he promised to submit to the instructions to the allegory, which fell, destroyed, and of the Pontiff, and cancelled the superior soiled by a rabble of boys, whilst Rienzi, authority he had awarded to the Roman beholding his powerlessness, disappeared people. This crest-fallen, unmanly pro- from Rome. But in the interval between fession of faith of the Tribune was re- his fall and this last attempt Rienzi had ceived with loud murmurs by both his gone to Civita Vecchia, where his nephew partisans and his enemies. In the mean- commanded the fort, leaving his wife, time the Legate was forming a secret sons, and relations in Rome, where, plot for the ruin of the Tribune, with the through the generosity of old Stephen Colonnas, the Savelli, and a Condottiere, Colonna, they lived secure and tranquil. Pepino, Count of Minarbino, who was When the nephew was obliged to surrencommissioned by the King of Hungary der the fort, Rienzi, skillfully disguised, to collect soldiers to march against the returned to Rome, to the Castle of St. Queen of Naples. Rienzi, hoping for Angelo, where, it appears by the pubsome assistance from that king, did not lished documents, that two of the Orsini anticipate the hostility of Pepino, although were plotting to have him taken in order he had shortly before banished him from to give him up to the Legate, or have Rome for having committed some act of him hanged or murdered. Their death plunder at Terracina. On the fifteenth alone saved him. It is well established of December, a bill was placarded at the that he left Rome and fled in the direcgate of the castle of St. Angelo, exciting tion of Naples, towards the end of Januthe people to free themselves from the ex- ary, 1348. communicated Tribune. Rienzi ordered it to be torn down, and summoned its author to his Tribunal. But in the evening of that day the cries of "Death to the Tribune" were heard clamored in several parts of the city. Early the next morning the belfry of the Capitol called the people to arms. No one answered it. Every party sought its safety in its district.

Rienzi sallied out, followed by a few remaining soldiers; the people at last, gradually, slowly, collected. He tried once more the magic power of his eloquence, but his faith in himself was gone; he spoke with a feminine nervousness, of all he had done, of the injustice and ingratitude he was subjected to. He wept abundantly; many wept with him, and when he begged to be released from the authority that had been intrusted to him seven months before, not one dissenting voice was heard. Probably, as a last mark of respect, a silent crowd accompanied him and his wife, who was concealed under a monkish robe and hood, to the Castle of Angelo. All the gates of the city were immediately thrown open. The barons returned; the Legate installed himself at the Capitol. The Tribune was declared solemnly a heretic, sacrilegious, and bung in effigy. Two senators were appointed, and his government abolished. Again Rienzi made one last attempt; he had one of his symbolical pictures affixed to the gate of the Church of Santa Madalena; but the Romans had latterly suf fered from famine; they paid no attention

Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, in his brilliant romance, attributes this first fall of his hero to the excommunication and its blighting results. But the excommunication alone could not have worked such a change among the Romans. The history of the fourteenth century, and of Florence especially, abounds with instances when this pontifical ultimatum was powerless and often braved. Rienzi had committed gross political errors, among which the most fatal to him were his folly of summoning the Emperor to his tribunal and his insulting and expelling the pontifical vicar, who was disposed to favor and support him. He certainly evinced flashes of genius and energy, but proved himself a mystical, literary Utopian, devoid of many of the leading characteristics of a statesman. His heedlessness, puerile ostentation, and extravagance, disgusted the people. Many of his acts of despotism destroyed also the public confidence, and when at the last moment he abandoned his pompous titles, annulled his former ordinances, these sudden changes and exaggerated concessions were received as a testimony of his weakness, and as a proof that self-interest alone had actuated him in all his proceedings-hence a mass of the people abandoned him and joined his enemies.

