LINEAGE OF THE CAROLINGIANS

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of his predecessors and successors, to ‘play the harlot,’ as Dante calls it, with foreign princes. He invited Rudolf, king of trans-Juran Burgundy, to assume the kingship of Italy, and actually set the Iron Crown on his head at Pavia in 922. Thereupon Berengar, reduced to great straits, had recourse to the still less praiseworthy expedient of inviting his old enemies, the Magyars, to re-invade Italy. This they did--but, instead of helping Berengar, they betook themselves to plundering the country. They set fire to Pavia, and then in large marauding bands they spread southwards as far as Rome. Meanwhile Berengar had succeeded without their aid in beating Rudolf and driving him back to Burgundy; but shortly afterwards (924) he was murdered at Verona, it is said by an intimate friend, Flambert, who had already conspired against him and had been pardoned. (14)

During the next thirty-seven years there was no Emperor. That which had once signified world-wide Empire had become an empty title affected by Byzantine rulers, or conferred by Popes on Germanic monarchs, or Proven�al princes, or Lombard dukes. The non-existence of an Imperator Romanorum in Italy for more than the third of a century was a matter of small moment, for it is the reality behind such names that lends them their only importance, and whatever importance attaches itself to the later ‘Holy Roman Empire’ is due not to unbroken succession, but entirely to the political and personal importance of the Germanic monarchs who, more or less with the sanction of the Roman people, assumed the imperial title. The original Imperium Romanum had come to an end before the sixth century, and the only right that medieval and modern Imperatores Romanorum had to their title was the right of might, or the right possessed by the Romans (and in some cases perhaps by the Popes as representatives of the Roman people) to revive and confer that title as they liked. But while it

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must be allowed that the imperial dignity as revived in the person of Otto was still more of a fiction than the title which with their piissimus Augustus, a Deo coronatus, magnus Imperator the Romans conferred on Charles the Great, or even more of a fiction than the honour conferred by the unctio barbarica of papal hands on Arnulf of Carinthia, it should not be forgotten that any such thing as imperial succession has sometimes what one may call a subjective reality; for, however fictitious may be the uninterrupted transmission of some mystic prerogative, the emotions excited in minds that accept such pretensions often prove a real and potent force in historical evolution, and they cannot be ignored. (15)

Never-ending feuds and civic discords, the entire submergence of all patriotism in the meanest personal ambitions, the most shameful collusion with alien princes and barbarian foes--such are the main traits of this so-called regno d’Italia indipendente, during which the Italians of that age proved themselves utterly unworthy of independence.

A bare statement of the political events of these thirty-seven years, from the murder of Berengar in 924, is given in the List of Emperors and Kings (pp. 378-79) and will serve as a clue while we explore a little further in order to discover some of the forces that were at work behind the scenes of this perplexingly crowded puppet-show. The chief of these influences were exercised by women, and more than one of these women attained for a time a political power comparable with that of Placidia or Pulcheria; but they gained and retained that power by the exercise of a daemonic, or perhaps we may call it a diabolic, fascination that recalls the younger Agrippina

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or Lucrezia Borgia rather than the daughter or the grand-daughter of the great Theodosius.

One of these women was Bertha, daughter of that Waldrada whose fascinations had caused such trouble in the case of Lothair (p. 320). Bertha had first married Count Theobald of Provence, by whom she had a son, Hugo. She then married Adalbert, Marquess of Tuscany, and had several children, to one of which, Ermengard, she transmitted the fatal dower of fascinating beauty. Bertha and, after her death, Ermengard--now Marchioness of Ivrea--seem to have gained such influence over the Italian nobles that soon after the murder of Berengar these nobles decided to ignore Rudolf of Burgundy (though already crowned by the Pope) and to invite the young Count of Provence to assume the crown of Italy. (16) Hugo landed at Pisa (926) and was crowned at Pavia, Pope John X for the third time giving his unholy unction to a claimant during the life of his rival and thus causing to fester the great open sore of Italy instead of aiding, as Head of the Christian Church, to bind up and heal her wounds.

*       *      *      *      *

But it was in Rome that female domination at this epoch had become most notable; and we must retrace our steps to observe how this began. Ever since the days when (896) Pope Formosus had crowned Arnulf as Emperor and when, to avenge this indignity, his corpse had been disinterred and arraigned before a Synod by Pope Stephen VI a most scandalous state of things had prevailed in Rome, where within eight years (896-904) there were no less than ten Popes, most of whom gained or lost their office by criminal intrigue or murder. (17)

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During this state of things, at a time when all Italy is supposed by some to have been blessed by independence under the rule of her own king Berengar, a formidable despotism had begun to arise in Rome--one before which during half a century both the Papacy and the Kingship of Italy were to succumb. A certain Theophylact, a leader of the lay aristocracy (judices de militia), had risen to the rank of Dux et magister militum and had assumed the titles of Senator and Consul, while his wife, who bore the ill-omened name of Theodora, (18) and her two daughters Marozia and Theodora succeeded in attracting by their beauty and dissolute habits a large number of adorers and satellites. In 904 the ambitious Cardinal Sergius, who had for years endeavoured to grasp the papal tiara, and who had at last succeeded in becoming the paramour of Marozia, was made Pope, and henceforth for many years the pontifical office was dependent on these women. For seven years this man, who is described by Baronius and other ecclesiastical writers as a ‘monster’ and by Gregorovius as a ‘terrorizing criminal,’ occupied the chair of St. Peter, while his concubine and her Semiramis-like mother held court with a pomp and voluptuousness that recalled the worst days of the ancient Empire.

Sergius III died in 911. Two Popes followed about whom we know next to nothing, but whose election and sudden disappearance were probably due to court intrigues. Then a certain Presbyter John, who had long made love to the no longer youthful Theodora and had been made Archbishop of Ravenna, was by the influence of his paramour transferred to the papal throne (914). This is that lecherous and treacherous Pope John X of whom we have already heard more than

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enough. Meantime Marozia, having lost her pontifical lover had married (c. 913) a soldier of fortune, a certain Alberich, who after serving in turn under Guido and Berengar had succeeded in making himself Duke of Spoleto

It was shortly after this that Berengar, favoured by Theophylact and Alberich and their two all-powerful consorts, came to Rome and was crowned Emperor (915) by Pope John X, after having routed the Saracens on the Garigliano, as has been already narrated.

Theophylact, Theodora, and Alberich now suddenly and somewhat mysteriously disappear from the scene, and Marozia, establishing herself in the huge fortress of S. Angelo (the Mole of Hadrian), dominates Rome. Pope John, as we have already seen, abandons the cause of Berengar and invites and crowns Rudolf of Burgundy, and not long afterwards repeats the process with Hugo of Provence. These traitorous intrigues bring Marozia into collision with the former lover of her mother, and finally she succeeds in seizing and imprisoning him in the fortress, and ere long the unhappy pontiff is put to death by her orders--strangled, it is said, or stifled with a pillow.

