Chapter XV: The Beginning of the Age of Slavery (2)

In the whole peninsula brigandage was organised, as in great epochs of misery. The discontented, the banished, ruined people, and bad subjects united in bands under bold and adventurous chiefs and wrought sanguinary revenge. The Apennine gorges, the little châteaux there, became the refuge for these outlaws or bandits who replaced the condottieri, and were as a last and wild protestation of national independence. The people, far from despising them, called them the _bravi_. Grandees, princes, even cardinals often went to these men to seek help needed to execute vengeance or even to satisfy their cupidity. Marco Bernardi of Cosenza in Calabria; Pietro Leonello of Spoleto in the Marches; Alfonso Piccolomini, lord of Montemarciano, and his noble family in the Apennines, became the terror of the peninsula. It needed a real military Spanish expedition to destroy Marco Bernardi and his band. Alfonso Piccolomini seized châteaux and even small towns in the papal states. Pope Gregory XIII augmented his military forces and gave Cardinal Sforza the fullest power to rid the patrimony of St. Peter of this brigandage. Gregory XIII could not, however, disarm Piccolomini but by pardoning him and restoring his goods. Such was the state to which imperial and pontifical restoration had reduced the peninsula towards the end of the sixteenth century. But at the threshold of the seventeenth century two energetic men tried to raise Italy and even put her in the way of profiting by the restoration of France, her natural protector, since she had fallen under the Spanish yoke: these were Sixtus V, sovereign pontiff, and Ferdinand I, grand duke of Tuscany.

POPE SIXTUS V; FERDINAND, GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY

[Sidenote: [1585-1590 A.D.]]

Felice Peretti [Sixtus V], one of a poor slave family who had taken refuge at Montalto, had been raised in the rough school of poverty. He had often in his youth guarded the fruit or taken care of swine. Received into a Franciscan convent, he had risen by showing a mixture of theologic erudition and facility in administration, which evidenced a decided mind and firm character. He was sixty-four and somewhat infirm when called to the papacy (1585). This honour seemed to tend to rejuvenescence, a fact which gave rise to a report that the day after his exaltation he had thrown away his crutches. He was the first for some time who understood that the pope, as temporal sovereign, cannot be absorbed exclusively in religious duties without imperilling that same spiritual power, and he undertook first to destroy brigandage and raise the finances of the holy see. From the first day, most energetic measures were taken against the brigands. A price was set on the heads of the leaders; their relatives were rendered responsible and liable for all their misdeeds. The holy father found good all the measures exercised against them. No pity was to be expected from him. “As long as I live,” he said the very day of his coronation, “every criminal shall suffer capital punishment.” At the end of two years, ambassadors congratulated the pope on the safety of the roads in the pontifical domain.

Gregory XIII had, as Sixtus V said, eaten the revenues of three pontiffs: his own, those of his predecessor, and those of his successor. Sixtus V exercised considerable economies in the expenses of the pontifical chamber. He created a number of venal duties, and established _monti_ on the consumption of wine, wood, and even small industries. In a short time he had paid his debts, and could put aside annually a million gold crowns: a reserve destined to pay for great events such as a crusade, a famine, or an invasion of St. Peter’s domain. The ordinary excess of receipts was employed by him in embellishing Rome. Since Sixtus IV had joined the two shores of the Tiber by the bridge which bears his name, the lower part of the town had been entirely rebuilt; beyond the river rose the marvels of the Vatican, the Belvedere, the Loggia, and the palace of the Chigi; beyond these, the Cancellaria of Julius II, the Farnese and Orsini palaces. But the heights of the town were always abandoned; the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli and the palace of the Conservatori on the Capitoline no longer attracted the inhabitants. Sixtus V, to repeople these beautiful and celebrated heights, conducted greatly needed water there by means of works which rivalled those of the Romans. He caused to flow, sometimes under ground, sometimes in aqueducts, to the Capitoline and Quirinal, that _aqua felice_ which gave in four hours 20,537 cubic metres of water and nourished twenty-seven fountains. He planned a great number of streets, facilitated communication between the higher and the lower towns, and doubled, as it were, the town of Rome.

