"He was a man wiser in speech than in action, betraying by his keen words that he saw what was just and right, but dared not follow it. Yet political courage alone was wanting. He was resolutely superior to the Papal vice of nepotism. On one only of his family, and that a deserving man, he bestowed a rich benefice. To the rest he said, 'As James Fournier I knew you well, as Pope I know you not. I will not put myself in the power of the King of France by encumbering myself with a host of needy relatives.' He had the moral fortitude to incur unpopularity with the clergy by persisting in his slow, cautious, and regular distribution of benefices; with the monks by his rigid reforms. He hated the monks, and even the Mendicant Orders. He showed his hatred, as they said, by the few promotions which he bestowed upon them." [1]
[Footnote 1: Milman: 'Latin Christianity.']
The bitter hatred begotten in return was displayed in the epitaph set up over him, describing him as a Nero, as death to the laity, a viper to the clergy, a liar and a drunkard. [1] But malignity of disappointed ambition and repressed vice did not go so far as to caricature his face. The graver had to copy the epitaph given him, but the sculptor reproduced the face of the man himself, and that face, sweet, gentle, and pure, tells its own tale. It is quite another face from that of John XXII. John has a magnificent shrine of incomparable Gothic pinnacle-work; but Benedict is laid in a very humble tomb, yet over it is the best of monuments, his own good face. Of this "Nero" there is not recorded one single act of cruelty; and he was guiltless of human blood shed in war.
[Footnote 1: "Ille fuit Nero, laicis mors, vipera clero, Devius a vero, cuppa repleta mero.">[
Here, at Avignon, and writing of the very epoch in which he lived, it is not possible to withhold the pen from some lines relative to Petrarch, and I feel the more disposed to write about him, for I think that the words used relative to him and Laura in Murray's Handbook are not quite just. Speaking of Vaucluse, the author says: "It is more agreeable to contemplate Petrarch in these haunts, as the laborious student retired from the world, than as the mawkish lover sighing for a married mistress."
Petrarch was an exile, living at Avignon in exile, when he saw his Laura in a church there, and lost his heart. He was then aged twenty-one, and she was twelve or thirteen; she belonged to the illustrious family of Sade. Now it so happens that the chief authority for the history of Petrarch is the Abbé de Sade, who set to work with a determination to show that his family were lineal descendants of Petrarch's Laura, and he ingenuously left out such particulars as militated against his doctrine. The great family of Sade, who had their castle between Avignon and Vaucluse, had not the smallest intention of suffering a daughter of the house to become allied to an exile of no great birth and prospects; accordingly every impediment was put in the way of a meeting. Petrarch's love for her was well known, indeed his imprudence was great, he allowed his poems in her honour to pass from hand to hand. It was impossible for her relatives to suffer this to continue. She was placed with her aunt Stephanette de Romanie; and died unmarried. Her father was Hugo de Sade, and her mother Laura de Neves; and the Abbé de Sade, and all who follow him, suppose that Petrarch was in love with the mother, whereas there is abundant evidence that the object of his passion was the daughter. [1]
[Footnote 1: The whole matter has been thoroughly discussed, and I think the story of his love for the wife of Hugo de Sade refuted by Bruce-Whyte ('Hist. des Langues Romanes,' t. iii. c. 38)].
Whether Petrarch's love for Laura was as pure as he represents it in some of his sonnets—whether the unhappy Laura did not suffer from his pursuit in honour as she certainly lost in repute, is uncertain. Petrarch in some of his poems exalts his passion for her into the most pure platonic affection, but other verses addressed to her have a very different complexion.
[Illustration: The Cathedral and the Palace of the Popes, Avignon.]
The vast fortress-palace of the Popes at Avignon has stood a siege. It was at the time of the Great Schism, when three grey-headed claimants to be representatives of S. Peter and Vicegerents of Christ were thundering anathemas against each other and the supporters of their rivals. Benedict XIII. was then Pope in Avignon, but there was a general desire in Christendom that the scandal should be terminated. All his cardinals except two deserted Benedict, and the King of France required his renunciation of the tiara. "Pope I have written myself; Pope I have been acknowledged to be; Pope I will remain to the end of my days," was his answer. Then he was besieged in his palace and forced to capitulate, and thrown into prison, where he lingered under the jealous ward of the cardinals for five years.