*      *      *      *      *

After the death of her husband, Alberich of Spoleto, Marozia had married Guido of Tuscany, the brother of Ermengard and the stepbrother of Hugo of Provence. Now when Hugo was elected and crowned King of Italy (926) it was natural that Marozia should feel deeply aggrieved, for she had doubtless wedded Guido with the object of making herself Queen of Italy. But, as luck would have it, Guido soon died, and Hugo of Provence about the same time lost his wife. The chance was one not to be lost, and ere long the seductive arts of the mistress of Rome were once more crowned with success. Hugo came to Rome (932) and celebrated his marriage with Marozia in the Castle of S. Angelo--the ceremony being performed and the royal pair being blessed by the lately elected Pope John XI, the bastard offspring of the bride by the paramour of her youthful days, Pope Sergius III.

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But by her first husband, Alberich of Spoleto, Marozia had a legitimate son, now about eighteen years of age, also named Alberich, who seems to have inherited his father’s soldier-like qualities and to have been possessed of a masterful character and a genius for leadership. This youth was profoundly disgusted by his mother’s conduct and resented the presence of his new stepfather, in whose retinue he had to serve as page, and when Hugo rewarded his impudence (19) with a box on the ear he rushed forth and with fiery eloquence harangued the assembled multitude, who forthwith made an assault on the castle. Hugo, terrified, was let down by a rope and fled from Rome. Alberich imprisoned his mother, (20) put his base-born half-brother, the young Pope, into strict custody, and assumed the titles of Princeps and Senator.

Alberich, or Alberico, governed Rome, perhaps with severity, but with evident justice, for twenty-two years (932-54). It is an episode in Italian history full of most interesting possibilities, frustrated, alas, by Alberich’s son and successor, who had inherited the character of his grandmother, Marozia. Alberich’s military reforms were important. He reconstituted the army in twelve scholae, corresponding to the twelve regions of the city, each commanded by a banderese, or flag-captain, like the Florentine Gonfaloniere della compagnia (not of course the Gonfaloniere of Justice, who was a political magnate). Under his titles of Princeps and Senator he evidently combined in his own person the chief legislative and executive powers; for the Senate had ceased to exist and the nobles seem to have acted merely as his subordinate officials. As President of the Tribunal, (21) like the Venetian Doges of early days, he held an almost absolute power in his hands, and although on his coins we find his name associated with that of the reigning Pope, it is very evident that none of the seven pontiffs of this period had any political authority. Most of them were doubtless

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selected by Alberich himself, and under his r�gime a Pope was, as he should be, nothing but the Head of the Church, exercising spiritual influence. And it cannot be doubted that Alberich highly appreciated the value of spiritual influence--at least as an accessory of civil power. This is apparent from two facts. Firstly, he encouraged vigorously the reform of monasteries (22) which had been initiated at Cluny, in France, by Friar Berno, and when Berno’s disciple, Odo, visited Rome he gave him a palace on the Aventine for the purpose of founding a reformed convent (now S. Maria Aventina and the priory of the Knights of Malta). Secondly, he was so impressed with the necessity of recognizing and using religious influences that he determined to combine in one person the chief civil and the chief ecclesiastical authority--an audacious experiment, which seems to have succeeded in the case of the early Roman Emperors and in that of certain Moslem Caliphs, but which in many cases has proved the source of great trouble. Before his death he assembled the nobles of Rome before the Confessio of St. Peter’s and made them swear that when the next vacancy occurred they would elect his son and successor, Octavian, to the papal throne. We shall see how this interesting experiment succeeded.

Before Alberich died, in 954, King Hugo had thrice (933, 936, and 941) attacked Rome in order to avenge himself and to expel his rebellious stepson; but Alberich had repulsed him with brilliant success, and is spite of a temporary truce (during which he married Hugo’s daughter) he defied all his efforts to enter the city and receive the imperial crown from the hands of the Pope.

About 940 a rival claimant to the crown of Italy had appeared in the person of another Berengar, Marquess of Ivrea (stepson of Ermengard above mentioned). Hugo, it is said,

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pretended to listen in a friendly way to his claims and invited him to his court, intending to kill or blind him. But Hugo’s son, Lothair, through friendship or compassion, revealed the design to Berengar, who fled to Germany and in 946, with the help of Otto, the Saxon king, returned and expelled Hugo, who retired to his native realm of Provence and died shortly afterwards at Arles. Berengar was now nominally the regent of the young king Lothair, but it was not long before Lothair died (950)--very probably poisoned by the man whose life he had saved. Now Hugo had wedded a Burgundian dowager and had married her daughter, Adelheid, to his son Lothair. On Lothair’s death Berengar tried to force Adelheid to marry his son Adalbert, whom he had nominated as his partner in the Kingship of Italy. Adelheid very naturally declined the honour. She was forthwith imprisoned in a tower of the Lago di Garda; but she escaped and appealed to Otto of Saxony. (23) Impelled by this and by other appeals from the enemies of the tyrannous Berengar, Otto descended with an army--the first German army that had crossed the Alps for half a century--and, having seized Pavia, married the fair Adelheid and had himself crowned King of Italy, though Berengar still held that title. He also sent word to Pope Agapetus that he intended to come to Rome and be crowned as Emperor. This design however he prudently abandoned, for Alberich gave him to understand that without his leave no king should enter Rome, and this leave he refused to give. But after Alberich’s death in 954 the state of things in Rome became intolerable. Octavian, his dissolute son, succeeded him as Princeps and Senator, and, on the decease of Agapetus in 955, was also elected Pope, taking the name John XII.

The accounts given of the pazza bestialit� of this papal libertine by impartial writers such as Villari and Gregorovius, and even by partial writers such as the Abb� Duchesne (in his splendid edition of the Liber Pontificalis), are almost incredible.

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He is said to have kept a large harem of concubines. In company with dissolute boon companions he abandoned himself to every kind of voluptuous excess. He used to drink health to the devil and to invoke the pagan ‘demon’ gods. We hear of a deacon ordained in a stable, a bishop consecrated at the age of ten, a father confessor blinded and dying of his wounds, a cardinal shamefully mutilated and killed by order of this Vicar of Christ. No honest woman, we are told, dared to set her foot in the Lateran. (24) And things were scarcely better at the court and camp of King Berengar the Second, who had humbly received back from the Saxon king at Augsburg the Lombard crown, promising to wear it as Otto’s vassal. His insane excesses and insolent cruelty, combined with the bacchanal orgies of the papal-senatorial court at Rome, forced the Italians to appeal once more to the German monarch, who responded and with a large army crossed the Brenner. Finding no resistance in North Italy--for Berengar’s soldiers refused to fight--and receiving an invitation from the young profligate at Rome, who had now determined to play off the German against the Italian King of Italy, Otto entered the city and was crowned Emperor on February 2, 962.

