The great struggle between Pope and Emperor ended with the Hohenstaufens. The two great powers left each other so weak that kings, nations, cities, small republics rose to independence, raising their heads from the ruin of the great ones. The popes no longer hoped to govern Europe from Rome; their large idea collapsed or dwindled. The emperors no longer hoped to rule Italy and the popes, and thus sway Europe. They came to depend on their own hereditary dominions, just as the popes became merely Italian, less and less European.
The greatest emperors of the Hohenstaufen family were the two Fredericks, Frederick Barbarossa, the great fighter, and Frederick the Second, called in his young days the Wonder of the World, and towards the end of his life, when the hatred between him and the Pope’s party became so deadly, called the Beast of Europe.
The Hohenstaufens came from the old castle of Wibelin in Germany. They had a great rival family in Germany, called the House of Welf. When the popes fought so terribly with Barbarossa and Frederick II., they made friends with the rivals of the Hohenstaufens in Germany. While ever the fighting went on, the dukes of the House of Welf sent down to Italy many knights and fierce soldiers to help the popes, so that Italy was full of fierce Germans, who could speak no Italian. These ferocious German soldiers would seize an Italian peasant, and demand: ‘ Which are you, Welf or Wibelin?’ This meant, are you of the Pope’s party, or of the Emperor’s?
The poor peasant must decide. He came to know the words Welf and Wibelin, to his sorrow. But he could not pronounce them. He said Guelph and Ghibelin. Every man in Italy must be cither a Guelph or a Ghibelin.
The Guelphs were staunch for the popes. But when Frederick II. died, the Ghibelins were much weakened. The brave Manfred, illegitimate son of Frederick, assumed the crown of Sicily and Naples, Frederick’s fairest kingdom. Pope Urban at once declared Manfred an usurper. The Ghibelins, Manfred’s party, seized power in Rome, and drove out Urban. Urban was a Frenchman, son of a cobbler of Troves, for in those days a man might rise to the highest position from the very lowest, if he entered the Church. The Pope now badly needed help. He turned to his native France, and asked Charles of Anjou to come and take the crown of Sicily from the usurper Manfred. Charles was brother to the saintly, crusading Louis ix. of France.
Manfred was excommunicated; and now began the disastrous occupation of Italy by the French. For hundreds of years the Germans of the Empire had swamped Italy: now it was the turn of the French, the great kingly power, to occupy and destroy that land.
Frederick II. and Manfred were so Italian that they seemed natives of Italy. The French were detestable foreigners. So that those who loved Italy as a whole, who wanted Italy to be settled in peace, a united country, these men were Ghibelins. But those who wanted their own separate little independence, and hated the thought of a united Italy, these were on the Pope’s side. Independent, jealous cities were with the Pope, the south of Italy and some northern princes were with Manfred.
Charles of Anjou marched south with his army of French, Swiss, and Lombard Italians. In 1266 Manfred, with an army of dark southerners, and Saracens, Moors from Sicily, marched north and met him. In the hot battle Manfred was slain, his army defeated. He was one of the bravest heroes, and the most gracious man of his day. But since he was excommunicated, Anjou would not even allow him a sacred burial, but had him put in a pit by the roadside, at the head of the bridge of Benevento. Great shame was cried on this. Even the soldiers in Charles’s own army put each one a stone in his pouch, and as they inarched past the pit, to cross the bridge, each threw his stone upon the grave, so that a large memorial mound was raised. This made the new Pope, Clement iv., very angry. He had the body dug out and buried in an unknown spot in the wastes. So far did the hatred of the popes pursue the Hohenstaufen blood.
In 1268 the last young Hohenstaufen, Conradin, was beheaded. Charles of Anjou now took possession of Sicily and Naples, occupying his new kingdom with his brutal French soldiers. This beautiful garden of Europe, this sunny, exquisite, most civilised realm, with its prosperous people and its gay, fair cities, its great schools, its famous universities where Saracen physicians taught their skill to all Europe, was now to be wasted by callous French troops.
Charles, a bullying prince, keeping fast friends with the Pope, tried to spread his power over Italy as Frederick II. had done. His Proven9al nobles and governors, however, were cruel and rapacious, despising the Italians and tormenting them. Even Clement had to remonstrate with these evil men.
