and Lombardy. Their city had the misfortune of being the metropolis of Christianity, in which it was for the interest of the sovereigns of Europe that a priest should reign; and, secondly, their too glorious name, and the pride of their Pontiffs, had tempted the ambition of every conqueror, with a crown which could be conferred nowhere but on the banks of the Tyber. Thus they had to contend with pretenders who could never die, and who failed not to unite their efforts when the Romans thought themselves strong enough to aspire to an independence of both. It was the endeavour of the people and nobles to deprive Leo III. of all temporal power, that made him apply to Charlemagne, and merge both the republic and the patricianate in the imperial title of the Frank'.

John XII. invited Otho the Great to Rome, in 962, under pretext of assistance against Berenger and Adalbert, and restored the Western Empire, which had been vacant since the death of Berenger Augustus, in 924.

It was to assist Gregory V. that Otho III. marched to Rome 3; and the protection of Benedict VIII brought down Henry II. in 1014.

4

See Annali d' Italia, ad an. 799, tom. iv.

Ι

2

Aunali ad an. 961, tom. v. p. 961. 399.

p. 431, 432.

The league between Adrian IV. and Frederic Barbarossa cost Arnold of Brescia his life, as the price of the Emperor's coronation '.

As then the imperial and papal interests combined against the spirit of revolt, and called, in succession, Charlemagne, the Othos, the Henries, and the first of the Frederics, to Rome, so the annalists of either party have joined in the censure of every independent leader. The patrician Alberic, the son of Marozia, is handed down to us as a tyrant, yet he held the dominion of Rome for two and twenty years, successfully resisted the repeated sieges of the capital, and peaceably transmitted his authority to his son, a youth of seventeen years of age3. The Consul, or rather the Casar, Crescentius*,

'Annali ad an. 1155, tom. vi. p. 516.

"Terminò in quest' anno il corso di sua vita Alberico Patrizio o Principe o vogliam dire Tiranno di Romana.” Annali ad an. 954, tom. v. p. 384.

3 See note to Stanza LXXX. P. 120.

4

* Mr. Gibbon, cap. xlix. calls him the Brutus of the Republic, but, in fact, he affected the empire. The Marquis Maffei's gallery contained a medal with IMP. CES. AUGUST. P P CRESENTIUS, on one side, round the head of the prince, and on the reverse a man on horseback haranguing soldiers, with the legend exercitus S. C., below; and on the base, S. P. Q. R. similar to the allocutions on horseback of Hadrian, Posthumus, and others. The arts appear to have been still preserved even in those ages, if we may

is, in the same manner, declared" a bad man, a man blinded by ambition," whose just punishment "served to deter those who knew not how to obey Pope or Emperor "." If Muratori says this, what is to be expected from Baronius? Yet the Emperor Otho III., who murdered Crescentius, undertook a barefoot pilgrimage to mount Garganus to expiate his treachery 2. The Guelf and Ghibeline writers are alike unmerciful to popular leaders. The anti-popes of the people are Volponi with Muratori; those of the Emperors sometimes a little anti-canonical, but often legitimate: there is no depth deep enough for either in the Ecclesiastical Annals.

Arnold of Brescia 3 is also delivered over to

judge from this medal. Verona Illustrata. par. iii. p. 500. edit. 1732. Crescentius was put to death in May 998, and hanged, with twelve others, round the bastion of St. Angelo.

"Un mal' uomo, un uomo acciecato dall' ambizione, convien dire che fosse Crescenzio Console di Roma.” Annali, &c. tom. v. p. 504.

"Il che servi ad atterrir chiunque non sapeva allora ubbidire nè al Papa nè all' Imperatore." Ibid. p. 510.

2

Annali ad an. 1001, tom. vi. p. 1, 2.

3" Porro circiter annum Christi MCXLII. Romanus Populus ab Arnaldi Brixiani heresiarchæ verbis seductus, rebellionem contra Petri successores justos urbis dominos primum instituit, rempublicam nempe atque Senatum prout antiquis temporibus fuerant restituere ausus." Antiq. Med. Evi. tom. ii. p. 559.

posterity as an heresiarch whose rebellious doc. trines justly condemned him to the flames of both worlds'. These doctrines, however, were not dispersed with his scattered ashes, but were concentred in that Capitol and by that Senate, which he restored; and however the ignorance of the age may have misapplied his institutions, they served to retard, for three centuries, the confirmed establishment of religious despotism. The Romans were the last of all the people of Christendom who submitted to the Pope. The feudal wars of the city belonged to the times, and are not to be charged to the democratical spirit, but to the impotence of the laws.

Rienzi had the fortune to fall on better days and better tongues. With Petrarch for a poet 2, and a fellow-citizen, rude, but a witness of his

* "Messo costui (Arnold) nelle forze del Prefetto di Roma fu impiccato e bruciato e le sue ceneri sparse nel Tevere, acciochè la stolida plebe non venerasse il corpo di questo infame." Muratori. Annal. ad an. 1155. tom. vi. p. 516.

2 Petr. epistola hortatoria de capessenda libertate. Opp. p. 535. 540, and the 5th eclogue. Vir magnanime, vir fortissime, Junior Brute, are the titles he gives Rienzi. De Sade was not the first who supposed the spirto gentil of Petrarch to be addressed to the younger Stephen Colonna: and that eulogy has been also claimed for Giordano de' Sabelli; but the Italian editors have, for the most part, recognised the gentle spirit in Cola di Rienzi. [See Castelvetro's

exploits, for a biographer', his merits have been fairly balanced with his defects; and as those who suffered by his justice were the rebellious Barons, rather than the partizans either of the church or the empire, his half heroic, fantastic figure', has been delineated with unusual partiality. The facility with which he succeeded in his first designs, shews that the allure of liberty had lost none of its charms at Rome, and that the tyranny of the hobles was equally odious with that of the Emperor or the Pope.

The fall of this abortion of fortune was the fruit rather of his own intemperance than of the inconstancy of the Romans 3. As the

edition, Venice, 1756, p. 132, et seq.] Our London editor has rejected the French hypothesis. Zotti, tom. i. p. 112. Mr. Gibbon [chap.lxix, ad fin. and chap. lxx. p. 588, 4to.] followed his favourite Abbé.

'Historiæ Romanæ fragmenta. Antiq. Med. Ævi. tom. iii. p. 399 to p. 480, and 509 to 546.

2 "Costui era uomo fantastico; dall' un canto facea la figura d' eroe, dall' altro di pazzo.” Annali ad an. 1347, tom. viii. p. 250.

3 Giovanni Villani seems inclined to divide the disgrace between the tribune and the people.

"Nessuna signoria mondana dura

E la vana speranza t' ha scoperto

Il fine della fallace ventura."

Hist. Fiorentinæ, lib. xii. cap. civ. Script. Rer. Ital. tom. xiii. p. 982.