The Age of Reason by D. J. Medley (best manga ereader .txt) 📕

persuasion was needed. The Greeks expressed a readiness to accept the primacy of Rome, the doctrine that the Holy Ghost proceeded from both Father and Son (whereas they had maintained His procession from the Father alone), and all the customs of the Western Church. It seemed as if at length a crusade were really possible. The chief sovereigns of Europe had taken the cross, and Gregory had even persuaded Charles of Sicily and the Greek Emperor to sign a truce.

[Sidenote: Nicholas III (1277-80).]

But it was not to be. Gregory's death (January 10, 1276) undid all his work. Charles of Sicily alone rejoiced at the vacancy, and made desperate efforts to secure the nomination to the Papacy again. But two nominees died in quick succession; and when on the death of John XXI after a similarly short reign, Charles again interfered, he was met by the election of Nicholas III of the family of Orsini, who returned to Rome and spent the three years of his pontificate in neutralising Charles' power. For this purpose he used the new King of the Romans. Charles was forced to resign the vicariate of Tuscany, which was made over to Rudolf. Charles also resigned the senatorship of Rome which he had held for ten years. To this Nicholas got himself elected, and issued a decree by which he hoped to make it impossible for any foreign prince to be elected, or for anyone to hold the post for more than a year without the papal favour.

[Sidenote: Revival of the Empire.]

But Nicholas was only able to give a German prince once more a footing in Italy because Rudolf had been effectually barred from reviving the Hohenstaufen claims. Already at the Council of Lyons the envoys of Rudolf had appeared and in his name had taken the oaths previously exacted from Otto IV and Frederick II. Rudolf had subsequently met Pope Gregory at Lausanne in 1275, and had confirmed the act of his representatives. Thus Gregory obtained from a crowned German King an acknowledgment of all the claims advanced by the Papacy since the days of Charles the Great. Rudolf was too busy ever to visit Rome; but in negotiations with regard to his coronation as Emperor, Nicholas III exacted the confirmation of all that was promised to Gregory, and this included especially the lands of the old Exarchate and the district of Pentapolis, which had never yet been actually in the hands of papal officers.

[Sidenote: Martin IV (1281-5).]

Dante has banned the memory of Nicholas as the simoniacal Pope. He certainly used his enormous patronage to enrich his own family. But his death (August, 1280) nearly proved fatal to the freedom of Europe; for Charles at length obtained his own nominee to the Papacy in the person of a Frenchman, Martin IV, who proceeded to hand over to the King for life the Roman senatorship conferred upon the Pope. All the work of the preceding Popes was undone. The temporary union of the Churches was dissolved by the excommunication of the Greek Emperor on the pretext that he had not carried out his promises; and Charles, who had obtained a footing in the Greek peninsula and made a league with Venice, prepared to start on his expedition against Constantinople. There seemed every prospect of his success.

[Sidenote: Sicilian Vespers]

But Charles' brutality had been imitated by his French officials; and the rising known as the "Sicilian Vespers" in March, 1282, cleared the French out of Sicily and finally overthrew all Charles' plans. The fleet prepared for Constantinople had to be turned against the rebel islanders. The Pope, thinking to play the game of his royal master, refused to mediate; the Sicilians thereupon declared that from St. Peter they would turn for aid to another Peter, and offered the crown to Peter, King of Aragon, the husband of Manfred's daughter, Constance, who for some years had welcomed Sicilian refugees at his court and had been ready for the summons. The Pope deprived Peter of his hereditary dominions and bestowed them on Charles' great nephew Charles of Valois, a son of Philip III of France; but the Aragonese fleet under Roger di Loria defeated Charles' fleet and captured his son and heir Charles the Lame. On January 7, 1285, Charles himself died, and was followed to the grave very shortly by Pope Martin IV. The same year saw also the death of Philip III of France and of Peter of Aragon. Pope Honorius IV followed the policy of his predecessor, and to him succeeded Nicholas IV. It was during his pontificate that the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, the result of the First Crusade, was finally wiped out by the capture of Acre (1291), and the little stir made by this event affords a measure of the decay of the crusading spirit.

[Sidenote: Celestine V (1294).]

On the death of Nicholas the division among the Cardinals reflecting the jealousies of the Roman families of Orsini and Colonna, caused a vacancy in the papal office for more than two years. Then by a sudden whim, which in the event of a successful result would have been called an inspiration, the name of a hermit, Peter, whose austerities in his cell on Monte Murrone in the Abruzzi had won him great reverence, was suggested apparently in all sincerity to the wearied and perplexed Cardinals. He was elected and took the title of Celestine V. In accordance with the desire of Charles II of Naples, he took up his abode at Naples. But he was utterly unfit for his high office, and after a pontificate of less than four months (August to December, 1294) he resigned, thus perpetrating that "great refusal" which won Dante's immortal phrase of scorn. How far his act was due to the machinations of Cardinal Gaetani is uncertain. At any rate Gaetani had evidently obtained Charles' sanction beforehand to his own elevation, which took place ten days later. But the new Pope did not intend that anyone should be his master. For the moment he and Charles needed each other, and it was agreed between them that Sicily should be recovered for Charles, while Celestine should be given into the keeping of his successor lest he should become a centre for disaffection.

[Sidenote: Boniface VIII (1294-1303).]