But a revenge was preparing. The South hated the French occupation. Sicily made ready for rebellion. On Easter Tuesday, 1282, the people of Palermo had gone out of the city to a church in the meadows some half-mile away. There they danced and made festival. A party of French horse came up, and the foreign soldiers, dismounting, crowded forward to get their share in the sport. They knocked aside the Sicilian young men, -and took hold of the young women to dance with them. One man insulted a bride, who was wearing her crown. The bridegroom, whom the French soldier had knocked away, rushed forward in fury and stabbed the offender. Immediately a cry went up ‘ Death to the French.’ The stored-up hate and rage of the last ten years was let loose. The Sicilians sprang like wild cats at the soldiers, and knifed them all. Not one Frenchman was left alive. Then the holiday-makers looked at the corpses lying among the sunny flowers.
The news spread like wildfire in Palermo. Immediately the Sicilians rushed from their houses, gathered, and flew with their knives upon the French. Before evening, two thousand of the detested foreigners were killed, and their bodies flung into a pit outside the city.
This event was called the Sicilian Vespers. It caused the wildest excitement in Europe. Sicily rose and cast out the French. A Spanish prince of Aragon was invited to take the crown. Meanwhile the House of Anjou still held Naples and the mainland. So began the utter ruin of the fair southern civilisation of Sicily and Naples.
But as the south died, sank down towards squalor, the north of Italy rose towards brilliance. With the French the Guelphs had triumphed. The Pope was the chief power in Italy, though his power was very limited. The cities and dukedoms of the north had now a chance to do as they liked.
We know that after the Roman power had been destroyed and Italy made a desert waste in the fifth and sixth centuries, the surviving Italian nobles and patricians were terribly impoverished.’ They left their estates and their open villas in the country and retired with some following into the walled cities, where they might keep their lives if not their fortunes. The country was left to roving bands of marauders and barbarians. The cities shut their gates tight and defended themselves.
In these isolated cities the noblemen were no longer lords, they were only burghers or citizens with the rest, for their estates were lost. Still, they were looked up to.
A city must be governed. So the citizens chose these gentlemen to be their magistrates, and to sit in the Commune or Council. And thus in the howling desert of Italy these walled cities stood like islands, with some law and order, and some busy work, and some prosperity flourishing within their safe confines. These little detached cities were alone, they governed themselves, they managed their own affairs.
Various trades were started within the various towns, and these prospered. Many of the noble families had saved some wealth. With this they set up industries, like weaving or tanning or glass-making, and so they became rich commercial citizens, leaders in the municipality, carrying on busy trade between towns in the intervals of quiet.
Now these cities, safe and busy and independent within their walls, were very proud, and clung fast to their own separate independence. They were never safe, however, from attack. They might be besieged, taken, and sacked at any. moment. Their corn and wine land outside the walls might be devastated. So some citizens thought that if they swore allegiance to the Emperor, they might remain free, and just by paying tribute or giving military help, they might have peace and all cities might be kept at rest. For the growing towns were very jealous of one another, they made murderous attacks on one another. They were never safe from each other.
Those citizens who felt that all might be united in prosperity by swearing allegiance to one strong emperor, who as overlord would protect all without interfering in the private government of any, these were the Ghibelin party in the towns. Those who did not want to be united with anybody in any way were the Guelphs. They stuck to the Pope, because they knew he could never really master them. So that the two parties or factions, Guelph and Ghibelin, divided all Italy, particularly the north. Some of the great families in Rome, Florence, Milan, Parma, were Guelph, some were Ghibelin, and the fights of these families and their followers sometimes made the streets of their towns run blood.
But the cities were staunch for independence. They had their own armies, their own standards, their own battle-cry. It was the cities of the Lombard League that defeated Barbarossa. And when Manfred sent an army against Florence, the great Guelph city of Tuscany, the Florentines marched out, surrounding their famous caroccio. The caroccio was a strange chariot or ark on wheels, bearing the standard, and representing the city. It was surrounded by a picked company of citizens, called the Company of Death. Before the caroccio was surrendered each of these citizens would be dead. Manfred’s army, however, for the first time in history captured the caroccio of Florence. The lovely Tuscan city was in the hands of the enemy Ghilbelins. Fortunately it was not, as was usually the case, sacked and destroyed. And soon after the death of Manfred it was free again in its own separation and fierce independence.