Thus by the grace of heaven transmitted through the blood-stained hands of this young ruffian was instituted what was later known as the Holy Roman Empire. How Pope John could be a medium of such grace is a question for theologians; but how little he represented the will of the Romans may be gathered from what an old chronicler, Thietmar, relates. The nobles, we are told, concealed their feelings in a gloomy silence. On the faces of these Romans, whose liberties and power he was come to destroy, Otto read murderous resentment, and

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ere he betook himself to the ceremony of coronation he said to Ansfried of Louvain: ‘When I kneel at St. Peter’s tomb, do thou hold thy sword continually above my head, for I know that my forefathers oft had experience of the treachery of the Romans.’ It should therefore scarcely surprise us that ere the next two years had passed the new Emperor had deposed the Pope to whose apostolic unction he owed his divine rights and had deprived the Romans of their right to elect their own pontiffs.

A document called the Privilegium Ottonis is still extant which (except for some later additions) seems to have been drawn up between Otto and Pope John XII. It officially sanctions the revival of the empire and the transmission of the dignity from the Frank to the Saxon monarchs; it also renews all the concessions made by the donations of Pipin and Charles the Great, giving to the Church even Venice and Istria and Naples and Benevento, and Sicily itself--which was still in the hands of the Saracens !

But whatever we may think of renewed Donations and the rehabilitated Empire, the revival of German domination in Italy was a fact the reality of which was substantiated very soon; for when Pope John, incited by the discontented nobility, began to intrigue with Berengar and received Berengar’s son, Adalbert, as his guest at Rome, Otto came sweeping back form North Italy. At his approach the Pope and Adalbert took to flight. Otto entered Rome and, having convoked a Council (known as the Council of November), he formally deposed John and gave the Romans his imperial sanction to elect another pontiff, Pope Leo VIII--a precedent of much importance, seeing that during the next hundred years the Popes were selected by the Emperors or nominated with the sanction of their envoys, and did much to restore the good name of the Papacy. But the deposed and exiled pope John was not easily suppressed. He incited a tumult at Rome, and an assault made on Otto, in the Vatican, was repelled with difficulty and considerable slaughter. Indeed, there is no

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saying how things might have ended, for the Romans were fiercely resentful at Otto’s insolent interference with their privileges. But Pope John’s hour had sounded; he was caught by an indignant husband and so severely cudgelled that he died. The Romans forthwith elected a Pope, Benedict V, in his stead, ignoring Otto’s Pope; but the imperial party finally prevailed and Benedict was deposed.

Meanwhile Otto had captured Berengar in North Italy and had sent him off to Germany, where soon after he died.

In 966, disorders having occurred at Rome, Otto again marched south and suppressed the rebels with great severity. The Prefect of the city, who had resisted the Pope (John XIII, Otto’s prot�g�), was hung up by the hair to the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, (25) then paraded, riding back foremost on a donkey, through the streets, and finally taken off to prison in Germany. After this Otto spent the greater part of his life in Italy--a fact that shows how anxious he was, in spite of his vast northern dominions, to establish his title as hereditary Roman Emperor of the West. This anxiety induced him to have his son, a child of twelve, crowned by the Pope with the imperial diadem--a function that took place in St. Peter’s on Christmas Day 967. And, not content with this, he tried to secure recognition as Western Emperor from the Emperor of the East, and requested as a bride for the young Otto a Byzantine princess; but the proposal, which included the conquest of Sicily from the Saracens and the cession of the Byzantine possessions in South Italy as dowry, was scornfully rejected by Nicephorus Phocas, the conqueror of Crete, who regarded himself as the only legitimate Roman Emperor and poured contempt on Otto’s pretensions. Moreover, although Otto sent his faithful Liudprand (26) as envoy to Constantinople,

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the Byzantine Emperor gathered a fleet to aid Adalbert, Berengar’s son, and to recover, if possible, for the Eastern Empire the cities of Capua, Benevento, Ravenna--and Rome ! Thus Otto was forced to fight, and with the co-operation of a powerful Lombard duke, Pandulf Iron-head (Testa di ferro), who had combined under his rule the provinces of Spoleto, Benevento, and Capua, he besieged Bari; but Bari had open access to the sea, which was dominated by the Byzantine fleet, and, as ill-luck would have it, Pandulf fell into an ambush and was captured.

At this juncture Phocas was assassinated by his wife, who had already poisoned her father and her first husband, the Emperor Romanus. Her fellow-conspirator, the puny John Zimisces, who ascended the Byzantine throne, released Pandulf and propitiated Otto by sending over to Italy the desired princess Theophano, daughter of the triple murderess. She was wedded to the young co-Emperor and received the title of Empress. A year later, in May 973, Otto the Great, as he is called, died.

His successor, Otto II, was now a youth of seventeen. Without possessing the first Otto’s masterful character, he certainly showed courage and vigour, and owed to his mother Adelheid a culture and refinement that was evidently lacking in his father. His reign of ten years was mainly occupied in fighting. First he was assailed by Henry of Bavaria, whom he defeated and deposed. Then he was attacked, and very nearly captured at Aachen, by Lothair of France; whereupon he led an army against Paris, and although he did not succeed in capturing it, he secured his undisturbed possession of Lorraine. Then he marched down into Italy, and after restoring a fugitive Pope and settling affairs at Rome, where violent discords, between the imperial and papal parties had become chronic, (27) he opened (982) the campaign against the Saracens, who were still in possession of Sicily and had lately once more crossed over in great numbers into South Italy. Emboldened by success,

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Otto acted rashly and was surprised and totally defeated not far from Cotrone, the ancient Crotona, and would have been captured had he not swum out to a Byzantine vessel, whose crew luckily did not recognize him, (28) so that he was able to reach a friendly shore in safety. The news of this disaster caused great disturbances and dangerous rebellions in Otto’s northern dominions, but he determined first to regain prestige in Italy. At Verona he convoked a great assembly of his nobles of both nations and caused his son, a child of three, to be elected King of Germany and Italy. He then made preparations to renew the war against the Saracens, and after vainly trying to persuade the Venetians to lend him a fleet, he marched once more down to Rome. Here he was attacked by a fever and died. He was buried in an ancient sarcophagus which had a porphyry lid stolen from Hadrian’s tomb. This sarcophagus stood for five centuries in the Paradiso, the great atrium of the old basilica, but when Paul V reconstructed the cathedral vaults, about 1610, the porphyry lid was taken to serve (as it still does) for a font, the old sarcophagus was given over to the kitchen of the Quirinal for a water-trough, and the body of the youthful Emperor was put into the marble and stucco coffin which now stands in the crypt (Grotte Vecchie) of St. Peter’s, not far from the urns of ‘King James III,’ of England and his sons Charles Edward and Henry. A mosaic, probably first erected by the Empress Theophano, is still to be seen near Otto’s tomb, and is a very interesting specimen of the degraded art of this period.

The child Otto III, born in 980, had been lately crowned at Aachen by the German nobles as King of Germany and of the Romans when the news of his father’s death at Rome arrived. His mother, the ‘Empress’ Theophano, was made regent, and she proved herself worthy of the post, having evidently inherited more of the nature of her father, the Eastern Emperor Romanus, than of her mother’s infamous character.

