LXX.

the duty of residence; the civil and ecclesiastical CHAP. privilege of the clergy and people of Rome. The reigning pontiff well deserved the appellation of Clement; the strange vicissitudes and magnanimous spirit of the captive excited his pity and esteem; and Petrarch believes, that he respected in the hero the name and sacred character of a poet *. Rienzi was indulged with an easy confinement and the use of books; and in the assiduous study of Livy and the Bible, he sought the cause and the consolation of his misfortunes.

eator

of Rome, A. D. 1354.

}

The succeeding pontificate of Innocent the Sixth Rienzi, opened a new prospect of his deliverance and restoration; and the court of Avignon was persuaded, that the successful rebel could alone appease and reform the anarchy of the metropolis. After a solemn profession of fidelity, the Roman Tribune was sent into Italy, with the title of Senator; but the death of Baroncelli appeared to supersede the use of his mission; and the legate, Cardinal Albernoz †, a consummate statesman, allowed him, with reluctance, and without aid, to undertake the perilous experiment. His first reception was equal to his wishes; the day of his entrance was a public festival, and his eloquence and authority revived

A a 4

*The astonishment, the envy almost, of Petrarch, is a proof, if not of the truth of this incredible fact, at least of his own veracity. The Abbé de Sade (Memoires, tom. iii. p. 242.) quotes the 7h epistle of the 13th book of Petrarch, but it is of the royal MS. which he consulted, and not of the ordinary Basil edition, (p. 920.).

Ægidius, or Giles Albornoz, a noble Spaniard, Archbishop of Toledo, and cardinal-legate in Italy, (A. D. 1353— 1367), restored, by his arms and counsels, the temporal dominion of the Popes. His life has been separately written by Sepulveda; but Dryden could not reasonably suppose, that his name, or that of Wolsey, had reached the ears of the Mufti Don Seb: stian.

LXX.

CHAP. vived the laws of the good estate. But this momentary sunshine was soon clouded by his own vices and those of the people; in the Capitol, he might often regret the prison of Avignon; and after a second administration of four months, Rienzi was massacred in a tumult which had been fomented by the Roman barons. In the society of the Germans and Bohemians, he is said to have contracted the habits of intemperance and cruelty ;adversity had chilled his enthusiasm, without for tifying his reason or virtue; and that youthful hope, that lively assurance, which is the pledge of success, was now succeeded by the cold impotence of distrust and despair. The Tribune had reigned with absolute dominion, by the choice, and in the hearts of the Romans; the senator was the servile minister of a foreign court; and while he was suspected by the people, he was abandoned by the prince. The legate Albornoz, who seemed desirous of his ruin, inflexibly refused all supplies of men and money; a faithful subject could no longer presume to touch the revenues of the apostolical chamber; and the first idea of a tax was the signal of clamour and sedition. Even his justice was tainted with the guilt or reproach of selfish cruelty; the most virtuous citizen of Rome was sacrificed to his jealousy; and in the execution of a public robber, from whose purse he had been assisted, the magistrate too much forgot, or too much remembered, the obligations of the debtor *. A

* From Matteo Villani, and Fortifiocca, the P. du Cerceau (P. 344-394.) has extracted the life and death of the Chevalier Montreal, the life of a robber, and the death of an hero.

At

A civil war exhausted his treasures, and the pa- CHAP. LXX, tience of the city; the Colonna maintained their hostile station at Palestrina; and his mercenaries soon despised a leader, whose ignorance and fear were envious of all subordinate merit. In the death, as in the life of Rienzi, the hero and the coward were strangely mingled. When the Capitol was invested by a furious multitude, when he was basely deserted by his civil and military servant, the intrépid senator, waving the banner of liberty, presented himself on the balcony, addressed his eloquence to the various passions of the Romans, and laboured to persuade them, that in the same cause himself and the republic must either stand or fall. His oration was interrupted by a volley of imprecations and stones; and after an arrow had transpierced his head, he sunk into abject despair, and fled weeping to the inner chambers, from whence he was let down by a sheet before the windows of the prison. Destitute of aid or hope, he was besieged till the evening; the doors of the Capitol were destroyed with axes and fire; and while the senator attempted to escape in a plebeian habit, he was discovered and dragged to the platform of the palace, the fatal scene of his judgements and executions. A whole hour, without voice or motion, he stood amidst the multitude, half naked and half dead; their rage was hushed into curiosity and wonder; the last feelings of reverence and compassion yet struggled in his favour; and they might