Florence was a fine city, well developed under her famous citizens. In 1266 the trades and traders of the town united themselves in seven great guilds or Arti. Each guild governed its own trade and its own workers. The rules were strict, and no man was allowed to break them. The heads of the guilds were rich, famous citizens, and as a rule members of the Commune or Council which governed the city. So now we have new republics born, governed by a number of rich and influential citizens, depending almost entirely on trade.
One of the great guilds of Florence was the Calimala, or Cloth-dressers’ Guild. From England, France, Flanders, cloth was sent to Florence to be dressed and dyed. It came in ships up the Arno, or on the backs of pack-mules, large bales of dirty, greyish, greasy stuff. In the hands of the Florentines it went through many processes, and was sent out again smooth and supple, dyed in lovely tints.
The secrets of the processes were preserved by the Calimala from all the world.
Every roll of cloth was stamped with the mark of the Guild, and this was guarantee enough. There would be no false statement of length or breadth, no flaw in the pieces, the dyes would be fast. If one of the workers or packers attempted fraud or even slovenliness, he was fined. If he did not pay the fine he was expelled by the consuls of the Guild. And then, no more work for him in Florence.
The Guild became rich. It had strong protectors. In all the great cities of Europe Calimala consuls were established, to guard the rights of their merchants, and to control the trade of finished cloth: for everywhere, in all countries, men wanted the cloth dressed by the Florentine Guild.
The great citizens, heads of the Guild, became important as princes. Their consuls were received like ambassadors. Kings treated with the rich citizens, asking for loans of money or guarantees of security. And thus the Florentine merchants were in a position to control peace and war, for they might grant the loan by means of which the war could be carried on, or they might refuse it. Kings were almost at their mercy, for the prosecution of war is dependent on the proceeds of the arts of peace. So trade dealt its first great blow against kings and barons. And so the great banking interest began to show its power in the world.
At home, the merchants lived in a stately manner. They built noble palaces. And yet, in Florence at least, they were careful not to pretend to be princes. They were friendly and familiar with the citizens. All the splendour they made they professed to make for the city, not for their own persons. And the citizens were glad. They were passionately proud of their city. They wished their greatest burghers to have the handsomest palaces in the world, the finest fame. For the city — all was for the fame of the city.
And thus arose the perfect palaces of Florence, Venice Genoa, the wonderful cathedrals of Rome and Milan and Pisa. These lovely buildings must be perfected with sculpture, statues, and frescoes on the walls. And so began that marvellous time of Italian painting, when the finest pictures in the world were produced. Then men felt their hearts bursting with splendour. Poets wrote great poems, famous for ever: the people gaily sang the songs and poems of their city, filling the streets with liveliness. The populace were proud of all glorious and lovely things that arose around them, proud of the pictures, the poems, the brilliant learning of the universities, the noble statues and buildings. It was not that they wanted possessions for themselves. Their delight was in knowing that splendid creations were brought forth within their cities. If this were so, the citizens were glad to be poor and see others rich. They knew that they themselves could not produce the beauties and the glories, however rich they might be.
Florence was a Guelph city. Yet it had a large Ghibelin party, many of its famous citizcns were Ghibelins, who wished a strong emperor might come to take the allegiance of all cities and make the land whole. In Florence the two factions quarrelled and fought bitterly, each exiling the leading opponents when opportunity arrived. But this struggle only strengthened the nerves and tempers of the Florentines.
In 1284 Florence, but particularly the Guelph party, had a great rejoicing over another’s misfortune. At the mouth of the Arno lay the city of Pisa, the great mediaeval seaport. All the sea-trade of Florence must pass through the fingers of Pisa. And Pisa was a staunch Ghibclin city; she made Florence feel the penalty. Therefore loud was the rejoicing in Florence when news came that Pisa had met her great sea-rival Genoa in battle on the waves, and that the Pisan fleet was terribly beaten, many ships sunk or taken, most of her best sailors gone for ever.
