LXIX. CHAP. bishop; 10 nor would his education or character allow him to exercise, with decency or effect, the power of the sword. The motives of his election and the frailties of his life were exposed to their familiar observation; and proximity must diminish the reverence, which his name and his decrees impressed on a barbarous world. This difference has not escaped the notice of our philosophic historian: "Though "the name and authority of the court of Rome were so ter"rible in the remote countries of Europe, which were sunk "in profound ignorance, and were entirely unacquainted "with its character and conduct, the pope was so little reve"red at home, that his inveterate enemies surrounded the แ gates of Rome itself, and even controlled his government "in that city; and the ambassadors, who, from a distant ex"tremity of Europe, carried to him the humble, or rather "abject, submissions of the greatest potentate of the age, "found the utmost difficulty to make their way to him, and "to throw themselves at his feet."" Successors of Gre ...1305. Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was gory VII. exposed to envy, their power to opposition, and their perA.D. 1086 sons to violence. But the long hostility of the mitre and the crown encreased the numbers, and inflamed the passions, of their enemies. The deadly factions of the Guelphs and Ghibelines, so fatal to Italy, could never be embraced with truth or constancy by the Romans, the subjects and adversaries both of the bishop and emperor; but their support was solicited by both parties; and they alternately displayed in their banners the keys of St. Peter and the German eagle. Gregory the seventh, who may be adored or detested as the 10 In a free conversation with his countryman Adrian IV. John of Salisbury accuses the avarice of the pope and clergy: Provinciarum deripiunt spolia, ac si thesauros Crasi studeant reparare. Sed recte cum eis agit Altissimus, quoniam et ipsi aliis et sæpe vilissimis hominibus dati sunt in direptionem (de Nugis Curialium, i.vi.c. 24. p. 387). In the next page, he blames the rashness and infidelity of the Romans, whom their bishops vainly strove to conciliate by gifts, instead of virtues. It is pity that this miscellaneous writer has not given us less morality and erudition, and more pictures of himself and the times. 11 Hume's History of England, vol. i. p. 419. The same writer has given us, from Fitz-Stephen, a singular act of cruelty perpetrated on the clergy by Geofrey, the father of Henry II. "When he was master of Normandy, the chapter of Seez presumed, without his consent, to proceed to the election of "a bishop: upon which he ordered all of them, with the bishop elect, to be "castrated, and made all their testicles be brought him in a platter" Of the pain and danger they might justly complain; yet, since they had vowed chastity, he deprived them of a superfluous treasure. 12 LXIX. A.D.1099 ...1118. founder of the papal monarchy, was driven from Rome, and CHAP. "died in exile at Salerno. Six-and-thirty of his successors,' till their retreat to Avignon, maintained an unequal contest with the Romans: their age and dignity were often violated; and the churches in the solemn rites of religion, were polluted with sedition and murder. A repetition13 of such capricious brutality, without connection or design, would be tedious and disgusting; and I shall content myself with some events of the twelfth century, which represent the state of the popes and the city. On Holy Thursday, while Paschal Paschal II. officiated before the altar, he was interrupted by the clamours of the multitude, who imperiously demanded the confirmation of a favourite magistrate. His silence exasperated their fury: his pious refusal to mingle the affairs of earth and heaven was encountered with menaces and oaths, that he should be the cause and the witness of the public ruin. During the festival of Easter, while the bishop and the clergy, barefoot and in procession, visited the tombs of the martyrs, they were twice assaulted, at the bridge of St. Angelo, and before the Capitol, with vollies of stones and darts. The houses of his adherents were levelled with the ground: Paschal escaped with difficulty and danger: he levied an army in the patrimony of St. Peter; and his last days were embittered by suffering and inflicting the calamities of civil war. The scenes that followed the election of his successor Gela- Gelasiu sius the second were still more scandalous to the church and II. A. D. city. Cencio Frangipani," a potent and factious baron, burst into the assembly furious and in arms: the cardinals were 12 From Leo IX. and Gregory VII. an authentic and contemporary series of the lives of the popes by the cardinal of Arragon, Pandulpus Pisanus, Bernard Guido, &c. is inserted in the Italian Historians of Muratori (tom. iii. P. i. p. 277...685), and has been always before my eyes. 13 The dates of years in the margin, may throughout this chapter be understood as tacit references to the Annals of Muratori, my ordinary and excellent guide. He uses, and indeed quotes, with the freedom of a master, his great Collection of the Italian Historians, in twenty-eight volumes; and as that treasure is in my library, I have thought it an amusement, if not a duty, to consult the originals. 