During the first six years of her regency we hear of little

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except that at Rome, as usual, fierce discords prevailed. One Pope (Benedict VI) had been imprisoned and strangled by the leaders of the populace; the next, Boniface VII, had fled from the imperialists of Constantinople; another (Benedict VII), driven out by the people and restored by Otto II, had been succeeded by John XIV, Bishop of Pavia and imperial chancellor. But Boniface returned from the East (985), deposed and poisoned, or starved to death, Pope John, and behaved with such intolerable cruelty that the populace rose, killed him, dragged his body through the streets, and cast it beneath the ‘horse of Constantine,’ namely the equestrian stature of Marcus Aurelius (see p. 338 n), the great imperial pagan philosopher, whose meditations would have been disturbed could he have foreseen the strange uses to which his monument would be put.

The leader of these tumults was Crescentius, whose father had held a similar position as head of the anti-German party. Crescentius assumed the ancient and princely title of Patrician of the Romans, and for some years was evidently as much the master of Rome as Alberich had been, and not only elected the next Pope (John XV, who reigned eleven years) but also expelled him when he proved recalcitrant. It is therefore somewhat surprising to find Theophano still at Rome in 989, and evidently recognized as ‘Empress’ both by Crescentius and this Pope; and even when, after her death and after the short regency of the dowager-Queen Adelheid, the young Otto, now sixteen years of age, came to Rome (996) to assume the imperial crown, Crescentius seems to have made no objection and to have received no castigation. But his fate was not to be deferred for long, as we shall see.

Before proceeding with the narrative, however, it will be well to say something about the personality of the young ‘Saxon’ monarch who reigned nineteen and lived twenty-two years. ‘The Germans’ we are told by a recent writer on this period of Italian history, ‘were big blond men, beer-drinkers, huge eaters, rough, ill-mannered, arrogant, phlegmatic, and brave.’ Perhaps this is the picture that one is rather apt to

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form when one hears of the ‘Saxon’ Ottos and their ilk. Perhaps too the description is fairly correct in the case of Otto the Great, who possessed, it is said, very little in the way of education, although, like Charles the Great, he was a zealous patron of learning (29) and a friend of scholars, such as the polyglot Liudprand. But it certainly is not correct in the case of the second Otto, who was an enthusiast for Southern culture and was in person probably dark and certainly small, as was proved when, as stated above, his body was removed from its sarcophagus. Still less does the description apply to the third Otto, though Gregorovius claims him as ‘German from head to foot.” His mother, the Byzantine princess Theophano, descended from the Emperors Basil and Leo (the last notable as a philosopher), had imparted to him a temperament almost Oriental in its fantastic proclivities and had fostered his enthusiasm for Byzantine civilization as well as for the ideals of Eastern Christianity.

When Otto III, as a youth of sixteen first came to Rome in 996, the Pope (John XV) had just died. He forthwith caused to be consecrated his own second-cousin, Bruno--a young man of twenty-three--who took the name Gregory V and three weeks later placed the imperial diadem on the head of his royal patron. He, the first German Pope, was not only a favourer of the reforms begun at Cluny (p. 334) but, like Otto himself, was strongly influenced by the enthusiasm for the monastic life which, as was natural at an epoch of such civic and religious disturbance, once more swept through Christendom, as it had done in earlier days. Several notable examples had of late excited imitation. St. Nilus, an illiterate Calabrian, who lived as hermit in a cave near Gaeta, was regarded by Otto, as by numberless other devotees, with unbounded veneration. St. Romuald of Ravenna, who some-

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what later founded the Reformed (or White) Benedictine Order of Camaldoli, was another who aroused immense enthusiasm, and was believed to have influenced Doge Pietro Orseolo to leave Venice by stealth, in the disguise of a pilgrim, and bury himself in a French monastery. A still deeper impression was made by Adalbert, the saintly and learned Bishop of Prag, who, after having devoted himself to the life of a recluse at Rome, was forced reluctantly to return to his Bohemian diocese, and at last sought and found a martyr’s death among the savage heathen of Northern Poland. (30)

Under the ban of such influences the excitable and fantastic temperament of Otto led him into strange extravagances. At one time we find him as pilgrim visiting Monte Gargano and the relics of St. Bartholomew at Benevento, (31) and the tomb of St. Adalbert in the wilds of Poland, or devising a crusade to rescue the holy Sepulchre from the power of the Saracens--a design first realized a century later--and at another time we find him, in an access (Susan note) of fury and fanaticism, committing the most bloodthirsty atrocities. Specimens of such atrocities--the inhuman mutilation and murder of the Antipope John XVI, who had been set up by Crescentius in the place of Otto’s cousin Gregory, and the execution of Crescentius himself and all the chief magistrates of Rome--I have reserved as evidence of the barbarity of the tenth century (see Part IV, ch. i). Another act that betokens a fantastic impulse is the opening of the tomb in Aachen Cathedral in which, tradition says, the body of Charles the Great sat enthroned in state. What Otto found, and what he did with what he found, it is impossible to know; we know however that he ordered that his own

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body should be entombed beside that of Charles at Aachen, and when, in 1003, he died near Rome they carried him thither, fighting their way through Italy, which was now in a state of open rebellion; for the last years of his reign had been spent in ever vainer efforts to realize his dream of a re-established Roman-Byzantine Empire in what he called the Eternal City and the one true capital of the world. Indeed so contemptuously had the Romans regarded his political designs and his religious enthusiasms that on his last visit to Rome they had treated him with insulting ridicule and had besieged him in his palace on the Aventine, so that it was with difficulty that he had persuaded them to let him depart unscathed. After retiring for a time to St. Romuald’s monastery at Ravenna he determined, against the saint’s urgent advice, to renounce the religious life and once more to attempt the establishment of his Roman Empire. But Rome itself had first to be regained, and while he hesitated to attack it he himself was attacked by fever and died in the castle of Paterno, near Mount Soracte. At this moment a Byzantine princess was voyaging to Italy in order to become his wife and the Empress of his dreamland realm. If we imagine her bending over his lifeless body we have a picture that strikingly symbolizes the non-fulfilment of his many ambitions.

Henry II, a Bavarian duke of the Saxon house, who succeeded Otto, had personally not much to do with Italy, but, as is the case with others of these German Kings of Italy and Imperatores Romanorum, his reign serves as a useful frame for events of importance. Otto’s attempts to reconstruct in Italy an Empire of the Southern type had not only failed, but had excited a very strong anti-German feeling through the whole of the country. He had looked for support to the Church, and had favoured the power of the ecclesiastics by recognizing them as hereditary and immediate beneficiaries of the crown and as independent of other liege-lords. The nobles were by this deeply aggrieved and became ever more and more determined to shake off the foreign supremacy. In Rome, in spite of the imperial policy of the wise Pope Silvester II, formerly

INSERT FIG 30

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Otto’s tutor, who had succeeded Otto’s cousin Gregory, the son of that Crescentius whom Otto had executed held power as head of the lay aristocracy for ten years, till he was succeeded by the Counts of Tusculum, who dominated the city for a still longer period. (32) In North Italy, not only among the lay magnates but also in the numerous cities, (33) which were rapidly acquiring wealth and independence, the hostility to the Northern barbarian was so intense that a month after the death of Otto III Marquess Arduin of Ivrea (in Piemont) was crowned at Pavia with the iron crown of Lombardy.

