CHAPTER IV

OF THE ITALY IN WHICH THE RENAISSANCE BLOSSOMED

IN the year 962 after Christ, the Roman Empire had become one with the German crown. It thereby destroyed both realms of its sovereignty. The universal authority of the Emperor became shadowy, and swiftly passed into unreality. The Empire was torn into shreds amidst that tangle of warring princes who created the puzzled nightmare of history called the Middle Ages.

The other great centre of mediæval power, the Papacy, also declined, even whilst it increased in worldly splendour, losing its world-power by being localised in a little state in Central Italy. Claiming certain lands in Central Italy by virtue of real or pretended donations from the Emperors and others, the Popes made the fatal mistake, backed by the house of Anjou that sat upon the throne of Naples to the south, to temporal dominion over the Romagna, the Pentapolis, the March of Ancona, with the city of Rome and the Campagna. In doing so, they became lords of a little kingdom instead of lords of Christendom. Their alliance with the house of Anjou soon became a masked servitude to the patronage of that house. The troubles of temporal rule plunged the Popes into secular affairs, to the loss of their spiritual power. The Popes were always old men, and their tenure of office was brief. Not only did secular affairs take their interest from high spiritual affairs, but it lowered them in the eyes of Europe. Thus, they [46] became associated with the mere lordship of a petty Italian state, and their great position was wholly degraded by it, exactly as the Empire was degraded the moment it became a mere German monarchy. I am now using the term " degraded " as meaning degradation of power. We shall see how the Pontiffs, in proportion as they became little kings of Central Italy, also became degraded in ethics during the Renaissance.

This loss of a great central power by the retirement of the Emperor to a little German court, and by the ambition of the Popes to found a little Central Italian kingdom, broke Italy into a large number of warring states, out of which emerged Naples to the south, with the house of Anjou as its sovereign ; the duchy of Milan in Lombardy to the north, with its dominant family of the Visconti ; the republic of Florence, with its dominant family of the merchant princes of the Medici ; the great Republic of Venice, and the lesser Republic of Genoa ; and the domination of lesser states by great families, such as the House of Este in Ferrara, the della Scala in Verona, the Gonzaga in Mantua, the Montefeltri in Urbino, with all their constant broils and everlasting quarrels.

And by no means the least fantastic paradox of the Renaissance in Italy, which was one vast paradox, is the pathetic fact that whilst Italy created the art of writing history again with reasoned grip of the action and counteraction of policies, whilst she taught all Europe the science of politics, as well as the arts of letters and painting, whilst she rid human thought of superstition and scholasticism, she was herself wholly unable to benefit from the lessons that she taught. France, England, and Spain were born out of the nationalism she taught, and became strong ; whilst Italy remained a chaos-the cockpit of the wars.

[47] The causes were many. The long quarrels between Pope and Emperor had split Italy into the party feuds of Guelf and Ghibelline. These feuds became hereditary. A more deadly cause of disunion was the fact of the city being the unit of political life. For when a great city brought others into its realm, the lesser cities did not become a part of, or share the equal rights of, the dominant commune- they became essentially a conquered people, not fellow-citizens. Thus the Italians, a proud people, proud of liberty, became a hotbed of discontent, eagerly flocked to the standard of the soldier-adventurers, called condottieri, who raised mercenary armies for the services of such princes or republics as offered the highest wage ; and it was exactly this population which eagerly welcomed all foreign invasion as a means of escape from domestic tyranny-thus the sense of nationality simply was not.

The house of Anjou, lords of NAPLES, the head of the Guelfs, looked like dominating Italy, when, in Sicily, the brutal insult to a woman by a French soldier during the procession of Easter Monday, on the 30th of March 1282, provoked a sudden rising at Palermo, and the people, with shouts of " Death to the French ! " massacred over four thousand men, women, and children that evening in the terrible tragedy known as the Sicilian Vespers, which lost Sicily to the House of Anjou.

