ROME IN THE MIDDLE AGES.*
WE welcome with becoming gratitude the latest instalment of the excellent English translation of the great work of Gregorovius, which carries us into the beginning of the fourteenth century, thus linking the early rule of Northern barbarism with the highly developed national States the evolution of which closes the period of the Middle Ages. We find the present portion of exceptional interest, since it deals with the fascinating thirteenth century,—the century of the founding of two of the great religious Orders — the Dominicans and the Franciscans — of the extraordinary career of the Emperor Frederick II. and his long quarrel with the Papacy, of the brief but brilliant career of his son Manfred, of the fall of the Hohenstaufen dynasty and the rise of the Hapsburgs ; the age of Innocent III., of Thomas Aquinas, of Dante, of the Flagellants, of church-building, of the broadening and expansion of the life of Western Europe. Perhaps, on the whole, this is the most interesting of the cen- turies of Christian history. The method of Gregorovius is well known to his readers. While the aspect of the city of Rome, seat of the spiritual authority of Christendom, and heir of the old Pagan Empire, is kept well in the central stream of the narrative, the varied threads with which Rome is con- nected with Italy and with the Western world are all analysed ; and if we find ourselves surveying the course of events at Milan or Pisa or Naples, we know that it would be impossible for us to comprehend the development of Roman affairs without these excursions to regions beyond Rome itself, and even beyond the State of the Church. The great merits of Gregorovius are his concentrated power of vision, and his capacity of putting before one the long result of history through great and crowded periods without being either superficial on the one hand, or prolix on the other. He seizes on the essential spirit of history, he projects himself into the past with his powerful historical imagination fortified by immense learning, and he selects for us what it is necessary for ns to know. This is the most resourceful work we can consult if we would wish to realise the inner history and spirit of the Middle Ages.
The main burden of the century is still the great contest of the Church and the Empire, the two powers which, in the theory of the Middle Ages, were supposed to be each supreme in its own sphere, but which, in fact, were ever struggling, and whose struggle makes up in large degree medimval history. The thirteenth century witnesses the struggle perhaps at its fiercest when Frederick of Hohenstaufen and Innocent IV. are at war for supremacy, and, practically, the century sees the great contest closed. Its close was not, however, due to the final victory of either power, but to the initiation of a new stage of European development, in which the claims of both Papacy and Empire were at variance with the growing needs of civilisation, and were seen to be anomalous. The new force which put an and to the contest was the growth of new nations, of young and powerful States out of the matrix of the Empire and the Church. It is true that the Holy Roman Empire theoretically existed until abolished by Napoleon in 1806. It is true that the Hapsburg dynasty conceived itself as carrying on the Empire. But the real Holy Roman Empire asunderstood by Charlemagne and Otto was buried in the tomb of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, as the true mediaeval Papacy was interred in the vault of Boniface VIII. It may be said, there- fore, that the advent of the fourteenth century brought with it a new Europe with new problems, the old order having given way before the flowering into life of the new nations of the Western world. The vital importance, then, of the century in which this great transformation was accom- plished is manifest. The century opens in Rome with the splendid pontificate of Innocent III., greatest of the Popes except Gregory the Great and Gregory VII., under whom • History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages. By Ferdinand Gregorovius. Translated from the Fourth German Edition by Annie Bamllt.m. Vol. V., Parts I. and II. London : George Bell and Sons. (9,.) consummate Papal statesmanship raised the Holy See to the highest position it has ever occupied. It closes with the Papacy under the domination of France, with the seat of Papal government about to be transferred for seventy years to Avignon, after a contest in which the power of the proud Pontiff known to history as Boniface VIII. had been broken by the very instrumentality which the Popes had used to deliver themselves from the control of the Empire. The two Powers which at the end of the cycle have clearly gained are the French Monarchy and the tyrants of the Italian cities, such as the Visconti at Milan. It is, when carefully examined, a strange age. The climax of medimvalism, we are apt to think of it as an age of religious and unquestioning obedience. No doubt for the simply peasantry scattered over the West it was so, and the wonderful pilgrimage to Rome from every land in Europe which took place in 1300 shows that the (peoples were not conscious of the change which was going on, and that they were filled with awe, if not of the Holy See itself, yet of the great city, heir of Pagan antiquity, in whom were found the relics of the apostles and confessors of the Church. But it was in reality
a mixed age of transition, and it was characterised by all the features of such a time. It is needless to say that the age of St. Francis was one of ecstatic faith, and of noble simplicity and purity of thought. It is needless to say that the age of St. Dominic was one of stern devotion to the rule and practice of the Church, a time of intense religious con- viction. The extraordinary phenomenon of the Flagellants, which Gregorovius rightly recognises as one of the significant events of history, reveals a passionate repentance, a positive anguish on account of sin, all but unknown in our modern world. The endowment of monasteries and the building of
noble churches show a wide interest in the ideas of worship and of holy living which lay at the root of Christianity. But we turn from this side of the thirteenth century, and what a different picture do we behold !