Henry, who had already assumed the title of King of the Romans, answered the challenge by sending a small force, which was routed by Arduin. He then came himself with an army and was likewise crowned at Pavia with the iron crown as King of Italy; but how little his rights were founded on the will of the Italian people is proved by the fact that on the same evening a very serious tumult broke out, during which the Germans (more Teutonico) set fire to Pavia and destroyed a large part of the city. (34)

In Rome, as elsewhere, the republican movement was gathering force, and, in combination with the patriotism of Arduin’s supporters, caused the Counts of Tusculum to ally themselves for a time with the Pope and the imperialists. The result was that Henry was invited to assume the diadem of the Empire, and together with his queen, Kunigund, he was crowned at Rome in 1014. Once more there were violent anti-German demonstrations and serious tumults; but they were suppressed by force, and the presence of the new Emperor

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and his powerful army so cowed King Arduin that he withdrew to a Benedictine monastery in Piemont, where he soon afterwards died.

During the next ten years events very little connected with Henry and his Germans, but most momentous for the future of Italy, took place in the south. Norman pilgrims, (35) returning from Jerusalem (c. 1016), had helped Salerno against the Saracens and had been enlisted by Melo of Bari against his fellow-subjects, the Byzantines. The Byzantines had defeated the rebel Melo and his Norman mercenaries at Canne (on the ancient battlefield of Cannae) and had recaptured their supremacy over most of Apulia and Calabria, and even over the cities of Naples, Capua, and Salerno.

This turn of events caused both Melo and also Pope Benedict VIII to undertake the journey to Germany in order to persuade Henry to come to the rescue; and he responded to their entreaties. With a large army he marched southwards and obtained some successes; but he was forced ere long to return to his northern dominions, where he died in 1024.

(5) THE HOHENSTAUFEN EMPERORS

Both Calixtus and Henry V died not long after the Concordat of Worms. Henry was childless, and once more the nobles (most of whom were glad enough to exercise their powers as electors and thus protest against a hereditary kingship) assembled at Tribur. Frederick of Staufen, son of the Frederick who had been made Duke of Suabia by Henry IV

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and had married his daughter, was the foremost claimant; but the Concordat was already bearing its fruit, and the archbishops together with the anti-imperial nobles succeeded in rejecting both Frederick and his brother Conrad as being ‘too full of the Waibling spirit.’ A devoted son of the Church, the former leader of the Saxon and Welf rebels, was chosen, Lothair (Lothar) by name. Frederick at first refused to give up certain royal demesnes which he claimed through his mother, but finally the Staufen family agreed to recognize the new king--not however until Conrad had been recognized as King of Italy and Emperor-designate by the people of Milan (1130) and had been crowned with the iron crown at Monza. In 1133 Lothair went to Rome. Here there had been, as so often, serious disturbances caused by the elections of rival Popes. One was Innocent II, the nominee of the powerful family of the Frangipani; the other was Anacletus, of the old Jewish-Roman family of the Pierleoni, monk of Cluny and disciple of the famous Abelard of Paris. Anacletus had gained the mastery at Rome and Innocent had fled to France, where he was strongly supported by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who was a vehement opponent of Abelard and his teachings. St. Bernard was commissioned by Louis of France to decide between the rival Popes, and naturally enough decided against Anacletus. But force was needed in order to restore Innocent, and the orthodox Lothair undertook the task, and incidentally had himself crowned Emperor at Rome by Pope Innocent (1133). His pious gratitude for this favour induced him to accept investiture from the Pope for his sovran rights over the quondam territories of Matilda--thus acknowledging the validity of Matilda’s Legacy and degrading himself to a vassal of the Papacy.

Roger the Norman of Sicily, who had proclaimed himself king in 1130, had been recognized by Anacletus, but not by Innocent. He now began to make himself master of the south of Italy, and Innocent appealed to Lothair, who came with his army and with Genoese and Pisan ships, and, being aided by the revolted cities of Naples and Capua, was able to chase

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Roger back to Sicily. But ere long Lothair and his army disappeared northwards, and when news came of his death (he died in December 1137, soon after crossing the Alps) Roger returned and not only reconquered all that he had lost, but defeated and captured Innocent and by generous treatment gained at last the confirmation of his kingly title.

The Welf Duke of Bavaria and Saxony, Henry the Proud, to whom Lothair had given over in mesne-tenure the territories of Matilda, and who was thus master of a vast realm, expected to be elected king and had already possessed himself of the royal insignia. But once more the German people shrank from choosing a too powerful candidate and from perpetuating the claims of either rival house. Even before the diet met at Tribur the Waiblinger, Conrad of Staufen, was proclaimed and crowned, and Duke Henry found it advisable to surrender the insignia; and ere long he had to surrender also his Saxon duchy, for the fierce outbursts of the Welf and Waibling feud that distracted the nation during these years ended at last in favour of Conrad.

Amid such disturbances it was not likely that Conrad III should have much to do with Italy; but it will be remembered that while competing with Lothair for the German crown he had succeeded, although he was excommunicated, in persuading the Archbishop of Milan to crown him with the iron crown, as King of Italy and Emperor-designate. It was therefore naturally his ambition to realize his claims to these titles, and later we shall find him attempting to do so. Meanwhile however Rome again claims our attention.

The republican movement, which was already effecting great results in the north of Italy, had been seriously counteracted in the south by the conquests of the Normans. In Rome itself, although fiercely suppressed by powerful families, such as those of the Tusculan counts, the Crescenzi and the Frangipani, and by such Popes as were the tools of the aristocratic and the imperialistic factions, the spirit of liberty had asserted itself so far that the civil government of the city was already to a great extent that of a Commune,

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the army, divided into twelve scholae corresponding to the twelve divisions of Rome, being together with its twelve commanders (banderisi) under popular control. But a sudden and violent outburst of feeling was now to develop Rome for a time into a full-blown republic. The little town of Tibur (Tivoli), whose love of freedom had deeply annoyed the freedom-lovers in Rome, had been mastered, but obstinately refused to submit to the Roman people, on the ground that the Pope was the one supreme Roman authority; and when Pope Innocent publicly supported this theory a revolution took place: the Republic was proclaimed, the Prefecture abolished, and the senate, reconstructed mainly of burghers instead of the patricians, was installed on the Capitol. (52) In the same year (1143) Innocent died, and also his successor, Celestin II. The next Pope, Lucius II, received a fatal blow from a stone while attempting to storm the Capitol at the head of a band of nobles; his successor, Eugenius III, elected during the very same day, had to flee from Rome. (53) As Consul or chief senator of the new republic was chosen Giordano, apparently a renegade member of the aristocratic family of the Pierleoni, for he was, it is said, a brother of the Antipope Anacletus. Under his presidency the resuscitated Roman Republic seems to have established itself on a fairly firm basis, from which even the combined efforts of Barbarossa and Breakspear failed to dislodge it. To judge from its coinage, in its earlier days it recognized the Emperor as its overlord, but allowed

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the Pope no part in the government, insisting that he should renounce all temporal power and content himself with tithes and oblations.