At the head of a free company, the first that desolated Italy, he became rich and formidable; he had money in all the banks, 60,000 ducats in Padua alone.

CHAP. might have prevailed, if a bold assassin had not LXX. plunged a dagger in his breast. He fell senseless His death, with the first stroke; the impotent revenge of his

A. D.

1354,

Sept. s.

Petrarch

invites and

upbraids

the Em.

peror Charles IV.

A. D. 1355,

May.

enemies inflicted a thousand wounds; and the senator's body was abandoned to the dogs, to the Jews, and to the flames. Posterity will compare the virtues and the failings of this extraordinary man; but in a long period of anarchy and servi tude, the name of Rienzi has often been celebrated as the deliverer of his country, and the last of the Roman patriots".

The first and most generous wish of Petrarch was the restoration of a free republic; but after the exile and death of his plebeian hero, he turned his eyes from the Tribune to the King of the Romans. The Capitol was yet stained with the blood of Rienzi, when Charles the Fourth descended January from the Alps to obtain the Italian and Imperial crowns. In his passage through Milan he received the visit, and repaid the flattery of the poet-laureat; accepted a medal of Augustus; and promised, without a smile, to imitate the founder of the Roman monarchy. A false application of the names and maxims of antiquity was the source of the hopes and disappointments of Petrarch; yet he could not overlook the difference of times and characters; the immeasurable distance between the first Cæsars and a Bohemian prince, who by the favour of the clergy had been elected the titular head of the German aristocracy. Instead of restoring to Rome her glory

The exile, second government, and death of Rienzi, are minutely related by the anonymous Roman, who appears neither his friend nor his enemy, (1. iii. c. 12-25.). Petrarch, who loved the Tribune, was indifferent to the fate of the senator.

LXX.

the Popes

of Avig

on to fix

their resi

dence at

Rome.

glory and her provinces, he had bound himself, by CHAP. a secret treaty with the Pope, to evacuate the city on the day of his coronation; and his shameful retreat was pursued by the reproaches of the patriot bard *. After the loss of liberty and empire, his third and Hesolicits more humble wish, was to reconcile the shepherd with his flock; to recal the Roman bishop to his ancient and peculiar diocese. In the fervour of youth, with the authority of age, Petrarch addressed his exhortations to five successive Popes, and his eloquence was always inspired by the enthusiasm. of sentiment and the freedom of language t. The son of a citizen of Florence invariably preferred the country of his birth to that of his education; and Italy, in his eyes, was the queen and garden of the world. Amidst her domestic factions, she was doubtless superior to France both in art and science, in wealth and politeness; but the difference could scarcely support the epithet of barbarous, which he promiscuously bestows on the countries beyond the Alps. Avignon, the mystic Babylon, the sink of vice and corruption, was the object of his hatred

and

The hopes and the disappointment of Petrarch are agreeably described in his own words by the French biographer, (Memoires, tom. iii. p. 375-413.); but the deep, though secret wound, was the coronation of Zanubi, the poet-laureat, by Charles IV.

See, in his accurate and amusing bicgrapher, the applica. tion of Petrarch and Rome to Benedict Xil. in the year 1334 (Memoires, tom. i. p. 261–265.), to Clement VI. in 1342 (tom. ii. p. 45-47.), and to Urban V. in 1366, (tom. iii. p. 677-691.); his praise (p. 711-715.), and excuse (p. 771.) of the last of these pontiffs. His angry controversy on the respective merits of France and Italy may be found, (Opp. F. 1068-1085.).