14 I cannot refrain from transcribing the high-coloured words of Pandulphus Pisanus (p. 384): Hoc audiens inimicus pacis atque turbator jam fatus Centius Frajapane, more draconis immanissimi sibilans, et ab imis pectoribus trahens longa suspiria, accinctus retro gladio sine more cucurrit, valvas ac fores confregit. Ecclesiam furibundus introiit, inde custode remoto papam per gulam accepit, distraxit, pugnis calcibusque percussit, et tanquam brutum animal intra limen ecclesiæ acriter calcaribus cruentavit; et latro tantum dominum per capillos et brachia, Jesû bono interim dormiente, detraxit ad domum, usque deduxit, inibi catenavit et inclusit. 1118, 1119. CHAP. stripped, beaten, and trampled under foot; and he seized, LXIX. without pity or respect, the vicar of Christ by the throat. Gelasius was dragged by his hair along the ground, buffeted with blows, wounded with spurs, and bound with an iron chain in the house of his brutal tyrant. An insurrection of the people delivered their bishop: the rival families opposed the violence of the Frangipani; and Cencio, who sued for pardon, repented of the failure, rather than of the guilt, of his enterprise. Not many days had elapsed, when the pope was again assaulted at the altar. While his friends and enemies were engaged in a bloody contest he escaped in his sacerdotal garments. In this unworthy flight, which excited the compassion of the Roman matrons, his attendants were scattered or unhorsed; and in the fields behind the church of St. Peter, his successor was found alone and half-dead with fear and fatigue. Shaking the dust from his feet, the apostle withdrew from a city in which his dignity was insulted and his person was endangered; and the vanity of sacerdotal ambition is revealed in the involuntary confession, that one emperor was more tolerable than twenty.15 These examples might suffice; but I cannot forget the sufferings of two pontiffs of the same age, the second and third of the Lucius II. name of Lucius. The former, as he ascended in battle-array to assault the Capitol, was struck on the temple by a stone, and expired in a few days. The latter was severely wounded in the persons of his servants. In a civil commotion, ...1185. several of his priests had been made prisoners; and the inhuman Romans, reserving one as a guide for his brethren, put out their eyes, crowned them with ludicrous mitres, mounted them on asses with their faces to the tail, and extorted an oath, that, in this wretched condition, they should offer themselves as a lesson to the head of the church. Hope or fear, lassitude or remorse, the characters of the men, and the circumstances of the times, might sometimes obtain an interval of peace and obedience; and the pope was restored with joyful acclamations to the Lateran or Vatican, from whence he had been driven with threats and violence. But the root of mischief was deep and perennial; and a momentary calm was preceded and followed by such tempests as A. D. 1144, 1145. Lucius III. 15 Ego coram Deo et ecclesiâ dico, si unquam possibile esset, mallem unum imperatorem quam tot dominos (Vit. Gelas. II. p. 398). II. ...1124. of the Ro mans by nard. had almost sunk the bark of St. Peter. Rome continually CHAP. presented the aspect of war and discord; the churches and LXIX. palaces were fortified and assaulted by the factions and families; and, after giving peace to Europe, Calistus the se- Calistus II. cond alone had resolution and power to prohibit the use of A.D.1119 private arms in the metropolis. Among the nations who re- Innocent vered the apostolic throne, the tumults of Rome provoked A. D.1130 a general indignation; and, in a letter to his disciple Euge- ...1143. nius the third, St. Bernard, with the sharpness of his wit and zeal, has stigmatised the vices of the rebellious people.10 "Who is ignorant," says the monk of Clairvaux, "of the Character "vanity and arrogance of the Romans? a nation nursed in "sedition, cruel, untractable, and scorning to obey, unless St. Ber "they are too feeble to resist. When they promise to serve, "they aspire to reign; if they swear allegiance, they watch "the opportunity of