This revolution was formerly believed to have been incited and led by Arnold of Brescia; but it seems certain that, although his doctrines had already spread through the whole of Italy (54) and doubtless exercised very great influence on the Roman republicans, he himself was not present in 1143, since he first came to Rome in 1145.

Arnold, a native of Brescia, had studied under Abelard at Paris and had imbibed intense enthusiasm for ancient Rome and for republican liberty. On his return to Italy he became friar and preached fervidly against all forms of tyranny, and especially against the temporal power of the Popes, his favourite text being apostolic poverty, such as St. Benedict praised when Dante met him in heaven:

But Arnold’s eloquence was received coldly, even in Brescia, and he returned to France, where his master Abelard was succumbing under the attacks of St. Bernard; and the angry saint, having crushed the heresiarch, turned on the disciple. Arnold was expelled, and seems to have spent some years, perhaps as a teacher, in Zurich--afterwards the home of a more successful theologian, Zwingli. In 1145 we find him in Rome, where his political theories were being largely put into practice. For ten years his zeal and learning inspired and guided the young republic, and, had his highest ideal been realized--the ideal of a truly apostolic Papacy, enthroned far above all greed of worldly wealth and power--how many centuries of misery would Italy, and humanity, have been spared ! But the cowardly vacillation of Conrad and the blind policy of Barbarossa in his earlier days, exploited by the overweening ambition of an English Pope, frustrated what might

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have proved a more salutary and radical reformation than that of Luther’s age.

In 1147 the second Crusade, due greatly to the preaching of St. Bernard, attracted a million fighters from Western Europe. It created more enthusiasm in Germany than the first Crusade had done, and Conrad III finally determined to join it. For two years he was in the East, and it is interesting to note that in his retinue were two warriors whose names awake in our minds two very vivid but very different trains of reminiscence. One of these was his nephew, the young Frederick of Staufen (Barbarossa), who many years afterwards returned, as a Crusader, to these Eastern lands and died there. The other was an ancestor of Dante--his great-grandfather, Cacciaguida--who when he met the poet in the heaven of Mars (Par. xv) told him that on earth he had ‘followed the Emperor Conrad,’ who ‘begirt him of his chivalry,’ i.e. knighted him.

But this ‘imperador Currado’ was never crowned Emperor. When, in 1149, he returned from the East the Roman senators, possibly on the advice of Arnold, sent him several grandiloquent epistles. The last of these, which is interlarded with barbarous hexameters, addressed him as “Lord of the City and the whole World; and as ‘King of the Romans’ and ‘Augustus,’ and besought him to come and re-establish the glories of the Roman Empire as it was under Constantine and Justinian, before it was ruined by the Popes and the nobles. It intimated also, rightly enough, that the Roman people, and not the Pope, was the true donor of the imperial dignity.

But Conrad hesitated. He had neither the wisdom nor the courage to accept the offer. At length he wrote that he would come ‘to re-establish order, to strengthen the loyalty of his friends and to punish rebels’--a somewhat ambiguous reply, which filled the republican party with apprehensions. And these apprehensions were greatly increased when it was heard that Conrad had made overtures to pope Eugenius, who had come back from France and had been for the last three years wandering about from place to place in Latium.

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Finally Conrad, having overmastered certain troublesome Welf insurgents in Germany, wrote--not to the Senate, which he ignored, but to the newly reinstituted Prefect and other magistrates--and made known his intention of visiting Rome and being crowned, not by senatorial delegates, but by the Pope. This intention was, however, not carried out, for he died in February of 1152, before the preparations for his journey were complete.

Conrad left a son only eight years old. He therefore recommended the electors to choose his nephew and fellow-Crusader, Frederick of Staufen, now thirty-one years of age. Frederick’s policy as regards Italy was soon revealed. When the Roman Senate sent him, as they had sent Conrad, a turgid epistle intimating that the S.P.Q.R. would be proud to invest him with the title of Emperor, he answered that his forefathers had won that title by arms and ‘let him who dares try to wrest the club from Hercules.’ He was determined to slay the hydra of republican liberty. He then wrote to Pope Eugenius, who answered inflaming his wrath still more against these insolent senators and undertook to crown him if he came and subjected Rome, as he had promised, to the Empire and to the Holy Church. Nor did Frederick delay his coming long. As soon as he had established his authority firmly in his northern dominions--had bestowed the crowns of Denmark and Bohemia and had annexed Burgundy--he crossed the Alps and in November 1154 held a great diet of all his Italian feudatories, lay and cleric, on the plain of Roncaglia, not far from Piacenza. True to his policy, he took severe measures against the growing independence of the Lombard cities; and ‘envy, the bane of republics,’ stood him in good stead, for grievous jealousies and strife had already arisen between them, and some eagerly seized the opportunity of accusing their rivals. Milan especially was bitterly assailed by less flourishing and more imperialistic cities, such as its neighbour Pavia, and incurred Frederick’s fiercest displeasure by refusing him his regalian rights (e.g. custom-dues, coinage, food for his soldiers, and so on) and inciting resistance when

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he attempted to abolish the consul and other republican magistrates and to impose German governors (Podest�) with dictatorial powers. He deemed it inadvisable to attack Milan itself, but vented his wrath by demolishing two of its allies--little Tortona, which stood a siege heroically for two months (and was soon rebuilt by the Milanese), and Asti, famous in a later age for its wine and for Alfieri.

Meantime Pope Eugenius and also his successor had died, and the Englishman Breakspear (Hadrian IV) had ascended the papal throne. His pride and impetuosity (which ere he died made him confess that the most miserable mortal on earth was a Pope) were soon in evidence. A cardinal had been attacked in the street--perhaps by anti-clerical republicans. Hadrian, who knew that Frederick would soon be there to aid him, forthwith does what no Pope had ever ventured to do--he lays the whole city under interdict. No religious functions are permitted save baptism and last sacrament. So terrified are the Romans that even the senators finally entreat pardon; and they gain it by the expulsion of Arnold of Brescia, who wanders as a fugitive from place to place, dreading the vengeance of the English pontiff, while Hadrian enthrones himself triumphantly in the Lateran. And now Frederick, ‘smoking with the blood of the Lombard Communes,’ appears before the gates of Rome. Arnold is betrayed and handed over by the Emperor to the Pope, and by the Pope to the Prefect, who has him hanged and burnt. The Senate, imagining that by this dastardly act the grace of the German monarch has been secured, sends to his camp a message of fulsome flattery and proposes once more to bestow on him the title of Emperor. But the envoys are disdainfully dismissed and Frederick marches his soldiery into the Leonine quarter and occupies St. Peter’s basilica’ and here Pope Hadrian, a few days after he has handed over Arnold to the gallows and the pyre, lays the imperial diadem on the head of his benefactor (June 1155).