The former Franciscan monk also caused a reaction against paganism in art; and was happy in celebrating in his works the triumph of the Christian faith. He surmounted with a cross the beautiful obelisk which the architect Fontana had raised with so much trouble and delight on the Piazza di San Pietro. He knocked down the statues of Trajan and Antoninus from the triumphal columns of those emperors to put up St. Peter and St. Paul, and to build his churches and realise his plans destroyed the monuments of antiquity, even the beautiful temple of Severus. He even sacrificed to this Christian vandalism the beautiful tomb of Cæcilia Metella. But before all, this positive mind had always one end in view--public utility; and Rome really rose under his pontificate.

The death of the grand duke of Florence, Francesco, was as favourable to Tuscany as that of Gregory XIII to the church states. Duke Francesco and Cardinal Ferdinand de’ Medici, rarely in accord, were still embroiled after the accession of Pope Sixtus V. In the autumn of 1587, Francesco having fallen ill, Ferdinand came to Florence and there was reconciled with him. But some days after the fever of Francesco grew worse, Bianca Capello herself was attacked by the same illness. The husband and wife whose passion for each other had troubled the court of Tuscany, even of Italy, died within two days of each other, and Cardinal Ferdinand became duke of Florence. A thousand rumours were set afloat to damage him, but the new duke soon stifled them by benefits bestowed. An enlightened man, with practical good sense and resolution, Ferdinand I repaired the miseries caused by the negligence of Francesco. The prosperity of Leghorn was taken in hand; the town of Pisa helped by the opening of a canal which put her in communication with Leghorn at that point where the Genoese were soon to assist at a yearly fair. The course of the Arno received a more advantageous direction; there was much done in the way of draining inundated lands, and the prospect of repeopling the Maremma was reundertaken by increasing the water-supply and damming the overflow of Lake Fucecchio. Ferdinand kept a navy sufficiently considerable to drive the Barbary pirates back to Bona, and tried to reanimate art and letters, which had been the glory of his country and his ancestors.

Pope Sixtus V and Ferdinand were so constituted as to understand each other. Their foreign policy began to betray more independence. Sixtus V pursued as far as Spanish territory the brigands who were sometimes protected by them. Ferdinand sent away all the Spaniards whom Francesco had taken into pay, and confided his fortresses to Italians whom he could trust. Both men had come to a good understanding with the Venetian republic. The pope particularly was fond of that town, which had helped him to destroy the brigands. He often assured her that he would willingly shed his blood for her. They also attached to themselves the Gonzagas of Mantua and Genoa, threatened by Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy, who hoped to obtain everything from Spain by proving himself her most zealous partisan. It was already a scene of resistance. But help must be sought from without. France, preyed upon for twenty-five years by the horrors of a religious war which paralysed all foreign politics, could hardly stand against the efforts and intrigues of Philip II. Ferdinand and Venice favoured as much as they could the restoration of a strong and national power. The republic guessed first what the future would be, and had the courage to recognise Henry IV before all the other states. After her, Ferdinand entered into friendly relations with the new king; and while the duke of Savoy seized from him Barcelonnette and Antibes, he threw himself into the château d’If and put an efficient garrison there.

Sixtus V hesitated. He threatened to break with the republic, for which he had promised to shed his blood. He allowed himself, however, to be persuaded to relent, and even received M. de Luxembourg, the envoy of Henry IV, in private audience. The Spanish ambassador begged, threatened. Sixtus went down before such boldness. Philip II again began to send bandits to the pontifical territory, and intercepted the convoys laden with grain which Ferdinand had caused to come for the provisionment of Tuscany.

Sixtus V went so far as to speak of excommunicating the Catholic king of Spain. This energetic man, however, bent under so great a task, and died the 7th of August, 1590, pursued by the cowardly maledictions of the people, who broke his statues, and decided that that honour should not again be given to living popes.

POPE CLEMENT VIII (1590-1605 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1590-1600 A.D.]]