Rienzi was now a wandering outcast, but far from being discouraged. Being abandoned by all parties, he turned to one of those Condottieri, the scourge of Italy-men who for a certain sum of

He concluded by imploring the imperial | resentment, had excited his feverish improtection, and proclaiming that the sword agination in the extreme. He most veheof the Emperor must cut down all tyrants, mently defended himself from the accusaadding that crows take to flight before the tion of heresy, refuted all the other accueagle. The Emperor, astonished, listened sations, and expressed his lassitude of all to him favorably, promised his pardon for human greatness. These documents have the past, and consented to listen to his been collected and published by Papenprojects. The allusions of the enthusiastic cordt; they form one of the most curious outcast referred to nothing less than the collections of medieval history, and cer universal monarchy of the empire, and tainly prove that the Emperor as well as the supremacy of the State over the the Archbishop held in great estimation Church after the long triumph and as- the eloquence of the fallen Tribune. The cendancy of the Pontifical See: they Emperor now abandoned the exiled heretic were all accompanied by prophetic assur- to the hands of the Archbishop of Prague, ances of the protection of the Holy Ghost, with the charge of informing regularly of ultimate success in all reforms, till the and legally against him. Happily for day when the world would offer a perfect Rienzi, the generous and benevolent preunity in government and creed, when the late evinced a paternal sympathy; he saw Emperor, Cola di Rienzi, and the Pope to the comfort and well-being of his priwould offer in this world the image of the soner, and as the fainting or epileptic fits Holy Trinity. Charles IV. was a practi- of Cola had become more frequent, the cal man, hostile to chimerical ideas, and kindest attendants were placed near him. attached to the Pope and the Church. The skillful and good old Archbishop, now Nevertheless, he requested the Tribune to obliged to carry on by correspondence give him in writing all he had heard him the trial of his prisoner, took every means express; and entertaining some doubt to attenuate his errors and soothe the reabout his orthodoxy, he requested the sentiment of the Pontiff. His persuasive Archbishop of Prague to watch over him, benevolence obtained from the ardent but to keep him a prisoner, but with kind feeble imagination of Rienzi a series of doctrinal concessions which justified his defense of the poor outcast. The latter addressed incessantly to him letters and memoirs repudiating many of his former acts, explaining others, accusing himself of the sin of pride, and dwelling on his boundless contrition and penitence. The prelate discussed also, with a tender benevolence, his mystical ideas, and led him from concession to concession to an almost complete submission to the Church, and to a declaration that, protected by the Emperor, his sins being remitted, his faith pure-being devoted to the evangelical and apostolical doctrine-he was ready to appear before the Pontiff's tribunal, suspecting that the Pope might want his blood, but ready, nevertheless, to meet his justice.

treatment.

Now Rienzi became subjected to endless conversations and argumentations with the Archbishop and many German doctors and scholars who visited him. In all he evinced dashes of heresy. In his memoir to the Emperor, he alludes for the first time to the report which supposed him to be the son of Henry VII., an indelicate disgrace on the honor of his mother; he asserts the prophecy which selected him as a precursor-a St. Johnof a new Christ, depicting vividly the corruption of the Avignon Court and the wretchedness of Rome. The Emperor, who had great pretensions to theological learning, condescended to answer the infatuated exile in conversations, and especially in writing; he did so as a faithful son of the Church, defending the orthodoxy, upbraiding Cola for his pride and vanity, pitying Rome and Italy, but protesting that the imperial power could not regenerate them, and announcing to the prisoner that as he nourished doctrines very dangerous for the salvation of his soul, he must remain in confinement to reflect and return to the Christian tenets. Rienzi replied by an incoherent ecstatic apology. Solitude, the ennui of captivity,