Pisa never recovered. She had had a great trade with the Crusaders’ cities in the East — Tyre, Jaffa, Acre j the Levant trade, it was called. She had rivalled Genoa and Venice as the greatest sea-force in the Mediterranean. She had rivalled Florence as a land power in Italy. And now she fell, never to rise again. To-day Pisa is a half-dead city, beautiful, rather forlorn, with her great cathedral, and the baptistery and the leaning tower, so silent and gold-coloured on the grassy square in a corner of the town, showing the glory of the Middle Ages, while the little tram-cars run to their terminus within the enclosure. But Florence, when Pisa fell, became the undoubted centre of all that great stream of traffic that flowed in those days along the Arno Valley — Florence, the queen of Tuscany, the flower of Italy.
Meanwhile the outer world was not quiet. The last of her great popes was to bring down the Church of Rome to ignominy. We know of three most famous popes: first, Gregory I., called Gregory the Great, who from 590 to 604 saved Rome and succoured the people in the distress of barbarian invasions, and who sent forth missionaries to Britain; then Hildebrand, called Gregory VII., who conceived the great idea that the Pope should rule Europe, who brought the Emperor Henry iv. to his knees at Canossa and who died sorrowful; and then the great Innocent III., who from 1198 to 1216 ruled the papacy in her most magnificent days, from his seat in Rome dictating like a president of the European states all that should be done by the rulers of Christendom. This was in the days when Barbarossa was dead, and when Frederick II. was still too young to reign. And even then Innocent had to scheme hard to keep his authority, and too often he sadly failed. Luckily he died before he saw the sad havoc his young charge Frederick would make with the papacy.
Now, in 1294 Boniface VIII. was elected Supreme Pontiff. He was a fine-looking, handsome man, of good Italian family, skilled in law, clever, confident, and arrogant. He thought he could do as Innocent had done, in the days before the terrible Frederick. Therefore he began to interfere in Europe. But he had not any longer just one single opponent to face, in the person of the Emperor. He had all the young nations, with their kings just growing strong.
Men were becoming less interested in heaven, and much less afraid of hell. Kings did not mind a great deal if the Pope threatened to excommunicate them and condemn their souls to eternal torture. They wanted to establish themselves and their own kingdoms on earth, and were not to be interfered with by threats from a pope.
So Boniface’s efforts at commanding kings led to disaster. These were as tired of supreme spiritual rule as they were of supreme imperial rule. Nations and cities wanted to act for themselves, without interference of any so-called higher power. When Boniface bade Prince Frederick of Aragon to leave Sicily, after the Sicilian Vespers, Frederick refused. When the Pope excommunicated the prince, the Spaniard ignored the event, and had himself crowned in Palermo. When Boniface issued a Bull preventing kings or princes from levying taxes on the clergy and on the lands of the Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury obediently forbade the English priests and bishops to pay their taxes to the tax-gatherers of Edward I. Edward I. immediately outlawed all his clergy, and the clergy, afraid, paid their taxes but called them voluntary gifts.
France, however, was the great kingly power of the Middle Ages, and it was with France that the real tussle took place. Philip iv. of France, in defiance of the Pope’s Bull, forbade any money to go out of France to the papal revenues. The quarrel became most bitter. Philip taxed his French clergy heavily. His bishops complained. The Pope stepped in to defend them. But Philip seized the papal legate and put him in prison, charged him with treason for having spoken words against the king. Then the Pope’s next Bull — called the Greater Bull — was publicly burned by the hangman in Paris. Immediately 166 movements in european history after this Philip was defeated by the Flemings at Courtrai, and people said it was a judgment on him. The Pope made friends with the Emperor Albert, and Albert made public declaration that he received his power at the hands of the Pope. This was a triumph for Boniface. In return Philip summoned the French Council, called the Estates General, and Boniface was accused of heresy, wizardry, and foul crime. Then Philip announced that he could no longer regard Boniface as Pope, and appealed to a General Council of the Church. At last, in September 1303, Boniface excommunicated Philip. He released all the subjects of the French king from their allegiance, and put that monarch outside the pale of Christianity.
