LXIX. 1 of the arts, and insensible of the benefits of legal CHAP. government. It was proposed by Arnold to revive and discriminate the equestrian order; but what could be the motive or measure of such distinction? The pecuniary qualification of the knights must have been reduced to the poverty of the times; those times no longer required their civil functions of judges and farmers of the revenue; and their primitive duty, their military service on horseback, was more nobly supplied by feudal tenures and the spirit of chivalry. The jurisprudence of the republic was useless and unknown; the nations and families of Italy, who lived under the Roman and barbaric laws, were insensibly mingled in a common mass; and some faint tradition, some imperfect fragments, preserved the memory of the Code and Pandects of Jus tinian. With their liberty, the Romans might doubtless have restored the appellation and office of consuls, had they not disdained a title so promiscuously adopted in the Italian cities, that it has finally settled on the humble station of the agents of commerce in a foreign land. But the rights of the tribunes, the formidable word that arrested the public counsels, suppose, or must produce, a legitimate democracy. The old patricians were the subjects, the modern barons the tyrants, of the state; nor would the enemies of peace and order, who insulted the vicar of Christ, have long reT 4 spected In ancient Rome, the equestrian order was not ranked with the senate and people as a third branch of the republic till the consulship of Cicero, who assumes the merit of the establishment, (Plin. Hist. Natur. xxxiii. 3. Beaufort, Republique Romaine, tom. i. p. 144-155.). CHA P. spected the unarmed sanctity of a plebeian magi LXIX. The Ca. pitol. strate *. steps In the revolution of the twelfth century, which gave a new existence and æra to Rome, we may observe the real and important events that marked or confirmed her political independence. I. The Capitoline hill, one of her seven eminences t, is about four hundred yards in length, and two hundred in breadth. A flight of an hundred led to the summit of the Tarpeian rock; and far steeper was the ascent before the declivities had been smoothed, and the precipices filled by the ruins of fallen edifices. From the earliest ages, the Capitol had been used as a temple in peace, a fortress in war. After the loss of the city, it maintained a siege against the victorious. Gauls; and the sanctuary of empire was occupied, assaulted, and burnt, in the civil wars of Vitellius and Vespasian 1. The temples of Ju piter *The republican plan of Arnold of Brescia is thus state d by Gunther: Quin etiam titulos urbis renovare vetustos ; After many disputes among the antiquaries of Rome, it seems determined, that the summit of the Capitoline hill next the river is strictly the Mons Tarpeius, the Arx; and that on the other summit, the church and convent of Araceli, the barefoot friars of St Francis occupy the temple of Jupiter, (Nardini, Roma Antica, 1. v. c. 11-16.). Tacit. Hist. iii. 69. 70. LXIX. piter and his kindred deities had crumbled into CHAP. dust; their place was supplied by monasteries and houses; and the solid walls, the long and shelving porticoes, were decayed or ruined by the lapse of time. It was the first act of the Romans, an act of freedom, to restore the strength, though not the beauty, of the Capitol; to fortify the seat of their arms and counsels; and as often as they ascended the hill, the coldest minds must have glowed with the remembrance of their ancestors. II. The first The coin. Cæsars had been invested with the exclusive coinage of the gold and silver; to the senate they abandoned the baser metal of bronze or copper *; the emblems and legends were inscribed on a more ample field by the genius of flattery; and the prince was relieved from the care of celebrating his own virtues. The successors of Dioclesian despised even the flattery of the senate; their royal officers at Rome, and in the provinces, assumed the sole direction of the mint; and the same prerogative was inherited by the Gothic kings of Italy, and the long series of the Greek, the French, and the German dynasties. After an abdication of eight hundred years, the Roman senate asserted this honourable and lucrative privilege; which was tacitly renounced by the Popes, from Paschal the Second to the establishment of their residence beyond the Alps. Some * This partition of the nobler and baser metals between the Emperor and senate, must, however, be adopted, not as a positive fact, but as the probable opinion of the best antiquaries, (see the Science des Medailles of the Pere Joubert, tom. ii. p. 2c8-211. in the improved and scarce edition of the Baron de la Bastie). CHAP. Some of these republican coins of the twelfth and LAIX. thirteenth centuries are shewn in the cabinets of the The præ fect of the city. curious. On one of these, a gold medal, Christ is depictured, holding in his left hand a book with this inscription, "THE VOW OF THE ROMAN SE66 NATE AND PEOPLE: ROME, THE CAPITAL OF "THE WORLD;" on the reverse, St Peter delivering a banner to a kneeling senator in his cap and gown, with the name and arms of his family impressed on a shield *. With the empire, the præfect of the city had declined to a municipal officer; yet he still exercised in the last appeal the civil and criminal jurisdiction; and a drawn sword, which he received from the successors of Otho, was the mode of his investiture, and the emblem of his functions t. The dignity was confined to the noble families of Rome; the choice of the people was ratified by the Pope; but a triple oath of fidelity must have often embarrassed the præfect in the conflict of adverse In his 16th dissertation on the Antiquities of Italy, (tom. ii. p. 559-569.), Muratori exhibits a series of the senatorian coins, which bore the obscure names of Affortiati, Infortiati, Provisini, Paparini. During this period, all the Popes, without excepting Boniface VIII. abstained from the right of coining, which was resumed by his successor Benedict XI. and regular. ly exercised in the court of Avignon. A German historian, Gerard of Reicherspeg, (in Baluz. Miscell. tom. v. p. 64. apud Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, tom. iii. p. 265.), thus describes the constitution of Rome in the 11th century: Grandiora urbis et orbis negotia spectant ad Romanum pontificem itemque ad Romanum Imperatorem; sive illius vicarium urbis præfectum, qui de sua dignitate respicit utrumque, videlicet dominum papam cui facit hominum, et dominum imperatorum a quo accipit suæ potestatis insigne, scilicet gladium exertum. 1 LXIX. 11.98 1216. adverse duties *. A servant, in whom they possess- CHA P. ed but a third share, was dismissed by the independent Romans; in his place they elected a patrician; but this title, which Charlemagne had not disdained, was too lofty for a citizen or a subject ; and, after the first fervour of rebellion, they consented without reluctance to the restoration of the præfect. About fifty years after this event, Inno- A. D. cent the Third, the most ambitious, or at least the most fortunate of the pontiffs, delivered the Romans and himself from this badge of foreign dominion; he invested the præfect with a banner instead of a sword, and absolved him from all dependence of oaths or service to the German Emperors t. In his place an ecclesiastic, a present or future cardinal, was named by the Pope to the civil government of Rome; but his jurisdiction has been reduced to a narrow compass; and in the days of freedom, the right or exercise was derived from the senate and people. IV. After the revival of Number the senate, the conscript fathers (if I may use of the the expression) were invested with the legislative fenate. and executive power; but their views seldom reached The words of a contemporary writer (Pandulph. Pisan. in Vit. Paschal II. p. 357, 358.) describe the election and oath of the præfect in 1118, inconsultis patribus . . . . loca præfectoria..... laudes præfectoriæ..... commitorium applau sum.... juraturum populo in ambonem sublevant. . . . confirmari eum in urbe præfectum petunt. + Urbis præfectum ad ligiam fidelitatem recepit, et per mantum quod illi donavit de præfectura eum publice investivit, qui usque ad id tempus juramento fidelitatis imperatori fuit obligatus, et ab eo præfecturæ tenuit honorem, (Gesta Innocent III. in Muratori, tom. iii. p. i. p. 487.). See Otho Frising. Chron. vii. 31. de Gest. Frederic I. 1. i. c. 27. and choice |