Boniface VIII—such was the name of the new Pope—returned to Rome escorted by Charles II and his son, Charles Martel of Hungary; and his coronation surpassed that of all previous Popes in magnificence. The late Pope was soon secured and placed in a tower on the top of a mountain, where he died in 1296. It was not so easy for Boniface to fulfil his part of the compact with regard to Sicily. James, the son of Peter of Aragon, agreed to surrender Sicily on the understanding that the new Pope would withdraw the award of Aragon made by Martin IV to a French prince, and confirm it him. But the Sicilians refused to return to their French ruler and found a champion in James' younger brother Frederick, who was their Governor. He was crowned King of Sicily at Palermo in 1296. Charles II was too feeble to make any real headway against Frederick, and even the title of Standard-bearer of the Church conferred by the Pope on James of Aragon, did not keep Frederick's brother permanently on the papal side. In 1301 Boniface fell back upon the French prince Charles of Valois, to whom Pope Martin had given Aragon, and sent for him to attack "the new Manfred" in Sicily. Charles having first failed in an attempt to appease the Florentine factions, passed on to the south, and here Frederick ultimately forced him to peace and a recognition of his title as King of Sicily (1302). At first Boniface would not ratify a peace from which all reference to Pope or Church had been omitted; but in 1303 circumstances caused him to accept it, though he exacted as a condition that Frederick should acknowledge himself a papal vassal. Frederick, however, never paid any tribute.

[Sidenote: Quarrel with Colonnas.]

Boniface held views of the papal power of the most exalted kind. It was in accordance with these that he once more made Rome the headquarters of the papacy. But he soon found himself involved in a quarrel which, purely local in origin, assumed an European importance. The family of Colonna by favour of Pope Nicholas IV had become one of the most powerful in Rome and the neighbourhood. The centre of the family property was the city of Palestrina. Cardinal Jacopo Colonna, who as the eldest brother administered it, did not distribute it fairly to his brothers, but rather favoured his nephews, the sons of his dead brother John who had been Senator of Rome. One of these was the Cardinal Peter. Uncle and nephew were the most influential members of the Roman Curia, and as Roman nobles they resented Boniface's design of humbling the Roman aristocracy. They refused the papal admonitions to deal justly with the other members of the family; they withdrew from the papal Court, and having already turned from Ghibelline to Guelf, they once more became Ghibelline and made an alliance with Frederick of Sicily. They published a manifesto in which they refused to recognise Boniface on the ground that Pope Celestine's abdication had been unlawful. But Celestine was dead and the Colonnas had voted for his successor. Boniface deposed the Cardinals and excommunicated them, even declaring a crusade against them! The struggle centred round Palestrina, and it is said that the Pope fetched from a Franciscan cloister a once famous Ghibelline general, Guy of Montefeltro, by whose advice he decoyed the Colonnas out of their fortress by promises which he did not intend to keep. Palestrina was levelled to the ground and the Colonnas fled (1298), finding refuge among the enemies of Boniface and preparing the way for the final catastrophe.

[Sidenote: Papal Jubilee.]

Boniface, however, had become his own master at home to an extent attained by none of his predecessors since Innocent III. His reign reached what may be termed its high-water mark in the Papal Jubilee of 1300. The cessation of the Crusades had largely increased the crowds of pilgrims to Rome, until in 1299 there awoke an expectation of special spiritual privileges in connection with the end of the century. Indulgences had been so freely scattered in attempts to promote the Crusades that a craving for them had been created. Boniface recognised the importance of exploiting the popular feeling, and after a mock enquiry he issued a bull promising generous indulgences to all who should visit the Churches of SS. Peter and Paul during the year for so many successive days, and directing that a similar pilgrimage should be proclaimed every hundredth year. Pilgrims flocked to Rome; 30,000 are reckoned to have entered and left daily, while 200,000 were in Rome at any given moment. The amount of the offerings must have been enormous, and the Ghibellines naturally declared that the Jubilee had its origin in the papal need for money. But most of the pilgrims were poor; and even if the size of the crowds were a just measure of the continued hold of the Roman Church upon the people of Western Europe, the absence of all the monarchs except Charles Martel, the claimant of Hungary, was significant. Indeed, Boniface had already experienced a foretaste of the independent attitude of the secular princes, which eventually proved fatal to him. Rudolf of Hapsburg died in 1291, and the German princes, rejecting the claims of his son Albert, elected Adolf of Nassau as their King. But Adolf proved less submissive than his electors had hoped to find him. He was deposed and fell in battle, and Albert was chosen and crowned without any reference to the Pope—the first occasion on which the German princes had acted without papal authority. Boniface had already barred Albert's claims. He now refused to recognise him, declaring that the Empire owed all its honour and dignity to the papal favour. Nevertheless, in 1303 circumstances forced him to accept Albert, especially since Albert was willing in return to confirm all that his father Rudolf had granted to the Papacy.

[Sidenote: First quarrel with France and England.]

But this quarrel with Germany sinks into insignificance before the great contest of Boniface with France, with which his English dispute was also closely connected. The Hohenstaufen had fallen before the Papacy because their German kingdom and the "German" Empire rested on no solid foundation. But in his attempts to coerce France and England into obedience the Pope found himself face to face with two strong national monarchies. Boniface failed to grasp the position. Edward I of England and Philip IV of France were engaged in war. Each resorted to every available method of raising money for the conduct of the war, and among other ways laid heavy taxes on the clergy. Boniface having failed to make the Kings submit their quarrels to his judgment, issued a