In the whole peninsula brigandage was organised, as in great epochs of misery. The discontented, the banished, ruined people, and bad subjects united in bands under bold and adventurous chiefs and wrought sanguinary revenge. The Apennine gorges, the little châteaux there, became the refuge for these outlaws or bandits who replaced the condottieri, and were as a last and wild protestation of national independence. The people, far from despising them, called them the bravi. Grandees, princes, even cardinals often went to these men to seek help needed to execute vengeance or even to satisfy their cupidity. Marco Bernardi of Cosenza in Calabria; Pietro Leonello of Spoleto in the Marches; Alfonso Piccolomini, lord of Montemarciano, and his noble family in the Apennines, became the terror of the peninsula. It needed a real military Spanish expedition to destroy Marco Bernardi and his band. Alfonso Piccolomini seized châteaux and even small towns in the papal states. Pope Gregory XIII augmented his military forces and gave Cardinal Sforza the fullest power to rid the patrimony of St. Peter of this brigandage. Gregory XIII could not, however, disarm Piccolomini but by pardoning him and restoring his goods. Such was the state to which imperial and pontifical restoration had reduced the peninsula towards the end of the sixteenth century. But at the threshold of the seventeenth century two energetic men tried to raise Italy and even put her in the way of profiting by the restoration of France, her natural protector, since she had fallen under the Spanish yoke: these were Sixtus V, sovereign pontiff, and Ferdinand I, grand duke of Tuscany.
POPE SIXTUS V; FERDINAND, GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY
[1585-1590 A.D.]
Felice Peretti [Sixtus V], one of a poor slave family who had taken refuge at Montalto, had been raised in the rough school of poverty. He had often in his youth guarded the fruit or taken care of swine. Received into a Franciscan convent, he had risen by showing a mixture of theologic erudition and facility in administration, which evidenced a decided mind and firm character. He was sixty-four and somewhat infirm when called to the papacy (1585). This honour seemed to tend to rejuvenescence, a fact which gave rise to a report that the day after his exaltation he had thrown away his crutches. He was the first for some time who understood that the pope, as temporal sovereign, cannot be absorbed exclusively in religious duties without imperilling that same spiritual power, and he undertook first to destroy brigandage and raise the finances of the holy see. From the first day, most energetic measures were taken against the brigands. A price was set on the heads of the leaders; their relatives were rendered responsible and liable for all their misdeeds. The holy father found good all the measures exercised against them. No pity was to be expected from him. “As long as I live,” he said the very day of his coronation, “every criminal shall suffer capital punishment.” At the end of two years, ambassadors congratulated the pope on the safety of the roads in the pontifical domain.
Gregory XIII had, as Sixtus V said, eaten the revenues of three pontiffs: his own, those of his predecessor, and those of his successor. Sixtus V exercised considerable economies in the expenses of the pontifical chamber. He created a number of venal duties, and established monti on the consumption of wine, wood, and even small industries. In a short time he had paid his debts, and could put aside annually a million gold crowns: a reserve destined to pay for great events such as a crusade, a famine, or an invasion of St. Peter’s domain. The ordinary excess of receipts was employed by him in embellishing Rome. Since Sixtus IV had joined the two shores of the Tiber by the bridge which bears his name, the lower part of the town had been entirely rebuilt; beyond the river rose the marvels of the Vatican, the Belvedere, the Loggia, and the palace of the Chigi; beyond these, the Cancellaria of Julius II, the Farnese and Orsini palaces. But the heights of the town were always abandoned; the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli and the palace of the Conservatori on the Capitoline no longer attracted the inhabitants. Sixtus V, to repeople these beautiful and celebrated heights, conducted greatly needed water there by means of works which rivalled those of the Romans. He caused to flow, sometimes under ground, sometimes in aqueducts, to the Capitoline and Quirinal, that aqua felice which gave in four hours 20,537 cubic metres of water and nourished twenty-seven fountains. He planned a great number of streets, facilitated communication between the higher and the lower towns, and doubled, as it were, the town of Rome.