But this unnatural alliance--this puttaneggiar co’ regi--was bound to prove short-lived. A very serious fight had taken place, on and near the S. Angelo bridge, after the corona-

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tion. About a thousand Roman citizens had been killed or drowned. Intense indignation prevailed, and Frederick found it advisable to escape from Rome and hurry northwards, leaving the Pope and his cardinals safely deposited in Tivoli. It was with difficulty that he forced his way through his disaffected Italian dominions, and when once more at home he began to revise his policy. He had already been angered by the papal claims to Tuscany (Matilda’s territories), and by the fact that Hadrian, like several of his predecessors, had sought to strengthen himself by alliance with the Norman depredators and usurpers, and had even presumed to act as overlord of South Italy and Sicily and to invest Roger’s son, William the Bad, with kingship. But worse was to follow. Ignoring the Concordat of Worms, Frederick had begun to appoint his own German bishops. Hadrian protested, and in his letter alluded to the late coronation as the bestowal by himself of the beneficium (fief) of the Empire, implying that Frederick was his feudatory. Hereupon took place a great outburst of indignation. The papal friendship was flung to the winds, and with a powerful army and a number of lay and clerical jurists Frederick again (July 1158) crossed the Alps, in order to chastise the insubordinate Communes (55) and to decide once for all his rights as Emperor in regard to Popes and republics. Milan was forced to surrender, and its citizens, together with their archbishop and their consuls, had to present themselves as barefoot and ash-strewn suppliants with cords round their necks, and when the ensigns on their Carroccio were lowered in obeisance the whole multitude sank on their knees and begged for mercy.

The conclusions arrived at by Frederick’s lawyers assembled at Roncaglia were drawn mainly from antiquated Justinian definitions and gave the Emperor an authority incompatible with constitutional government. Moreover, very unjust distinctions were made, some cities receiving much liberty and

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others being enslaved. But the humiliation of Milan had cowed resistance. One brave little town, Crema, alone defied the German despot, and after a siege (56) of six months was taken and demolished.

The break with Frederick now induced the Papacy to form another unnatural alliance. Though in Rome it was a deadly foe to republican freedom, it was keen-witted enough to sue the friendship of the northern Communes and to support them against the common enemy. On Hadrian’s decease in 1150 a Pope not less strong-willed and ambitious had been elected by the clerical party. But great tumults had ensued, and Alexander III was so successfully opposed by the Antipope Victor, elected by Roman imperialists, that he had to flee to France, and to console himself by futile excommunication of both the Antipope and the Emperor. Thus for the present the cause of the Communes was not aided by the papal alliance, and when Frederick in 1161, irritated by the reviving impudence of Milan, laid siege to that city no succour arrived. After a long and heroic resistance it was taken (1162), and, as was to be expected, it was almost totally destroyed and depopulated (57)--a fated that it had suffered more than once in days long past.

But freedom’s banner streams like the thunder-storm against the wind. Driven to despair, the North Italian cities, led by the now powerful and independent Venice, began to combine, and when towards the end of 1163 Frederick for the third time made a descent upon Italy he found it advisable to beat a retreat. Three years later he returned with a larger army; but meanwhile the League, (58) newly constituted by Venice, Verona, Padua, and Vicenza, had extended itself through

INSERT FIG 32

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Lombardy and was being joined even by cities, such as Cremona, that hitherto had been imperialistic. Moreover, at Rome the imperial cause was waning. Victor, Frederick’s Antipope, had died, and although the imperial faction had forthwith elected another (Paschal), the fugitive Pope Alexander III had returned from France and had expelled the rival pontiff.

Frederick thought it best to strike first at Rome. He therefore left the northern cities unmolested, and having reduced Ancona (a strategical position necessary to cover his advance) he pushed southwards, and in the height of an exceedingly hot and pestilential summer (1167) he entered the Leonine quarter. But the Romans showed fight, and the Germans were unable to force their way across the Tiber into the city or even to capture S. Angelo. It was as much as they could do to occupy St. Peter’s with troops while Antipope Paschal went through the ceremony of crowning Frederick’s consort as Empress. And they had been hardly a fortnight in Rome when a virulent malarial epidemic, or perhaps the plague, broke out, and Frederick hastily led his army northwards. Many of his retinue, nobles and generals and prelates, fell victims to the pestilence, and about 2000 of his fighting men; nor did the mortality cease for some time after Germany was reached. (59)

Pavia was almost the only large Lombard town that had not joined the League. It proved a constant annoyance to Milan, which had been rebuilt and refortified in an incredibly short time by the enthusiasm of the allies (60). In order to check Pavia also from the south the town of Alessandria was now built, and in a short time could furnish 15,000 fighters. Its name signalized the friendship of Pope Alexander, but it received from its enemies the contemptuous sobriquet of the ‘city of straw’--in allusion to its supposed frailty or to its hastily

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erected straw-roofed houses. Frail it certainly proved itself not to be, for when, after a pause of six years, Frederick made his fifth descent on Italy and attempted to capture this city of straw he was compelled to withdraw his troops after five months of ineffectual siege, and shortly afterwards he was totally defeated by the allies at Legnano, some twelve miles north-east of Milan. So overwhelming was the catastrophe that Frederick himself disappeared in the general rout, and is said to have reached Pavia with great difficulty three days after the battle.

This disaster made Frederick realize the impotence of fury and inhumanity in a contest with those who were ready to die for liberty. His nature, too, was not so wholly cruel and ignoble that he could not feel some admiration for heroism. He agreed on the proposal of Doge Ziani to meet at Venice not only Pope Alexander and envoys from William the Good of Sicily, but even delegates from the allied cities. This was the first time that republican envoys had ever met a Pope or an Emperor on equal terms. It was therefore an event that promised great things. Perhaps it was the most momentous crisis that ever occurred in Italian history. Alas that so fair a promise should have been frustrated by those intestine feuds which caused Italy to ‘cast away the pearl of great price, and sacrifice even the recollections of that liberty which had stalked as a majestic spirit among the ruins of Milan.’ (61)

The meeting of Frederick Barbarossa and Pope Alexander at Venice in the summer of 1777 has been described so often (sometimes without any reference to Legnano and the delegates of the Lombard republics !) that it may here be passed over lightly. In the Atrio of St. Mark’s three porphyry slabs in the pavement are believed to commemorate the splendid and dramatic function; but it doubtless took place as described by an eye-witness, (62) outside or under the great portal. The results of the Venetian conference were the deposition of Calixtus (the third of Frederick’s Antipopes), a peace of fifteen

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years with William of Sicily, and a truce of six years with the Lombard republics. Moreover an agreement, of no very satisfactory and permanent nature, was patched up in regard to the vexed question of the Matilda Legacy. Pope Alexander re-entered Rome in triumph, greeted by the homage and enthusiasm of all parties. (63) Frederick returned to Germany and for the next seven years enjoyed peace and the loyal reverence of his northern subjects, while by a generous compact with the Lombard cities, which he signed at Constanz in 1183 and by which he granted them many privileges, he so won their affection that Alessandria even offered to change its name to Caesarea ! Striking evidence of his prosperity too is afforded by the descriptions that chroniclers have given of a magnificent festivity held in 1184 at Mainz--a veritable Field of Cloth of Gold. His last visit to Italy was a character very different from his former expeditions. Without an army he journeyed from city to city, welcomed and honoured everywhere. For Milan he showed special affection, and he undertook to rebuild heroic little Crema. Adsit omen !