It was now the time for the last blow. Philip sent his genera], William of Nogaret, and the Roman noble Sciarra Colonna to Tuscany, well supplied with money, to raise forces against the Pope. It happened that Boniface, who was now an old man, had retired to his little native town of Anagni, to escape the summer heats of Rome. On September 8 cries and clatter of hoofs were heard in the sleepy little town of Anagni. The inhabitants looked out in astonishment. It was William of Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna, who had entered the gates with three hundred men, and ensigns and standards of the King of France flying gaily as they shouted ‘ Death to Pope Boniface! Long live the King of France!’
The townsfolk gaped in amazement and did not stir. The band of troops clattered up to the sunny papal palace. There were no soldiers to defend it; Pope and cardinals were helpless. The cardinals gave themselves up for lost. But the Pope was a brave man. ‘ Since,’ he said, ‘ like Jesus Christ, I am willing to be taken, and needs must die by treachery, at least let me die as Pope.’ He bade his attendants robe him in the mantle of St. Peter, with the crown of Constantine on his head, and the keys and cross in his hand; he seated himself on the papal chair.
He sat whilst Nogaret thundered at the doors. He sat as he heard the iron-mailed feet tread the corridors. Then the French and Italian enemy came into presence. Boniface sat unmoving. He was old, stout, but still a handsome figure. Nogaret demanded that he should at once abdicate from the papacy. He constantly refused. He was seized, dragged from the throne, taken prisoner, and threatened with instant death if he did not at once agree to abdicate. Still he refused. So he was kept confined until he should submit.
On the third day the people of Anagni, ashamed at last of this treatment of their old, proud Pope, rose and drove forth the mere handful of the enemy. Boniface was free, but the shock had been too great for a man of seventy-nine. Escorted by the Orsini family, who were bitter enemies of the rival Roman House of Colonna, Boniface returned to Rome and entered it amidst the cheers of the people. But his time was nearly over. It is said his mind gave way, and that he gnawed at himself as if he were mad. In three weeks he died — the last great pope of the Middle Ages had passed away. The papacy never again rose to European power. Monarchy was now triumphant, kings were the greatest men in the world.
The next important pope was elected in France. He was Bertrand de Goth, Archbishop of Bordeaux, which city then belonged to England. But Bertrand was a Frenchman, and unwilling in any way to offend the French king. He did not depart for Rome, as every pope had done. New cardinals were created, all Frenchmen, and the papal court was set up in the Archbishop’s palace in Bordeaux.
In 1309, however, the Pope and his cardinals removed to Avignon, an old town in Provence, on the Rhone. There the papal court would still remain under the protection of the French king. Once again Provence knew the gay splendours it had seen in Roman days, when it was the brilliant Province. The town was ancient, sunny, delightful, full of memories of the great past. It had an excellent climate, much better than that of Rome, and the townsfolk were quiet and pleasant, not like the turbulent citizens of Rome, who were constantly rising in dangerous rage against their popes. The valley of the Rhone was delightful, beautiful to look at, pleasant to ride through, excellent for sport. It was full of the memories of old Roman greatness, but memories all mellow and sweet, not bloody.
The popes now became like the Gallic bishops in the Frankish days. They did not trouble deeply about anything. In their great palace on the Rhone they spent days of festival, they took their pleasure on the river and in the shady woods. The cardinals established themselves in palaces in the city, and the old streets were brilliant with gay processions as these prelates, vivid in their scarlet, rode laughingly towards the Pope’s palace, followed by a retinue of gentlemen and ladies. Now for the first time ladies were invited to the papal feasts. Poets sang to the harp, fools and buffoons made merriment, the wine circulated, the handsome halls rang with mirth. Then musicians struck up for the glittering dance. But in time the Avignon popes suffered from lack of money, for the revenues did not come in to the papal treasury in France as they had in Rome.
For seventy years, from 1305 to 1376, the popes resided in France. This period is called the Babylonish Captivity, when the Church was supposed to be in captivity in France as the Jews had been captive in Babylon. But though France was the greatest power in Europe at that time, before the great struggle of the Hundred Years War, yet the popes were not altogether slavish, not really under the thumb of the French King. None the less the reverence for the papacy withered in all countries in Europe during the Captivity. Men began even to despise the great head of the Church, whom before they had regarded as being very near to God Himself, very powerful.