The death of Sixtus V again agitated the conclave. The Medicean party at last arrived at finding a pope, if not hostile, at least less devoted to Spain--Urban VII. But he died at the end of seven days, and the struggle recommenced. The viceroy of Naples, to finish it, sent brigands. Olivares threatened the cardinals with a siege. Gregory XIV, a pope devoted to Spain, was elected; but only reigned seven months. A third struggle began, more fierce than the preceding ones. The cardinal of San Severino, supported by the Spaniards, failed one day of the papacy by a single vote. “Anxiety,” he himself said, “made me sweat blood.” Cardinal Aldobrandini, the creature of Sixtus V, much less devoted to the Spaniards, was at last elected on January 30th, 1592, and took the name of Clement VIII.

This was a victory for Italy. The abjuration of Henry IV, his entry into Paris in 1594, was another. It was celebrated in the peninsula as a national event. The pope, who up to then had managed the Spanish and only secretly received the ambassadors of Henry IV, no longer resisted the insistences of the grand duke of Florence. In vain the Spanish party left Rome with the cardinals, who led them; in vain the duke of Sessa, Philip II’s ambassador, threw his Abruzzian bandits on church lands. Supported by the Venetians, by the duke of Tuscany, by the emperor himself, to whom the Italians furnished help against the Turks, the pope carried all before him. He declared in solemn ceremony (September 8th, 1595) Henry to be reconciled with the Catholic church, thus re-establishing between the orthodox powers a favourable equilibrium to his own independence and the freeing of Italy. The peninsula, in effect, soon found she had gained a powerful support against Spain. Alfonso II, duke of Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio, dying in 1597, had left his heritage to Don Cesare his cousin, in default of a direct heir. Clement VIII claimed, as fief of the holy see, the town of Ferrara, hurled excommunication against Don Cesare, who aspired to all the heritage, and raised a loan to support an army of spiritual thunderbolts.

At first events did not seem to favour the holy see. The court of Spain, who thought it had somewhat against Clement VIII, was ill disposed. The grand duke of Tuscany, brother-in-law to Don Cesare, this time abandoned the pope. Even the Venetian Republic hindered him from recruiting soldiers in Dalmatia. Henry IV forgot what he owed to Venice, to the grand duke, and offered to send an army beyond the mountains to put the pope in possession of Ferrara. Don Cesare, obliged to yield, gave up the town after taking away the archives, the library, and the artillery of his predecessors. He thereafter contented himself with the title of duke of Modena and Reggio. The town of Ferrara lost all its advantages, all its éclat as capital, and soon saw rise in place of the ducal palace and the beautiful belvedere sung by her poets, a citadel which easily kept in awe a town promptly dispeopled.

Philip II, who for thirty years had allowed nothing to be done in Italy without his permission, was obliged to yield this time. He thus signed, before dying, the peace of Vervins, which announced the re-establishment of French power and the decadence of Spain. His successor, Philip III, abandoned even the most faithful of the servitors of his house in Italy--Charles Emmanuel I, duke of Savoy, from whom Henry IV, by the treaty of Lyons, received in 1600 Bugey, Valromey, and Gex, in exchange for the marquisate of Saluzzo.

Italy now turned with full hope towards France. The holy see had nothing but kindness for her. The learned cardinal Baronius repeated, to whoever cared to listen, that the papacy had never received of any nation so much service. “Can it be allowed,” cried the cardinal’s nephew, Aldobrandini, through whose hands all affairs passed, “can it be allowed that the Spanish should command in the house of a stranger in spite of him?” And it was not perhaps without reflection that he put millions in reserve and maintained an army of twelve thousand men. Not having had occasion to meddle with France since the Peace of Lyons, Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy began to understand that it was in Italy, at the expense of Spain, that he must seek aggrandisement. So he entered into intimate relations with Henry IV, so long time his enemy. In waiting for better things, he ended by organising the senate established by his father at Carignan on the model of the French parliaments. He reanimated agriculture and commerce and fortified Turin, an Italian city. He himself wrote a parallel between great men ancient and modern, and began to found the military power of his little state.

Ferdinand of Tuscany, only too happy to see Maria de’ Medici mount the French throne, did not long hold out before Henry IV. He was bold enough to send his admiral Inghirami, at the head of his fleet, to fight the Turks in the Adriatic, even seeking to seize from them the isle of Cyprus. In the north and south of Italy the Milanese and the Neapolitans themselves began to grow restless under the iron yoke of Spain. It was perhaps the time to attempt something. Cardinal Aldobrandini once proposed to Venice a league against Spain. But Cardinal Aldobrandini and Ferdinand were sworn foes. Henry IV, moreover, was not yet firmly enough established in France to act outside it.

