180. Here are five frames, containing the best representations I can get for you of the façade of the cathedral of Orvieto. I must remind you, before I let you look at them, of the reason why that cathedral was built; for I have at last got to the end of the parenthesis which began in my second lecture, on the occasion of our hearing that John of Pisa was sent for to Perugia, to carve the tomb of Pope Urban IV.; and we must now know who this Pope was.
181. He was a Frenchman, born at that Troyes, in Champagne, which I gave you as the centre of French architectural skill, and Royalist character. He was born in the lowest class of the people, rose like Wolsey; became Bishop of Verdun; then, Patriarch of Jerusalem; returned in the year 1261, from his Patriarchate, to solicit the aid of the then Pope, Alexander IV., against the Saracen. I do not know on what day he arrived in Rome; but on the 25th of May, Alexander died, and the Cardinals, after three months' disputing, elected the suppliant Patriarch to be Pope himself.
182. A man with all the fire of France in him, all the faith, and all the insolence; incapable of doubting a single article of his creed, or relaxing one tittle of his authority; destitute alike of reason and of pity; and absolutely merciless either to an infidel, or an enemy. The young Prince Manfred, bastard son of Frederick II., now representing the main power of the German empire, was both; and against him the Pope brought into Italy a religious French knight, of character absolutely like his own, Charles of Anjou.
183. The young Manfred, now about twenty years old, was as good a soldier as he was a bad Christian; and there was no safety for Urban at Rome. The Pope seated himself on a worthy throne for a thirteenth-century St. Peter. Fancy the rock of Edinburgh Castle, as steep on all sides as it is to the west; and as long as the Old Town; and you have the rock of Orvieto.
184. Here, enthroned against the gates of hell, in unassailable fortitude, and unfaltering faith, sat Urban; the righteousness of his cause presently to be avouched by miracle, notablest among those of the Roman Church. Twelve miles east of his rock, beyond the range of low Apennine, shone the quiet lake, the Loch Leven of Italy, from whose island the daughter of Theodoric needed not to escape—Fate seeking her there; and in a little chapel on its shore a Bohemian priest, infected with Northern infidelity, was brought back to his allegiance by seeing the blood drop from the wafer in his hand. And the Catholic Church recorded this heavenly testimony to her chief mystery, in the Festa of the Corpus Domini, and the Fabric of Orvieto.
185. And sending was made for John, and for all good labourers in marble; but Urban never saw a stone of the great cathedral laid. His citation of Manfred to appear in his presence to answer for his heresy, was fixed against the posts of the doors of the old Duomo. But Urban had dug the foundation of the pile to purpose, and when he died at Perugia, still breathed, from his grave, calamity to Manfred, and made from it glory to the Church. He had secured the election of a French successor; from the rock of Orvieto the spirit of Urban led the French chivalry, when Charles of Anjou saw the day of battle come, so long desired. Manfred's Saracens, with their arrows, broke his first line; the Pope's legate blessed the second, and gave them absolution of all their sins, for their service to the Church. They charged for Orvieto with their old cry of 'Mont-Joie, Chevaliers!' and before night, while Urban lay sleeping in his carved tomb at Perugia, the body of Manfred lay only recognizable by those who loved him, naked among the slain.
186. Time wore on and on. The Suabian power ceased in Italy; between white and red there was now no more contest;—the matron of the Church, scarlet-robed, reigned, ruthless, on her seven hills. Time wore on; and, a hundred years later, now no more the power of the kings, but the power of the people,—rose against her. St. Michael, from the corn market,—Or San Michele,—the commercial strength of Florence, on a question of free trade in corn. And note, for a little bye piece of botany, that in Val d'Arno lilies grow among the corn instead of poppies. The purple gladiolus glows through all its green fields in early spring.
187. A question of free trade in corn, then, arose between Florence and Rome. The Pope's legate in Bologna stopped the supply of polenta, the Florentines depending on that to eat with their own oil. Very wicked, you think, of the Pope's legate, acting thus against quasi-Protestant Florence? Yes; just as wicked as the—not quasi-Protestants—but intensely positive Protestants, of Zurich, who tried to convert the Catholic forest-cantons by refusing them salt. Christendom has been greatly troubled about bread and salt: the then Protestant Pope, Zuinglius, was killed at the battle of Keppel, and the Catholic cantons therefore remain Catholic to this day; while the consequences of this piece of protectionist economy at Bologna are equally interesting and direct.
188. The legate of Bologna, not content with stopping the supplies of maize to Florence, sent our own John Hawkwood, on the 24th June, 1375, to burn all the maize the Florentines had got growing; and the abbot of Montemaggiore sent a troop of Perugian religious gentlemen-riders to ravage similarly the territory of Siena. Whereupon, at Florence, the Gonfalonier of Justice, Aloesio Aldobrandini, rose in the Council of Ancients and proposed, as an enterprise worthy of Florentine generosity, the freedom of all the peoples who groaned under the tyranny of the Church. And Florence, Siena, Pisa, Lucca, and Arezzo,—all the great cities of Etruria, the root of religion in Italy,—joined against the tyranny of religion. Strangely, this Etrurian league is not now to restore Tarquin to Rome, but to drive the Roman Tarquin into exile. The story of Lucretia had been repeated in Perugia; but the Umbrian Lucretia had died, not by suicide, but by falling on the pavement from the window through which she tried to escape. And the Umbrian Sextus was the Abbot of Montemaggiore's nephew.
189. Florence raised her fleur-de-lys standard: and, in ten days, eighty cities of Romagua were free, out of the number of whose names I will read you only these—Urbino, Foligno, Spoleto, Narni, Camerino, Toscanella, Perugia, Orvieto.