The former Franciscan monk also caused a reaction against paganism in art; and was happy in celebrating in his works the triumph of the Christian faith. He surmounted with a cross the beautiful obelisk which the architect Fontana had raised with so much trouble and delight on the Piazza di San Pietro. He knocked down the statues of Trajan and Antoninus from the triumphal columns of those emperors to put up St. Peter and St. Paul, and to build his churches and realise his plans destroyed the monuments of antiquity, even the beautiful temple of Severus. He even sacrificed to this Christian vandalism the beautiful tomb of Cæcilia Metella. But before all, this positive mind had always one end in view—public utility; and Rome really rose under his pontificate.
The death of the grand duke of Florence, Francesco, was as favourable to Tuscany as that of Gregory XIII to the church states. Duke Francesco and Cardinal Ferdinand de’ Medici, rarely in accord, were still embroiled after the accession of Pope Sixtus V. In the autumn of 1587, Francesco having fallen ill, Ferdinand came to Florence and there was reconciled with him. But some days after the fever of Francesco grew worse, Bianca Capello herself was attacked by the same illness. The husband and wife whose passion for each other had troubled the court of Tuscany, even of Italy, died within two days of each other, and Cardinal Ferdinand became duke of Florence. A thousand rumours were set afloat to damage him, but the new duke soon stifled them by benefits bestowed. An enlightened man, with practical good sense and resolution, Ferdinand I repaired the miseries caused by the negligence of Francesco. The prosperity of Leghorn was taken in hand; the town of Pisa helped by the opening of a canal which put her in communication with Leghorn at that point where the Genoese were soon to assist at a yearly fair. The course of the Arno received a more advantageous direction; there was much done in the way of draining inundated lands, and the prospect of repeopling the Maremma was reundertaken by increasing the water-supply and damming the overflow of Lake Fucecchio. Ferdinand kept a navy sufficiently considerable to drive the Barbary pirates back to Bona, and tried to reanimate art and letters, which had been the glory of his country and his ancestors.
Pope Sixtus V and Ferdinand were so constituted as to understand each other. Their foreign policy began to betray more independence. Sixtus V pursued as far as Spanish territory the brigands who were sometimes protected by them. Ferdinand sent away all the Spaniards whom Francesco had taken into pay, and confided his fortresses to Italians whom he could trust. Both men had come to a good understanding with the Venetian republic. The pope particularly was fond of that town, which had helped him to destroy the brigands. He often assured her that he would willingly shed his blood for her. They also attached to themselves the Gonzagas of Mantua and Genoa, threatened by Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy, who hoped to obtain everything from Spain by proving himself her most zealous partisan. It was already a scene of resistance. But help must be sought from without. France, preyed upon for twenty-five years by the horrors of a religious war which paralysed all foreign politics, could hardly stand against the efforts and intrigues of Philip II. Ferdinand and Venice favoured as much as they could the restoration of a strong and national power. The republic guessed first what the future would be, and had the courage to recognise Henry IV before all the other states. After her, Ferdinand entered into friendly relations with the new king; and while the duke of Savoy seized from him Barcelonnette and Antibes, he threw himself into the château d’If and put an efficient garrison there.
Sixtus V hesitated. He threatened to break with the republic, for which he had promised to shed his blood. He allowed himself, however, to be persuaded to relent, and even received M. de Luxembourg, the envoy of Henry IV, in private audience. The Spanish ambassador begged, threatened. Sixtus went down before such boldness. Philip II again began to send bandits to the pontifical territory, and intercepted the convoys laden with grain which Ferdinand had caused to come for the provisionment of Tuscany.
Sixtus V went so far as to speak of excommunicating the Catholic king of Spain. This energetic man, however, bent under so great a task, and died the 7th of August, 1590, pursued by the cowardly maledictions of the people, who broke his statues, and decided that that honour should not again be given to living popes.