revolt; yet they vent their discontent "in loud clamours if your doors, or your counsels, are shut against them. Dexterous in mischief, they have never learnt "the science of doing good. Odious to earth and heaven, "impious to God, seditious among themselves, jealous of "their neighbours, inhuman to strangers, they love no one, "by no one are they beloved; and while they wish to inspire "fear, they live in base and continual apprehension. They "will not submit; they know how to govern; faithless to "their superiors, intolerable to their equals, ungrateful to "their benefactors, and alike imprudent in their demands "and their refusals. Lofty in promise, poor in execution: "adulation and calumny, perfidy and treason, are the fami"liar arts of their policy." Surely this dark portrait is not coloured by the pencil of Christian charity;17 yet the features, however harsh and ugly, express a lively resemblance of the Romans of the twelfth century." 16 Quid tam notum seculis quam protervia et cervicositas Romanorum? Gens insueta paci, tumultui assueta, gens immitis et intractabilis usque adhuc, subdi nescia, nisi cum non valet resistere (de Considerat. 1. iv. c. 2. p. 441). The saint takes breath, and then begins again: Hi, invisi terræ et cœlo, utrique injecere manus, &c. (p. 443). 17 As a Roman citizen, Petrarch takes leave to observe, that Bernard though a saint, was a man; that he might be provoked by resentment, and possibly repent of his hasty passion, &c. (Memoires sur la Vie de Petrarque, tom. i. p. 330). 18 Baronius, in his index to the twelfth volume of his Annals, has found a fax and easy excuse. He makes two heads, of Romani Catholici, and Schis matici: to the former he applies all the good, to the latter all the evil, that is told of the city. VOL. VIII. A A Political Arnold of Brescia, 1140. CHAP. The Jews had rejected the Christ when he appeared among LXIX. them in a plebeian character; and the Romans might plead their ignorance of his vicar when he assumed the pomp and heresy of pride of a temporal sovereign. In the busy age of the crusades, some sparks of curiosity and reason were re-kindled A.D. in the Western world: the heresy of Bulgaria, the Paulician sect, was successfully transplanted into the soil of Italy and France; the Gnostic visions were mingled with the simplicity of the gospel; and the enemies of the clergy reconciled their passions with their conscience, the desire of freedom with the profession of piety.19 The trumpet of Roman liberty was first sounded by Arnold of Brescia,20 whose promotion in the church was confined to the lowest rank, and who wore the monastic habit rather as a garb of poverty than as an uniform of obedience. His adversaries could not deny the wit and eloquence which they severely felt: they confess with reluctance the specious purity of his morals; and his errors were recommended to the public by a mixture of important and beneficial truths. In his theological studies, he had been the disciple of the famous and unfortunate Abelard," who was likewise involved in the suspicion of heresy: but the lover of Eloisa was of a soft and flexible nature; and his ecclesiastic judges were edified and disarmed by the humility of his repentance. From this master, Arnold most probably imbibed some metaphysical definitions of the Trinity, repugnant to the taste of the times: his ideas of baptism and the eucharist are loosely censured; but a political heresy was the source of his fame and misfortunes. He presumed to quote the declaration of Christ, that his kingdom is not of this world: he boldly maintained, that the sword 19 The heresies of the xiith century may be found in Mosheim (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 419.. 427), who entertains a favourable opinion of Arnold of Brescia. In the viith volume, I have described the sect of the Paulicians, and followed their migration from Armenia to Thrace and Bulgaria, Italy and France. 20 The original pictures of Arnold of Brescia, are drawn by Otho bishop of Frisingen (Chron. 1. vii c. 31. de Gestis Frederici I. 1. i. c. 27. l. ii. c. 21), and in the iiid book of the Ligurinus, a poem of Gunther, who flourished A. D. 1200, in the monastery of Paris near Basil (Fabric. Bibliot. Latin. med. et infimæ Ætatis, tom. iii. p. 174, 175). The long passage that relates to Arnold, is produced by Guilliman (de Rebus Helveticis, I. iii. c. 5. p. 108). 21 The wicked wit of Bayle was amused in composing, with much levity and learning, the articles of ABELARD, FOULQUES, HELOISE, in his Dictionnaire Critique The dispute of Abelard and St. Bernard, of scholastic and positive divinity, is well understood by Mosheim (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 412 ..415). |