There then remained only one alternative for the Neapolitan kingdom--one of those isolated revolts, so extraordinarily foolish, so frequent in the peninsula, which can only be explained by the misery of the people. A Dominican, Tommaso Campanella, a deep thinker if he had not been a still greater dreamer, tore himself from his philosophic elucidations and dreams to call, like a new Savonarola, his compatriots to liberty. He believed in the faith of the Apocalypse that the seventeenth century would be for Italy the signal for a cataclysm wherein would be engulfed the Spanish domination, and he formed the project of founding a kind of universal theocratic republic. He began first by Calabria, his country. Monks, not only Dominicans, but Franciscans and Augustines, drawn away by his eloquence, began to preach the doctrines of this new emissary from God, and blew upon the hardly extinct ashes of Neapolitan frenzy. Even many bishops and a few barons followed the monks. An army, recruited in part by bandits, went out from Calabria. The count of Lemos, viceroy of Naples, soon had the upper hand. The unfortunates who were seized perished in frightful torments. Tommaso Campanella, regarded as insane, was thrown in a dungeon, where he stayed twenty-seven years, and passed from the dream of a universal republic to that of a universal holy empire.

This attempt sufficed to put the Spanish government, already full of distrust, still more on their guard. Philip III, at Rome, roused Cardinal Farnese, head of his faction, against Aldobrandini. The garrisons of Tuscany were strengthened; Fuentes, governor of Milan, assembled sufficient troops to scare the whole peninsula. He would have done more, if the king of Spain, Philip III, and his minister, the duke of Lerma, satisfied with maintaining their domination, had not taken every precaution not to rouse the intervention of Henry IV from beyond the Alps.[i]

Fully to appreciate the character of the times just treated, one must recall the state of contemporary civilisation. We have been brought somewhat in contact with the conditions in Germany, France, and Spain, because these countries were in constant political association with Italy. To complete the picture, it should be recalled that the sixteenth century was the age of Henry VIII and Elizabeth in England; therefore, the time of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Bacon. It was the age also of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin; the time when the spirit of the Reformation was actively battling with the old ecclesiasticism, and when the counter influence of the Inquisition made itself felt everywhere. Italy being relatively uninfluenced by the Reformation was also relatively free from the excesses of the Inquisition. Nevertheless, it furnished just at the close of the century a most striking illustration of inquisitorial power in the persecution, imprisonment, and finally the execution by burning at the stake of the famous philosopher, Giordano Bruno.

But the Italian civilisation of the time presents some more attractive features. The artistic impulses of the Renaissance, at which we have glimpsed in an earlier chapter, could not be blotted out in a single generation; and it must be recalled that Michelangelo lived until the year 1564; so the art movement did not pass its climax before the middle of the century. In the field of literature the activities of the earlier generation were unabated. “Among the numbers of men who had devoted themselves to letters,” says Sismondi,[k] “Italy produced at this glorious epoch, at least thirty poets, whom their contemporaries placed on a level with the first names of antiquity, and whose fame, it was thought, would be commensurate with the existence of the world. But even the names of these illustrious men begin to be forgotten; and their works, buried in the libraries of the learned, are now seldom read.

“The circumstances of their equality in merit has doubtless been an obstacle to the duration of their reputation. Fame does not possess a strong memory. For a long flight, she relieves herself from all unnecessary encumbrances. She rejects, on her departure, and in her course, many who thought themselves accepted by her, and she comes down to late ages, with the lightest possible burthen. Unable to choose between Bembo, Sadoleti, Sanazzaro, Bernardo Accolti, and so many others, she relinquishes them all.”

There is one name, however, that stands out from amidst this company in a secure position. This is the name of Torquato Tasso, the famous author of the _Gerusalemme Liberata_ (“Jerusalem Delivered”), a poem dealing with the First Crusade, which by common consent has high rank among the great epics, and which placed its author in contemporary estimation, as in that of posterity, on an approximate level with Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto. The appearance of Tasso in this epoch is another illustration of that fruitage of literary genius in times of political degeneration to which reference has previously been made.[a]