The history of Italy under the rule of their Roman ancestors took on a celestial radiance in the eyes of those who viewed the sad decline of their country's greatness. Petrarch would, he says, have preferred any age to his own. His sole consolation lay in the rooted conviction that times were going rapidly from bad to worse. He saw upon every hand examples of the terrible inadequacy of the existing system to yield even the most primitive benefit of government,—the reasonable security of person and property. Disorder, robbery, and murder were every-day occurrences. When he first visited Rome, his friends deemed a hundred horsemen a necessary escort to protect him from the Orsini on his way to the city.[2] Upon the occasion of his coronation the representative of the King of Naples, who was to accompany him, failed to reach Rome; he had been captured by bandits.[3] Petrarch himself was attacked as he left the city, and was obliged to return within its walls.[4] The danger upon the highroads kept him in a constant state of apprehension when he or his friends undertook a journey. Even the peaceful retreat at Vaucluse was at last plundered and burned, and the poet declared that nowhere was one any longer sheltered from the ferocious robber bands which moved about with the precision of regular armies, and which the walls of fortified towns and the arms of their rulers were alike powerless to check.[5]
This lawlessness was naturally attributed to Italian disunion. The subdivision of Italy into a multitude of practically independent states and urban communities stimulated the development of personal political ambition and produced the "age of despots." The tyrants, in their struggle to maintain their power at home and increase their prestige abroad, inevitably resorted to the approved expedient of the usurper, territorial aggrandisement. The discomfiture or subjugation of their neighbours became the absorbing object of the foreign policy of Milan, Venice, and Florence, and of the lesser states as well. Peace, the natural enemy of the usurper, was thoroughly banished from Italy, and a perpetual state of war prevailed. There were few serious, decisive conflicts, it is true, but there was an all-pervading, self-perpetuating, Ishmaelitish antagonism between the various countries, which precluded all hope of national cooperation. "Servile Italy," indeed, "ship without a pilot!"[6]
In the face of such evils, and hopeless of reform from within, a patriotic Italian of the fourteenth century might be pardoned for looking to a foreign ruler, even to a somewhat commonplace and unpromising prince, for the initiative in restoring order. The Italians were too completely engrossed by their own complex interstate relations, and too thoroughly convinced of the absolute inferiority of "the barbarians," seriously to apprehend that foreign intervention might ultimately develop into subjugation. History was, indeed, quite explicit upon this point. The German emperors had never been able to establish their control over Italy except partially and for the moment.
Practical considerations were not, however, the most fundamental justification and explanation of the Ghibelline reliance upon foreign intervention. The political speculation of the time shows clearly that theory was much more potent than the obvious necessity of governmental reform in fostering the imperial cause. The theory in question was that of the perpetuity of the Holy Roman Empire, with its divinely recognised centre at Rome. Even at the courts of the despots, whose practical sagacity was creating the first modern states with their elaborate systems of administration, Petrarch, like Dante, loved to brood, with a half-mystical, half-humanistic partiality, upon that perdurable illusion which exercised such an inexplicable charm over the mediæval mind. It was the same craving for an ideal union of humanity under one consecrated head that led Dante joyfully to hail the coming of Henry VII. In the same great cause,—the defence of the Empire,—Marsiglio of Padua, by far the keenest of the political thinkers of Petrarch's time, composed his extraordinary treatise upon government and the relations of church and state. Longing for the restoration of Rome's supremacy, Petrarch first placed his hopes in Rienzo, and then, after the Tribune's fall, sent message after message to Charles IV., King of Bohemia, the grandson of Dante's imperial hero, exhorting him to have pity upon Italy and widowed Rome.
Mr. Bryce calls Dante's treatise on government an epitaph, not a prophecy. Petrarch, too, was blind to the forces about him which made for political progress. He learned nothing from that race of really great rulers, the Visconti, with whom he was intimately associated. Moreover, the most original and profound work upon government which the Middle Ages produced, the Defensor Pacis of Marsiglio of Padua, written in 1324, appears to have exercised no influence upon him, and although he confined his reading to the classics and the writings of the Fathers, his political sympathies and ideals are typically mediæval. In his treatment of these matters he does not rise above the current argumentation of the Imperialists, although he re-enforces his position with a greater abundance and precision of historical illustration.
Rienzo had found in Petrarch a sympathetic confidant when, as early as 1343, upon visiting Avignon, he had unfolded his audacious schemes to him.[7] When, four years later, at Pentecost, 1347, the innkeeper's son carried out his successful coup d'état and got possession of the city of Rome, Petrarch was enchanted, as is shown by the letter given below. The immediate results of Rienzo's accession to power were indeed almost magical: order was restored, the roads were rendered safe for the first time in the memory of man, and an Italian parliament was summoned to consider the unification of Italy. The Tribune's manifestoes aroused universal enthusiasm; and, in spite of the writer's inflated and obscure style, Petrarch pronounced him, long after the spell was broken, a most eloquent and persuasive orator and a graceful writer. Petrarch seemed to see his own dreams realised; the ancient dignity and ascendancy of Rome were re-established; the foreign tyrants, as he called the Roman nobility, including the Colonnesi, had been expelled; the power was once more in the hands of the divinely elected people of Rome. Rome was soon to be the head of a unified and rejuvenated Italy, perhaps of a redeemed Europe. By November Petrarch was on his way to join Rienzo. He was probably actuated to some extent, however, by his desire to see Italy once more, and to escape from the reproaches of his former friends at the papal court, especially of Giovanni Colonna, whose favour he necessarily sacrificed by his public espousal of Rienzo's cause. But upon his reaching Genoa, letters forwarded to him from Avignon brought the sad story of the Tribune's fatal indiscretions. He thereupon gave up the idea of going to Rome, and contented himself with addressing a sharp reprimand to the delinquent ruler, to whom he recalled the truth: Magnus enim labor est magnæ custodia famæ.[8]
After scarcely seven months of power Rienzo ignominiously retired from the Capitol and fled to the solitudes of the Abruzzi. There, while living the life of a hermit, he was encouraged by prophetic revelations to renew his attempts to establish the Roman power. He determined to conciliate the new Emperor, Charles IV., foreigner as he was, and win him if possible to his fantastic[9] schemes. This strangest of all Italian ambassadors must have reached Prague when Charles was fresh from a perusal of Petrarch's first summons to him, which is given below.[10] The Emperor listened curiously to Rienzo's representations, but instead of joining him in a campaign for the realisation of the ideal Roman Empire he shut up the ex-Tribune as an enemy of the Church, and later turned him over to the pope at Avignon. Petrarch still sympathised with the unfortunate captive, and prepared an appeal to the Roman people in his favour.[11] After a brief return to a restricted exercise of power as senator under the papal control, Rienzo was killed by a mob, October 8, 1354.[12]