In 1186 there was celebrated at Milan a very momentous wedding. William II, the King of Sicily, was childless, so he agreed that his elderly aunt and heiress Constance (Costanza), daughter of the late King Roger, should marry Frederick’s son Henry, a young man of twenty-one. Thus the long enmity of the Normans and Germans was ended, and the Hohenstaufen monarchs added Sicily and South Italy to their Empire.

In 1187 Jerusalem was recaptured by the Turks, and in 1189 Frederick, now sixty-eight years of age, joined Richard of England (64) and Philippe Auguste of France in the third Crusade. Before reaching the Holy Land he was drowned in attempting to swim across the river Salef, not far from the Cydnus, in which Alexander the Great nearly lost his life. For

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centuries the belief prevailed in Germany that the great Kaiser had never really died, but that he was sleeping beneath his castle on the Kyffh�user mount and would some day awake and restore the Empire--a tradition that R�ckert has versified in a fine ballad. The character of Frederick as displayed in what we know of his life, is difficult for us to appraise, and perhaps the verdict of Dante, which was probably the verdict of his age, only increases our difficulty; for, though in his Inferno he assigns the second Frederick the fiery sepulchre of a heretic, he speaks of il buon Barbarossa. But his expression, it should be added, some commentators regard as ironical.

As a framework, reigns and dynasties are often useful, and the history of medieval Italy has so little inner consistency that it needs the framework afforded by the reigns and dynasties of its invaders and its alien, especially its German, masters. But in some cases the periods into which German history falls do not correspond with those which are convenient in the case of Italy. The Hohenstaufen dynasty continued to rule in Italy for more than half a century, but such events as the recognition of the republics by the treaty of Constanz and the merging of the Norman kingship in that of the German monarchs by the marriage of Constance with Henry VI initiated a new period in Italian history and render it advisable to make a break here, at the death of Barbarossa in 1190.

14 He had risen early to attend Mass at a church near to his palace--doubtless the little church of SS. Siro e Libera, still existing near the remains of Theoderic’s palace.

15 The Papacy, regarded as a temporal power possessing often an enormous advantage in the recognition of its spiritual pretensions, cannot, of course, be ignored even by those who find it impossible to accept transmission of spiritual prerogatives in the face of such facts as the most atrocious crimes and the most shameful vice--the throne of Christ’s vicar seized on by murderers--the pazza bestialit� (as Villari calls it) of many of the Popes who made the Lateran a den of assassins and fornicators--a state of things that lasted intermittently for centuries and was such that no wonder all heaven blushed fiery red at St. Peter’s passionate invective, reported by Dante.

16 Ermengard is said to have fascinated and befooled Rudolf himself, who, according to Gregorovius, was ‘transformed into a whining adorer, while the new Circe with a contemptuous laugh took the Lombard crown from his head and gave it over to her stepbrother.’

17 Stephen VI and John X are known to have been strangled. Leo V and Christopher were deposed and probably murdered. The fates of Anastasius III and Lando were, says Gregorovius, ‘probably tragic and terrible’; nor can we feel certain that it was not so with Theodorus II, Boniface VI, Benedict IV, Leo VI, Stephen VII, and with the bastard of Pope Sergius and Marozia, John XI, who--a mere youth--reigned only about four years. Of the other half-dozen nonentities who were made Popes by Alberich, certainly Stephen VIII came to a tragic and shameful end, and not much later Alberich’s son, Pope John XII, was found under disgraceful circumstances in company with a married woman, and was so cudgelled that he soon after died (p. 338).

18 Of unknown parentage. Some have believed that, like Ermengard, she was related to the wild strain of Waldrada.

19 He purposely spilt a cup of wine, or water, over the king.

20 We hear no more of her, nor of any demand by Hugo for her release.

21 The Tribunal often held its sittings in the Aula ad lupam in the Lateran, so called from the Capitoline She-wolf, which in this age was preserved there.

22 Most of the Benedictine monasteries had not become ’dens of vice,’ and to copy out the old Rule was mere ‘waste of paper,’ as St. Benedict said to Dante when they met in Paradise. The Cluny reformers did something, but no general reform took place till the founding of the Camaldoli Order of White Benedictines by Romuald about 1010. It was the immense wealth and the territorial authority of these princely abbots that Alberich wished to reform quite as much as their morals.

23 A noble named Attus (Azzo) seems to have helped her to escape. He was owner of Canossa Castle, of later fame.

24 See especially in Count Balzani’s Cronache italiane the account given by Luidprand, Bishop of Cremona, who was present and acted as Otto’s interpreter at the Council at which Pope John was deposed. Luidprand (c. 920-70) is the great authority for this epoch. He wrote a Historia Ottonis besides other works on the period 888-962. For the dark and perplexing period of the Carolingians and the ‘Italian’ monarchs we have very little but the Liber Pontificalis and untrustworthy monastic chroniclers.

25 Then near the Lateran, now on the capitol. Called in the Middle Ages the ‘horse of Constantine’ (see p. 341).

26 He remained there 120 days and was very disdainfully treated, if we may believe all the he says in his Account of the Embassy to Constantinople. Phocas was especially indignant because the Pope had addressed him as Imperator Graecorum.

27 Some of these interminable disorders are briefly noted in the List of Popes, p. 379. To recount them here at all fully is impossible.

28 Except, it is said, a Slavonian, who did not betray him.

29 Otto the Great is regarded, still more than his father Henry, as the establisher of the German Empire and of all the is essentially deutsch, including literature. The Germans were first in his reign officially called Deutsche, i.e. ‘the [elect] people.’ See p. 159 n. Southern culture was at this time being rapidly introduced into Germany. Even school-girls, we are told, were taught to read Virgil and Terence.

30 He was killed at Gnesen, which is now in Prussia. His tomb is in the cathedral, founded about 1000.

31 St. Bartholomew is said to have voyaged in his marble sarcophagus from India to the Lipari Islands, where Saracens cast forth his body: but it found its way safely to Benevento, whence Otto tried to bring it to Rome. The Beneventans however deceived him and gave him the relics of St. Paulinus instead. Nevertheless the Romans insist on calling the church on the Isola Tiberina after St. Bartholomew and assert that his relics are there. This church was built, on the site of the ancient temple of Aesculapius, by Otto III, and at first was dedicated to St. Adalbert.

32 This family had the disgrace of producing that most iniquitous, perhaps, of all the Popes, Benedict IX.

33 Such as Venice, Florence, Pisa, Genoa, etc. The last two were powerful at sea and had successfully combated the Saracens of Sardinia and Spain. Milan and Pavia were much dominated by the Germans and had a long struggle for independence. In the south the republican spirit was extinguished by the Byzantines, Saracens, and Normans.

34 Serious tumults, proving the same feeling and punished in the same barbarous fashion, took place at almost every future coronation of a German Roman Emperor.

35 More about the Normans will be found in ch. ii of this Part.