The good Archbishop took Rienzi at his word, and announced to him that he would be sent immediately to Avignon, at the request of the Pope, but warmly recommended to the pontifical favor. A deep gloom assailed the poor prisoner when he found that he was going to be given up. A great sadness prevails in his letters written at this moment. The two letters especially which he wrote before his departure for Avignon-one to his son

and the other to Fra Angelo, the hermit it shattered his naturally feeble intellect of the mountains of Majella-are charac--he fell; but, in falling, his dying eyes terized by a tone of sadness and discour- and imploring hands were directed toagement, blended with a presentiment of wards the cross of his Saviour. his approaching end, not to be met with in any of his compositions. In the first, to his son, he dwells on the everlasting belief in the future renovation of the world; he urges the youth to be patient and humble-to forget his father, who will soon be with God, and to obey his other father, Fra Angelo, to whom he leaves him, and who will show him the ways of the Lord. In the other, to Fra Angelo, he dwells on his sufferings he considers them as the fulfillment of a prophecy he blesses his prison-speaks of his flood of tears, and of his soul that does not despair in sorrow, because after this deluge the dove will return to the ark with the branch of olive tree; and affectingly closes the epistle with these words: "No longer think of me; I am to be given up to the Pope, who longs for my blood as I am yearning for the celestial Jerusalem; think of yourselves only, brothers; remain concealed and pray for my sins. My wife, the star of my house, has already taken the vail in the order of Santa Clara, with her two dear daughters. Fra Angelo! I intrust my son to you, to lead him away from the world, towards the true light. It is the only legacy I leave to you. As to the few arms, jewels, and other things which are deposited in a concealed spot, in the Abruzzi, and of which my son has no need, pray have them sold, and if a pilgrim brother goes to the Holy Land, let him, with the value, raise a chapel in which my soul may rest in peace; and if the infidels prevent him from doing so, let him divide the money among the poor priests or Christians of Jerusalem." This touching epistle reveals, more especially, the singular dualism of Rienzi's nature. His soul could not exist bereft of his holy mother, the Church, nor cling too warmly to his beloved ideal, modern liberty. He was the victim of that period of transition during which he lived-torn by the two elements, a mystical faith, and a mind enriched with the treasures of antiquity, in advance of his time. His mind and heart were indulging in the hope and dream of a union between the past and future. The Holy Ghost, refuge of all the fervent men of that age, was to be the great link of unity. His dream assumed gigantic proportions;

Rienzi was brought to Avignon in the month of August, (1351.) The people crowded to gaze silently on the man who had been the idol of the Romans, and the object of so many splendid festivities. Petrarch says that he arrived between two common soldiers, looking sad and cast down. Thanks to the benevolent efforts of the Archbishop of Prague, he was not to appear before his judges charged with the crime of heresy, but simply of disobedience to the Holy See. The three Cardinals appointed to judge him did not manifest a kindly disposition towards him. He was thrown into a dungeon, with one foot fastened to a chain riveted to the wall. His prison at Avignon, the old tower in the suburb of Villeneuve, is still shown. Although the imprisonment was harsh, yet he may not have suffered otherwise; for, if we are to believe the cotemporary biographer, Rienzi was fat and ruddy in the Avignon prison, and commenced to give way to habits of intemperance, which subsequently brutalized him considerably. The trial was secret and rapidly terminated. Nothing remains of it not a note, not a word. The accused outcast was not even allowed a human being for the defense. Petrarch wrote secretly in his favor, without daring to sign his letters. The fallen Tribune, abandoned by all, was found guilty and condemned to death. But Provence, the land of the Troubadours, was then the part of Europe where intellectual culture and poetry were the most honored and beloved. Although Rienzi was not a poet, his erudition was celebrated; it had been the basis of his power and fortune; and let it be an eternal honor to the humanizing influence of letters, that the inhabitants of Avignon felt indignant that a scholar- a literary charactershould be condemned to bring his head on the block; they interceded warmly in his favor, made use even of menacing language, and prepared to revolt rather than to suffer such an execution. The Pontiff, who valued the fidelity of Avignon, yielded to their demand. Rienzi was only kept a prisoner, but not severely; his books were returned to him-among them the Bible and Livy-and his food was even sent him from the pontifical kitchen.

1860.]

