But the Sforza government had so outraged the Genoese that popular indignation ran high against it, and Prospero Adorno resolved to free himself from his unfortunate alliance, and, to strengthen his new position, sought and obtained the aid of the counts of Lavagna. The Lombard regency sent a splendidly equipped army of more than sixteen thousand men, to compel the rebels to return to their allegiance; but Gianluigi Fieschi assaulted them in flank and rear with such skill and courage that he put them to complete rout. The enemy took refuge in Savignone and Montobbio, but Fieschi refused to listen to terms of accommodation, stormed those strongholds, recovered his feuds, and retained the prisoners as a ransom for Obietto.
The Fieschi may have been restless partisans and promoters of intestine strife, but they were never tyrants. Their broad lands, from which they drew large revenues and considerable armies, enabled them to make war upon a republic already strong in arms, and to snatch victory from the troops of foreign lords. At this period they held in the duchies of Parma and Piacenza the feuds of Calestano, Vigolone, Pontremoli, Valdettaro, Terzogno, Albere, Tizzano, Balone, and a number of smaller castles; in the territory of Lunigiana—Massa, Carrara, Suvero, Calice, Vepulli, Madrignano, Groppoli, Godano, Caranza, and Brugnato; in Valdibubera they were masters of Varzi, Grimiasco, Torriglia, Cantalupo, Pietra, and Savignone; in Piedmont—Vercelli, Masserano, and Crevacore; in Lombardy—Voghera (which Tortona sold to Percival Fieschi in 1303), and Castiglione di Lodi; in Umbria—Mugnano; in the kingdom of Naples—San Valentino; in Liguria, to say nothing of Lavagna, where they coined money before 1294,[6] they possessed more than a hundred boroughs.
It should be added that most of these possessions came into their power by conquest, purchase, or imperial gift before Innocent and Hadrian ascended to the Pontifical throne. Nicolò Fieschi alone, to pass by others of the family, bought seventy castles in Lunigiana from the bishop of Luni and from the lords of Carpena then very powerful. He ceded a great part of these feuds to the Republic, when he took the leadership of the Guelphs and formed alliance with Naples against the Ubertines (1270). This was the origin of long and bitter contests which finally ended in a treaty of peace and the absolution of Genoa from the interdict hurled against her by Pope Gregory at the instance of Cardinal Fieschi, whose lands the Republic had seized. The convention provided for the cession of a great part of the Cardinal’s feuds to Genoa (1276). We believe there is no other family which counts in its registers two Popes, seventy-two Cardinals and three-hundred Archbishops, Bishops and Patriarchs. Sinibaldo who assumed the tiara in 1242 under the title of Innocent IV, was an illustrious Pontiff. Frederick II, who had found in him when cardinal a warm ally, proved the strength of his hostility when he became Pope. The Emperor shut up the Pope in the castle of Sutri in 1244 and the Genoese sent twenty two galleys to raise the siege and rescue the pontiff. Innocent accompanied his deliverers to Genoa and from here travelled by the mountain road of Varazze to the castle of Stella, of which Jacopo Grillo (an accomplished troubadour) was lord, and remained there for forty days. A fountain from which he was wont to slake his thirst is still called Fontana Del Papa. From Stella he journeyed by way of Acqui to Lyons, where he summoned a general council and excommunicated Frederick, his son Corrado and his followers and partisans the Duke of Bavaria and Ezzelino.
The Emperor to avenge this affront, captured and destroyed the castles of the Fieschi in Liguria. The Pope, to rebuild and secure a home wasted by many invasions, formed the magnificent scheme of surrounding Genoa with walls and converting it into a refuge for the Guelph party. He selected for his own residence the convent of S. Domenico,[7] which had been the church of St. Egidius (having been donated to that patriarch in 1220.) The Ghibellines, learning the Pope’s design, raised a tumult and prevented the erection on that site of the palace which afterwards adorned the summit of Carignano.
Ottobuono, son of Tedisio, followed Innocent in the papal dignity and took the name of Hadrian V. As legate of Urban IV, he had conducted with success some difficult political negotiations. In the Council of Lyons and in his embassies to Germany and Spain, the superiority of his mind had given him a foremost place. When he ascended the pontifical throne, he curbed the insolence of Charles of Anjou who was abusing his office as Senator of Rome. His reign was short, for as Dante sings,
“Un mese e poco piu provò Come pesa il gran manto”[8]
The great Poet condemns him to the circle of the avaricious in Purgatory, perhaps on account of the vast wealth which he amassed while cardinal, the rental of which exceeded a hundred thousand gold marks.
Luca Fieschi, Cardinal of S. Maria Invialata, was still richer. He, like all the rest of his family, wielded the sword as well as made pastoral addresses. The famous Sciarra Colonna, captured by him at Anagni, had bitter experience of his warlike spirit. This cardinal as legate of Clement V in Italy, accompanied Henry VII in his expedition to our Peninsula in 1311. It was through his influence that Brescia and Piacenza were saved from pillage as a punishment for their revolt. After Henry’s coronation in Rome, the cardinal obtained by a decree, issued at Pisa in 1313, the full confirmation of all his ancient feudal rights. In his will, he ordered that, whoever of his heirs should be patron of the church of S. Adriano in Trigoso should build, on the estates of Benedetta De Marini, a church of equal size and beauty with that in Trigoso, and he bequeathed a large amount of property to be spent in its construction. This is the origin of that Gothic church in Vialata whose sides are covered with alternate slabs of black and white marbles. The word Vialata is not derived from the violets which once blossomed over that height, as some tell us, but from the cardinalate of that temple which the vandals of our time have not yet entirely disfigured. The friends of Luca Fieschi erected an honourable monument to him, in the duomo of Genoa, some remains of which are yet visible on a side door of our cathedral.