Among many anomalies in the papacy, was the inverse ratio of its foreign influence and its domestic strength. Even whilst Rome and its vicinity had been most lawless, whilst the authority of popes in preceding centuries had been most fettered by faction, or most exposed to seditious outrage, their spiritual sway attained its height, and was acknowledged over Christendom without question. The reason is obvious. The religious spirit of the age bowed to ecclesiastical domination, while the factious temperament of the Romans fretted under all restraints of order. After their long exemption from the personal control of the popes, it became more than ever requisite to curb these feverish citizens, and to break down their robber noblesse: we shall hereafter see by what unscrupulous means, and at how great a sacrifice of character, this was finally effected by Alexander VI. But the popedom, whose unity had been rudely shaken by schism and absence, began, after its return to Rome, to suffer manifest inroads from the extension of their political individualities by the chief states of Europe. In order to maintain itself against this new tendency, it had recourse to a like policy; it sought by temporal aggrandisement to compensate the decay of spiritual authority. During its antecedent struggles with the empire, the cause of the Church had been that of freedom, its rallying cry the watchword of liberty. In those days its successes were hailed as a boon by the communes of Italy. Even the feudatories, whose jurisdiction had grown up under shelter of the imperial name, were glad to confirm their title by enrolling themselves as vassals of the Holy See. But when the successors of St. Peter began to develop ulterior aims,—when they descended into the arena of mere political ambition, and sought to aggrandise their territorial dominion by intrigue and arms,—a marked reaction took place. The princes and republics of the Peninsula stood on their defence against a new power of discord, the most fickle in its policy, the most unscrupulous in its expedients, that they had yet been called to resist. The ultra-montane nations pressed on to cope with or to conquer those degenerate Vicars of Christ, who, abandoning their high calling as shepherds and pacificators of Christendom, became its perturbators.
The rapid sketch which we have given in our [first chapter] of the seigneuries and communities of Central Italy may suffice to exhibit the general condition of Umbria, the March of Ancona, and Romagna as far as the Po. In Tuscany, democratic institutions had taken deeper root, among a population addicted rather to arts than to arms, and preferring wealth earned by industry and commercial enterprise to the precarious glory and profits of the sword. Their peaceful habits permitted capital to accumulate; its increase gave them a stake in its security; leisure and consequent intelligence enabled them to mature ideas of liberty beyond those of neighbouring states. It was in Florence especially that a more perfect system of municipal institutions established communal freedom upon a firmer basis, which, amid the ceaseless convulsions of domestic factions, and even through the long atrophy of later Medicean domination, has preserved for that city a political and intellectual pre-eminence, finely acknowledged by old Sanzi in his exclamation,
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"For to curtail fair Florence of her freedom, Were to pluck forth an eye from Italy, And cause her orb to wane." |
In the adjacent commonwealths of Pisa, Lucca, and Siena, similar results sprang from somewhat analogous causes, although they were from time to time, in the words of Dante,
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"O'erthronged With tyrants, and a great Marcellus made Of any petty factious villager," |
until, by degrees encroached on by their more powerful neighbour, they were finally absorbed in the state which owned the Arno's queen as its capital.[*58]
Lombardy was no longer the emporium whence commercial wealth circulated over Europe, but her cities, surrounded by plains of unequalled fertility, gave no signs of decay, her universities were crowded by transalpine students. She had fully realised the stinging reproaches of Alighieri,—
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"Thy living ones In thee abide not without war, and one Malicious gnaws another, ay, of those Whom the same wall and the same moat contain;" |
but her Ezzelino and Can della Scala were no more, and many of her petty principalities had been merged in the wide-spreading duchy of Milan, or the mainland conquests of Venice. The Lion of St. Mark was in the ascendant during the fifteenth century, and, though we have no occasion to follow the fleets of Venice as they spread terror among the Turks, we shall in due time find her terra-firma policy complicating the relations and hampering the diplomacy of Italy. Naples, long exposed to the calamities of a disputed succession, which we shall hereafter explain, endured the feeble sway of the notorious Joanna II., by whose death in February, 1435, the crown passed to Alfonso V.,—notwithstanding her death-bed recognition of the claims of the first Angevine dynasty, then represented by the good King René of Provence,—and the dynasty of Aragon was continued by his illegitimate descendants until the close of this century.
Having thus endeavoured in a few pages to exhibit the condition of those Italian states with which our narrative will have to do during the life of Federigo, we must resume its interrupted thread. Martin V. was succeeded in 1431 by Eugene IV., a noble of Venice, who, eager to undo the favours bestowed by Martin on his own relations, sought a quarrel with the Colonna and their adherents, including the Count of Urbino. This misunderstanding was patched up by mediation of the Venetian signory, upon an interchange of hostages, among whom was included Federigo. It thus became necessary for him to repair to Venice, where he was received in the college or council, and acquitted himself so well that the Doge, Francesco Foscari, foretold his rise to great eminence in after life. The favourable opinion thus formed was daily confirmed by his engaging manners, and he conciliated the noble youths, who admitted him into their fashionable and very select club or fraternity of the calze, or hose, so called from their uniform.[59] The plague having appeared, he was permitted by the Doge, after a residence of fifteen months, to retire to the court of Mantua, then presided over by the Marquis Gian Francesco Gonzaga, whose marriage with a Malatesta connected him with both the wives of our Count Guidantonio. His welcome there was cordial and distinguished, and during two years he enjoyed advantages which beneficially influenced his after life. In the Marquis's children he found fellow-pupils as well as playmates, and, under their father's eye, was taught the theory of war and the practice of military exercises, until he became one of the most skilful swordsmen and equestrians of his day.