser chroniclers. Their work evidenced that spontaneous outbreak of the creative impulse for which the classicism of the East had been preparing. How spontaneous it was, how little understood, even by its originators, is illustrated in the fact that both Dante, the creator of Italian poetry, and Boccaccio, the creator of Italian prose, regarded their work in the vernacular as relatively unimportant; basing their hopes of immortality upon their archaic Latin treatises, which the world promptly forgot. No better illustration could be furnished anywhere of that spontaneity of truly creative art to which we have had occasion more than once to refer.

Nor was it in literature alone that the time was creative. Pictorial art had likewise its new beginning in this epoch. Cimabue, indeed, had made an effort to break with the crude traditions of the eastern school of art in the latter part of the thirteenth century; his greater pupil Giotto developed his idea in the early decades of the fourteenth century, and gathered by him, the school of painters in Florence attempted, following their master, to go to nature and to reproduce what they saw. Their effort was a crude and tentative one, judged according to the canons of the later development; but it was the beginning of great things. In architecture the effort of the time was not doomed to be content with mere beginnings: “Giotto’s tower,” the famous Campanile, still stands in evidence of the relative perfection to which this department of art had attained. All in all, then, the fourteenth century was a time of wonderful development in Italy; the clarion note of Dante has been called the voice of ten silent centuries; it told of a new phase of the Renaissance.