We see the Popes aiming at temporal power, using all the worst arts of the politician, making war and desolating Italy, breaking down the hopes of the Italian people by inviting the French conqueror into the fair land for the express purpose of keeping their own hold over secular power. We see Popes denounced by prelates of the Church for their de- parture from the spirit of their office, and distrusted by the people for their disobedience to the simplicity of the Gospels and the essential genius of Christianity. We see Popes fleeing from Rome, pursued by the vengeance of the Roman people, and taking refuge in the strong fortifications of the lawless nobles of the time, from whose ranks they were generally elevated. For it was the age of the rise of the Orsini, the Colonna, the Savelli, and many other of the great families so intimately connected with Rome. The remarkable career of the Emperor Frederick, King of Naples, who was crushed by the Holy See, reveals a striking growth of free thought inconsistent with the whole theory on which the mediaeval Church reposed. It is not necessary to believe that Frederick was in reality a Mussulman, and that he hated and disbelieved in Christianity. It is enough that his movement was supported by large numbers who sincerely believed that the dispensation of the Church was over, and that the dispensa- tion of the Holy Spirit was begun ; and it seems pretty clear that many of these were inclined to see in that gifted though sensual genius a new incarnation of the divine destined to lead them out from what was thought to be a decaying order of things to a new liberty. A new order was, in fact, coming, though not in the sense of Frederick or his enthusiasts. We feel that the blood spilt for Church and Empire was spilt for objects equally impossible. The very steps taken by each power to preserve the theory and fact of its own supremacy were land- marks on the road to decline, because the function of each was exhausted. Even the religious Orders themselves, founded in such faith and devotion, soon became corrupt supporters of a centralised Papacy which no longer expressed the moral convictions and spiritual needs of Europe.
Apart from the keen insight which throughout these volumes enables ns to comprehend the movement of the thought of that age and the general trend of its history, we have scattered through these pages many most interesting glimpses of the actual condition of Rome during this eventful century. We see the splendid ceremonies at the coronation of the Popes, when Kings knelt before the Vicar of Christ
and served him at the banquet which be partook of in solitary state. We see the communal life and movement of the Roman people, a recrudescence of the old spirit of Republican Rome, which, later on, was to manifest itself in a vain attempt to restore the Roman Republic. The citizens of Rome were always against the attempts of the Papacy to make a great temporal power out of what they considered to be their civic heritage. We have brief pictures of the Flagellants scourging themselves till the blood ran down in the streets of mediaeval Rome, in contrition for the sins which had led to massacre and devastation; of the appearance of Rome in the thirteenth century, with its great fields and gardens, its marshes actually inside the city where networks of streets now stand, and its forests of huge towers, the castles of the nobles who issued from them with their retainers to wage war on each other for Pope or Empire. The complex warfare of the Papacy, of the Roman nobles, of the Roman Commune, is the principal local Roman fact of the time, and it is dealt with in these pages with great learning. We have also an account of the art, architecture, and learning of the age, in which much was done in these several directions. One of the most interesting chapters is that recording the election to the Papal chair of the hermit who is known to history as Celestine V., who was carried in his coarse monk's garb from the cave in which be lived to be the chief ruler of Christendom, and who, alarmed at his sudden elevation, made what Dante called it gran rifiuto,—the sole Pope who ever resigned his office. The great pilgrimage of 1300, to which French, English, Slays, Germans, Bohemians, Spaniards, as well as people from all regions of Italy repaired, and where special regulations had to be made to feed the vast armies of humanity, and to prevent them from trampling each other down, was a testimony to the secret of Rome, her fascination for mankind. No matter what were the shortcomings of the Popes, no matter what the inner corruption, the chaos, the poverty, the strife of mediaeval Rome, it was the centre of the hopes and of the faith of mankind, the heart of Christendom.
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