The tribune, unconscious of his danger, made no defence, nor sounded a bell. “I also,” he said, “am with the people; the pontifical confirmation has arrived; I have only to publish it to the council.” He was not afraid until he saw he was abandoned by all, and that the uproar increased. He wished to harangue the people from the window, but it was impossible, for they threw stones and sticks at him, crying still louder, “Death to the traitor!” Confusion filled the palace; he was doubtful of Brettone, the brother of Fra Moriale, who was a prisoner. He vacillated, he put on his helmet and took it off again, uncertain whether to meet death with the dignity of the ancient Romans or to take refuge in flight—he finally decided on the latter course.
The Romans were now firing the doors, when the tribune divested himself of all his arms, laid aside the insignia of dignity, cut off his beard, dyed his face black, and put on the door-keeper’s mantle and enveloped his head with a bed-cover. Thus disguised he descended the stairway to the outside door, and changing his voice, he mingled with the insurgents, himself crying “Down with the traitor!” He was outside the palace when he was recognised by his gold armlets, and conducted to the Place of the Lion in the Campidoglio where the sentences were given. Here he stood for the space of an hour, a wretched spectacle for the people who stood in silence and seemed frightened at what they had done and uncertain whether to pardon or sacrifice him. Cola stood firm and calm awaiting death, and the people seemed in no hurry to bathe their hands in the blood of him whom a few months previously they had accompanied in triumph to the Campidoglio, crowning him with olive leaves, and uttering shouts of joy.
What memories must have filled the mind of the unhappy tribune!
Cecco del Vecchio gave him a blow in the stomach. The sight of blood changed compassion to fury. A notary wounded him with his sword. He was soon covered with wounds. He did not say a word, he did not utter a cry. He was taken to St. Mark’s, and he was tied by the feet to a pillar. His head was mangled and tufts of his hair strewed the way; he was riddled with wounds in every part of his body. There he remained two days, whilst rogues cast stones at him. On the third day Guigurth and Sciarretta Colonna had him taken over to the field of Augustus, where he was burned upon a pile of dry thistles. Such was the end of Cola di Rienzi, who made himself august tribune of Rome, and constituted himself the champion of the Romans.[d] “In the death, as in the life of Rienzi,” says Gibbon,[g] “the hero and the coward were strangely mingled.” Posterity will compare the virtues and failings of this extraordinary man; but in a long period of anarchy and servitude the name of Rienzi has often been celebrated as the deliverer of his country, and the last of the Roman patriots.
FOOTNOTES
[15] “Il tutto senza derogare all’autorità della Chiesa, del Tapa e del Sacro Collegio.” So concludes this extraordinary citation, this bold and wonderful assertion of the classic independence of Italy, in the most feudal time of the fourteenth century. The anonymous biographer of Rienzi declares that the tribune cited also the pope and the cardinals to reside in Rome. De Sade powerfully and incontrovertibly refutes this addition to the daring or the extravagance of Rienzi. Gibbon, however, who has rendered the rest of the citation in terms more abrupt and discourteous than he was warranted by any authority, copies the biographer’s blunder, and sneers at De Sade, as using arguments “rather of decency than of weight.” Without wearying the reader with all the arguments of the learned abbé, it may be sufficient to give the first two:
(1) All the other contemporaneous historians that have treated of this event, G. Villani, Hocsemius, the Vatican manuscripts and other chroniclers, relating the citation of the emperor and electors, say nothing of that of the pope and cardinals; and the pope (Clement VI), in his subsequent accusations of Rienzi, while very bitter against his citation of the emperor, is wholly silent on what would have been to the pontiff the much greater offence of citing himself and the cardinals.
(2) The literal act of this citation, as published formally in the Lateran, is extant in Hocsemius (whence is borrowed, though not at all its length, the speech in the text of our present tale), and in this document the pope and his cardinals are not named in the summons.