RIENZI, THE LAST OF THE TRIBUNES.

Hence, no doubt, the change in his appearance and habits, mentioned by the biographer.

A new Pontiff, Innocent VI., was elected on the eighteenth of December, 1352. From the very day of his election he manifested a deep anxiety about the state of Italy, and the conviction that the restoration of the pontifical authority was the only remedy that could heal the evil with any efficacy. But the application of that remedy was the most difficult question. The division of power between the nobles and the people of Rome seemed to his experienced comHe prehension an unattainable object. felt that no reliance could be placed on the Colonnas or the Orsini, and a representation of the Roman populace appeared impossible.

rence.

ter were well calculated to crush all the petty tyrants, crafty despots, and brigands who spread desolation in the patrimony of St. Peter. But somebody was indispensaInnocent VI. ble to conciliate the Roman people and hurl down Baroncelli. thought of Rienzi; he had him brought before him, and secretly gave him his instructions. Poor Cola evidently did not comprehend their drift; delirious with joy and confidence on being drawn from a dungeon, to appear again in Italy and behold Rome at his feet, he did not perceive the cruelty and policy that led to his being associated with a man like Cardinal Albornoz. They took their departure, escorted by a small but excellent troop of mercenary soldiers; they crossed the Apennines, bending their way towards Rome. The Cardinal was bearer of, a Since the fall of Rienzi the anarchy had bull empowering him to exterminate been worse than ever; the authority of heresy-restore the dignity and rights annihilate the leagues the pontifical vicars was a dead letter; of the Church sanguinary contests between the nobles formed against the pontifical rights, and with each other, and between the nobles enforce the restitution of the Church proand the people, were of constant recur-perty. Rienzi had received a letter of A citizen had been proclaimed instructions, worded in a somewhat amSenator by the people, but he was soon biguous manner; it stated that the Rotracked by the nobles and obliged to fly. man Knight, Rienzi, had been absolved, One Orsini and one Colonna assumed in delivered, and was now sent to Rome, 1352 the title and functions of Lieutenants hoping that his sufferings had brought of the Roman people, and they were, not him to his right senses, and to the laying long after, assailed in a popular riot; one aside of his fantastical visions, so that by was stoned to death, and the other only his influence and industry he might resaved himself by flight. Subsequently, concile the ill-intentioned. Great verbal the greatest nobles fought with each promises had been lavished upon him at other at the head of their bands, and the Avignon; the dignity of Senator being people, in the meantime, stabbed them stipulated as the future reward for his right and left. Finally, a citizen, a popo- services, on the condition that he would lare, called Baroncelli, a former warm remain faithful to the Church and defend partisan of the Tribune, took possession her rights to the death. During the of the Capitol, where he planted a white journey, Rienzi, although exulting in his flag, and called on the support of the dreams for the future, awoke to the conpeople for the sake of their liberty. He sciousness of his real position. He saw took the title of Second Tribune and himself almost destitute of every thing; Roman Consul-revived a great number isolated, whilst the Cardinal was of the laws of the first Tribune-received rounded by valiant knights, his relations, the oath of the captains of districts, but, and escorted by a little pontifical army When they all arrived at notwithstanding a certain practical abil- well paid. ity, there was every appearance that his Florence, the Cardinal was received with gorgeous splendor and with honors due reign would not be of long duration. The Pope had long fixed his eyes on to a sovereign, whilst Cola remained lost Cardinal Albornoz as the only man who in the crowd of menials unobserved. The could subdue the Roman nobility. The Florentines, who had formerly feared his Cardinal was a stern, dark man, who, in authority, were not disposed to encourage Spain, had warred against the Moors, his political resurrection. On the way to intrigued at the court of Castille, and Rome, all the partisans of the Church finally offered his services to the Holy flocked round the Cardinal, whilst the exSee. His experience and fearless charac-Tribune was left in solitude. Once in VOL. L.-No. 4

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