So far for the kingdom of Naples to the south. The PAPAL STATES need not detain us long. With the departure of the Popes to Avignon, and the seventy years of their so-called " Babylonish Captivity," we are not here concerned. It is enough to realise that the Popes, now being petty potentates of Central Italy, and hereditary succession to their lordship being impossible owing to their vow of celibacy, the vice of nepotism became rife, and the Popes, [48] being old men on election, had to make the most of a short tenure of power for the aggrandisement of their families. Nicolas III. (1277-1280) increased the power of his great House of the Orsini; Honorius IV. (1285-1287) exalted his family, the Savelli, at the cost of the Orsini ; Nicolas IV. (1288-1292) raised the Colonna. The thirteen-hundreds saw Rome torn with the bitter feuds of these great baronial houses ; the effect on the spiritual and temporal dignity of the Popes was wholly disastrous. The Conclave of Cardinals henceforth became the cockpit of their intrigues. The Popes, in their quarrels with the Emperors, had nursed the growth of nationalities in the north-west, only thereby to forge the deadliest weapons against their successors. Boniface VIII. (1294-1303), the ablest pontiff of his times, unable to see the overwhelming force that was being born in nationalisation, found himself treated with contempt by Edward I. of England, backed by his Parliament-and by Philip IV. of France, backed by his States-General. The French king seized the Pope, whose humiliation broke his pride in death. Then began the withdrawal of the Popes from Rome, which ended in the exile of seventy years to Avignon, and their subjection to French policy.

TUSCANY, lying to the north-west of the Papal States, was a group of city-states, mostly republics, subject to despots. Of these by far the greatest was FLORENCE, destined to become queen of all Tuscany. To the south was SIENA. The great port of PISA was declining, owing to her defeat by Genoa in 1284. LUCCA showed plucky resistance from time to time to the tyranny of Florence.

FLORENCE was to become the hub of Central Italy's great achievement in art and letters in the Renaissance, her only rival the great republic of Venice in the north. No city [49] had suffered more from the wrangles of Guelf and Ghibelline ; and in Florence their bitterness and hatred was increased by the fact that they tallied with class hatred. The feudal nobles were Ghibelline ; the merchant princes Guelf, siding therefore with the Popes. On the defeat of Manfred in 1266, Florence became Guelf for the rest of her career.The Gudlf sway, at first moderate and pacific, was changed by the news of the Sicilian Vespers of 1282-the Guelfs taking alarm and changing the constitution, out of which arose four orders in Florence-(1) the nobles, (2) the seven greater guilds, (3) the four lesser guilds, and (4) the ordinary citizens, who were without machinery for self-government or influence on public affairs. The nobles could come to office by joining a guild ; but had to practice the trade or craft-otherwise they were shut out of office, and suffered many humiliations. The head officer of the state, called gonfalonier, was elected by the signory of the guilds, was in command of a large force of infantry, and was elected for two months. The harshest penalty therefore was to ennoble a citizen ; the greatest honour to a noble was to degrade him to citizen. The signory were given a fortifies Public Palace.

Though the actual conduct of affairs was in the hands of a plutocracy, real power was with all the citizens in mass meeting in the great piazza called a parlamento.

The disatrous was of 1321 with Lucca showed the weaknesses of a two-months government ; and a system of secret ballots was soon created, and the squittino, or scrutiny every two years, was applied. A list of all citizens qualified for office was drawn up ; their names put to the ballot by the committee of the signory for the time being, the black and white beans fell, and such names as received two-thirds black beans were put in the bags from which [50] were filled as they arose. It followed that the committee of signory in power largely controlled the names in the bags. By 1323, then, Florence was governed by a gonfalonier of justice, six priors, and twelve buonuomini, who were the privy council to the signory. But it was complicated by a series of subordinate magistracy who greatly confused all issues.

GENOA played but a small part in the Renaissance, taken up with its incessant family feuds of the Doria and Spinola, and chiefly concerned in creating its vast sea-borne wealth by eastern trading.