[1370-1377 A.D.]
Gregory XI, who succeeded him, was ambitious, covetous, and false. He joined the Florentines in their war against the Visconti; but the legates, to whom he had entrusted the government of the ecclesiastical states, and who had rendered themselves odious by their rapacity and immorality, formed the project of seizing for themselves Tuscany, which they had engaged to defend. All the troops of the Florentines had been placed at their disposal, for the purpose of carrying the war into Lombardy. The cardinal legate, who commanded the combined army, resided at Bologna; the church having rescued that city from the grasp of Visconti da Oleggio, on the 31st of March, 1360. He signed a truce with Barnabò Visconti, in the month of June, 1375; and, before the Florentines could recall their soldiers, sent John Hawkwood with a formidable army to surprise Florence. The Florentines, indignant at such a shameless want of good faith on the part of the church, whose most faithful allies they had always been, vowed vengeance on the see of Rome. They determined to rouse the spirit of liberty in every city belonging to it, and drive out the French legates—more odious and perfidious than the most abhorred of the Italian tyrants. They, in the month of June, 1375, without placing any confidence in Barnabò Visconti, made an alliance with him against the priests, who had just deceived them under the faith of the most solemn oaths. They admitted the republics of Siena, Lucca, and Pisa into this league; they formed a commission of eight persons, to direct the military department, called “the eight of war”; they assembled a numerous army, and gave it colours, on which was inscribed, in golden letters, the word, “Liberty!” This army entered the states of the church, proclaiming that the Florentines demanded nothing for themselves—that not only would they make no conquests, but would accept dominion over no people who might offer themselves; they were desirous only of universal liberty, and would assist the oppressed with all their power, solicitous for the recovery of their freedom.
The army of liberty carried revolution into all the states of the church with an inconceivable rapidity; eighty cities and towns, in ten days, threw off the yoke of the legates. The greater number constituted themselves republics; a few recalled the ancient families of princes, who had been exiled by Gil Albornoz, and to whom they were attached by hereditary affection. Bologna did not accomplish her revolution before the 20th of March, 1376. This ancient republic, in recovering its liberty, vowed fidelity to the Florentines, to whom it owed the restoration of its freedom. The legates, beside themselves with rage, endeavoured to restrain the people by terror. John Hawkwood, on the 29th of March, 1376, delivered up Faenza to a frightful military execution; four thousand persons were put to death, property pillaged, and women violated. The pope, not satisfied with such rigour, sent Robert of Geneva, another cardinal legate, into Italy, with a Breton company of adventurers, considered as the most ferocious of all those trained to plunder by the wars of France. The new legate treated Cesena, on the 1st of February, 1377, with still greater barbarity. He was heard to call out during the massacre, “I will have more blood—kill all—blood, blood!” Gregory XI at last felt the necessity of returning to Italy, to appease the universal revolt. He entered Rome on the 17th of January, 1377; although the Florentines, who had sent the standard of liberty to the senators and bannerets of Rome, and had made alliance with the Romans, expostulated on the danger they incurred if they admitted the pontiff within their walls.
[1377-1378 A.D.]
The two parties, however, began to be equally weary of the war. Some of the cities enfranchised by the Florentines were already detached from the league. The Bolognese had made, on the 21st of August, 1377, a separate peace with the pope, who had agreed to acknowledge their republic. Barnabò Visconti carried on with the holy see secret negotiations, in which he offered to sacrifice to the church, his ally, the republic of Florence. This republic was then pressed for its consent to the opening of a congress for restoring peace to Italy, to be held at Sarzana, in the beginning of the year 1378; the presidency of the congress was given to Barnabò Visconti. The conference had scarcely opened when the Florentines perceived, with more indignation than surprise, that the Lombard tyrant, who had fought in concert with them, intended that they should pay to him and to the pope the whole expenses of the war. The negotiations took the most alarming turn, when the unexpected news arrived of the death of Gregory XI, on the 27th of March, 1378; and the congress separated without coming to any decision. The year which now opened was destined to bring with it the most important revolutions throughout Italy. Amidst those convulsions the Peace of Florence with the court of Rome, weakened by the great western schism, was not difficult to accomplish.
The Papal Schism
The pontifical chair had been transferred to France since the year 1305. Its exile from Italy lasted seventy-three years. The Christian world, France excepted, had considered it a scandal; but the French kings hoped by it to retain the popes in their dependence; and the French cardinals, who formed more than three-fourths of the Sacred College, seemed determined to preserve the pontifical power in their nation. They were, however, thwarted in this intention by the death of Gregory XI at Rome; for the conclave must always assemble where the last pontiff dies. The clamour of the Romans and the manifestation of opinion throughout Christendom were not without influence on the conclave. On the 8th of April, 1378, it elected—not, indeed, a Roman, whom the people demanded, but an Italian—Bartolommeo Prignani; who, having lived long in France, seemed formed to conciliate the prejudices of both parties. He was considered learned and pious. The cardinals had not, however, calculated on the development of the passions which a sudden elevation sometimes gives; or on the degree of impatience, arrogance, and irritability of which man is capable, in his unexpected capacity of master, though in an inferior situation he had appeared gentle and modest. The new pope, who took the name of Urban VI, became so violent and despotic, so confident of himself, and so contemptuous of others, that he soon quarrelled with all his cardinals. They left him; assembled again at Fondi; and, on the 9th of August, declared the holy see vacant; asserting that their previous election was null, having been forced by their terror of the Romans.
Consequently, on the 20th of September, they elected another pope. Their choice, no better than the former, fell on Robert, cardinal of Geneva, who had presided at the massacre of Cesena; he took the name of Clement VII. He was protected by Queen Joanna, with whom Urban had already quarrelled. Clement established his court at Naples; but an insurrection of the people made him quit it the year following, and determined him on returning, with his cardinals, to Avignon. Urban VI, meanwhile, deposed as schismatics all the cardinals who had elected Clement, and replaced them by a new and more numerous college; but he agreed no better with these than with their predecessors. He accused them of a conspiracy against him; he caused many to be put to the torture in his presence and while he recited his breviary; he ordered others to be thrown into the sea in sacks and drowned; he quarrelled with the Romans and the new sovereign of Naples, whom he had himself named; he paraded his incapacity and rage through all Italy; and finally took refuge at Genoa, where he died, on the 9th of November, 1389. The cardinals who acknowledged him named a successor on his death, as the French cardinals did afterwards on the death of Clement VII, which took place on the 16th of September, 1394. The church thus found itself divided between two popes and two colleges of cardinals, who reciprocally anathematised each other. Whilst the Catholic faith was thus shaken, the temporal sovereignty of the pope, founded by the conquests of the cardinal Albornoz, was overthrown. Several of the cities enfranchised by the Florentines in the war of liberty, preserved their republican government; but the greater number, particularly in Romagna, fell again under the yoke of petty tyrants.
An Italian Soldier, Fourteenth Century