The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0086/00864.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 26KB | 389 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00864}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Part III}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Hallam, Henry}
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$Subject{frederic
imperial
cities
century
italy
rome
footnote
henry
innocent
upon}
$Date{}
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Title:       History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Book:        Book III: The History Of Italy
Author:      Hallam, Henry

Part III

     The peace of Constance presented a noble opportunity to the Lombards of
establishing a permanent federal union of small republics; a form of
government congenial from the earliest ages to Italy, and that, perhaps, under
which she is again destined one day to flourish.  They were entitled by the
provisions of that treaty to preserve their league, the basis of a more
perfect confederacy, which the course of events would have emancipated from
every kind of subjection to Germany. ^l But dark, long-cherished hatreds, and
that implacable vindictiveness which, at least in former ages, distinguished
the private manners of Italy, deformed her national character, which can only
be the aggregate of individual passions.  For revenge she threw away the pearl
of great price, and sacrificed even the recollection of that liberty which had
stalked like a majestic spirit among the ruins of Milan. ^m It passed away,
that high disdain of absolute power, that steadiness of self-devotion, which
raised the half-civilized Lombards of the twelfth century to the level of
those ancient republics from whose history our first notions of freedom and
virtue are derived.  The victim by turns of selfish and sanguinary factions,
of petty tyrants, and of foreign invaders, Italy has fallen like a star from
its place in heaven; she has seen her harvests trodden down by the horses of
the stranger, and the blood of her children wasted in quarrels not their own:
Conquering or conquered, in the indignant language of her poet, still alike a
slave, ^n a long retribution for the tyranny of Rome.

[Footnote l: Though there was no permanent diet of the Lombard league, the
consuls and podestas of the respective cities composing it occasionally met in
congress to deliberate upon measures of general safety.  Thus assembled, they
were called Rectores Societatis Lombardiae.  It is evident that, if Lombardy
had continued in any degree to preserve the spirit of union, this congress
might readily have become a permanent body, like the Helvetic diet, with as
extensive powers as are necessary in a federal constitution. - Muratori,
Antichita Italiane, t. iii. p. 126; Dissert. 50; Sismondi, t. ii. p. 189.]

[Footnote m: Anzi girar la liberta mirai,
          E baciar lieta ogni ruina, e dire,
          Ruine si, ma servitu non mai.

Gaetana Passerini (ossia piutosto Giovan Battista Pastorini,) in Mathias,
Componimenti Lirici. vol. iii. p. 331.]

[Footnote n: Per servir sempre o vincitrice o vinta. - Filicaja.]

     Frederic did not attempt to molest the cities of Lombardy in the
enjoyment of those privileges conceded by the treaty of Constance.  His
ambition was diverted to a new scheme for aggrandizing the house of Suabia by
the marriage of his eldest son Henry with Constance, the aunt and heiress of
William II., King of Sicily.  That kingdom, which the first monarch Roger had
elevated to a high pitch of renown and power, fell into decay through the
misconduct of his son William, surnamed the Bad, and did not recover much of
its lustre under the second William, though styled the Good.  His death
without issue was apparently no remote event; and Constance was the sole
legitimate survivor of the royal family.  It is a curious circumstance that no
hereditary kingdom appears absolutely to have excluded females from its
throne, except that which from its magnitude was of all the most secure from
falling into the condition of a province.  The Sicilians felt too late the
defect of their constitution, which permitted an independent people to be
transferred, as the dowry of a woman, to a foreign prince, by whose ministers
they might justly expect to be insulted and oppressed.  Henry, whose marriage
with Constance took place in 1186, and who succeeded in her right to the
throne of Sicily three years afterwards, was exasperated by a courageous but
unsuccessful effort of the Norman barons to preserve the crown for an
illegitimate branch of the royal family; and his reign is disgraced by a
series of atrocious cruelties.  The power of the house of Suabia was now at
its zenith on each side of the Alps; Henry received the imperial crown the
year after his father's death in the third crusade, and even prevailed upon
the princes of Germany to elect his infant son Frederic as his successor.  But
his own premature decease clouded the prospects of his family: Constance
survived him but a year; and a child of four years old was left with the
inheritance of a kingdom which his father's severity had rendered disaffected,
and which the leaders of German mercenaries in his service desolated and
disputed.

     During the minority of Frederic II., from 1198 to 1216, the papal chair
was filled by Innocent III., a name second only, and hardly second, to that of
Gregory VII.  Young, noble, and intrepid, he united with the accustomed spirit
of ecclesiastical usurpation, which no one had ever carried to so high a
point, the more worldly ambition of consolidating a separate principality for
the Holy See in the centre of Italy.  The real or spurious donations of
Constantine, Pepin, Charlemagne, and Louis, had given rise to a perpetual
claim, on the part of the popes, to very extensive dominions; but little of
this had been effectuated, and in Rome itself they were thwarted by the
prefect, an officer who swore fidelity to the emperor, and by the
insubordinate spirit of the people.  In the very neighborhood the small cities
owned no subjection to the capital, and were probably as much self-governed as
those of Lombardy.  One is transported back to the earliest times of the
republic in reading of the desperate wars between Rome and Tibur or Tusculum;
neither of which was subjugated till the latter part of the twelfth century.
At a further distance were the duchy of Spoleto, the march of Ancona, and what
had been the exarchate of Ravenna, to all of which the popes had more or less
grounded pretensions.  Early in the last-mentioned age the famous Countess
Matilda, to whose zealous protection Gregory VII. had been eminently indebted
during his long dispute with the emperor, granted the reversion of all her
possessions to the Holy See, first in the lifetime of Gregory, and again under
the pontificate of Paschal III.  These were very extensive, and held by
different titles.  Of her vast imperial fiefs, Mantua, Modena, and Tuscany,
she certainly could not dispose.  The duchy of Spoleto and march of Ancona
were supposed to rest upon a different footing.  I confess myself not
distinctly to comprehend the nature of this part of her succession.  These had
been formerly among the great fiefs of the kingdom of Italy.  But if I
understand it rightly, they had tacitly ceased to be subject to the emperors
some years before they were seized by Godfrey of Lorraine, father-in-law and
stepfather of Matilda.  To his son, her husband, she succeeded in the
possession of those countries.  They are commonly considered as her allodial
or patrimonial property; yet it is not easy to see how, being herself a
subject of the empire, she could transfer even her allodial estates from its
sovereignty.  Nor on the other hand can it apparently be maintained that she
was lawful sovereign of countries which had not long since been imperial
fiefs, and the suzerainty over which had never been renounced.  The original
title of the Holy See, therefore, does not seem incontestable even as to this
part of Matilda's donation.  But I state with hesitation a difficulty to which
the authors I have consulted do not advert. ^o It is certain, however, that
the emperors kept possession of the whole during the twelfth century, and
treated both Spoleto and Ancona as parts of