Passages from the history of liberty

Preface

It is hardly necessary to explain the connection between the Passages, drawn all from one great stream of History, which are contained in this little volume. The efforts of the first Italian Reformers, here, of course, very briefly sketched, are illustrations of the isolation and travail of the Dark Ages. Wycliffe's work was a work of national principles, just beginning, in his time, to be acknowledged by his country of England. Savonarola's reforms express the desires for peace and purification, which were in all true hearts, during a period of so much strife and so many stains, as that period of transition from the Middle Ages to our Modern Times. The Castilian war is one among numerous histories concerning the same desires for juster principles and larger life, as they were in many places forced into struggles, tumultuous and unavailing.

Without turning away from abstract truths, that are vigorous and beautiful to all who have open souls, we may be glad to seek the greater power and completer beauty which belong to human examples. We begin with things individual to end with things general, and all our Cathedrals must be built up, column by column, stone by stone. It is after such simplest purposes that these passages are here put together. Although neither many in number, nor full in detail, they may nevertheless be as clear, separately, as a single diminutive volume can be made to comprehend. I wish to say one thing very plainly about them all, that their design, in being histori-

VI PREFACE.

cal and in not being biographical, is no further concerned with the incidents of individual lives than as the individual lives are united by these incidents to the general history of Liberty and of Humanity.

We have claims, as Americans, upon History, that it should be written anew for us, after our own principles of thought and action. Pulchrum est bene facere reipublicce ; etiam bene dicere haud absurdum est. This book, humble as it is, has been written in cordial sympathy with such desires as we may all be willing to follow, for nearer knowledge of some remembered and some forgotten names. Yet unless these pages bear a higher mark, unless the love, to which they give witness, be large as the love of humanity and pure as the love of God, it would be better that they were not printed, or even written at all.

I do not hesitate to add a few words not my own, even though they seem to make a profession, for which others may now have little concern : "I constantly feel how overpowering the labor is and how many advantages I want ; yet I feel, too, that I have the love of History so strong in me, that I can write something which will be read, and which, I trust, will encourage the love of all things noble and just and wise and holy." I ask only this, that Arnold's words may be allowed to express the purposes of one who is Arnold's pupil in heart.

Samuel Eliot.

December 22, 1846.

Contents

Early Italian Reformers ....

Pajfe 1

I. Isolation of the Middle Ages

I

The Church of Rome, although now abandoned by many generations, was long ago the great strong-hold of humanity. Open to all men and to most opinions, liberal and progressive in its best influences, it united and protected Europe through those Middle Ages, when Europe was broken up in divisions, and surrendered to feudality. While the Church was defending itself, it was also defending mankind. A poor carpenter's son, Hildebrand, became the great pope Gregory Seventh, and he, giving voice and action to demands which the age about him was prepared to sustain, declared his spiritual power independent of all temporal authority. The great purpose of Gregory's life was accomplished not long after his death, and Rome, set free, seemed destined to become again the mother of living empires.* On her laws, society as well as religion, now depended; by her keys, it was believed, the world here and the world hereafter were unlocked to men; and to her altars was brought the worship of confiding hearts. Feudal force submitted, or seemed to submit, to Church-principles, and, as it were in emblem of these, there rose from out cold stones the Cathedral column and the Cathedral spire. To this time, even, we might have been among the dreamers and the pilgrims of Rome, had she done half she pretended to fulfil. But the day of triumph passed away, and the day of shame drew nigh. The principles which the Church professed, it presently upheld by force as much as by reason, and in abandoning its own laws, it divided and deceived its people. When it was lifted up above its enemies, when the strong and the weak were both at its mercy, then, even then, did it set itself up as strongest of all, and deny its better promises in injustice and in persecution. Rome rose, in the Dark Ages, by faith ; she began to fall by superstition, even before the Dark Ages were gone ; and as the world was for a season bound to her by charity, so by oppression was it sundered from her forever. Between the first Crusade against the Saracens

* It was in 1122, that Henry V., Emperor, formally yielded to Calixtus II., Pope, the claims which German Emperors had hitherto maintained to interference in Church elections. Gregory VII. died in 1085.

(in 1095) and the Crusade against the Albigeois (in 1209), there were hut one hundred years ; yet that single century separates catholic and uncatholic Rome.*

How the increasing vigor of Europe, grown already from youth towards maturity, should be turned to good things, without greater help from the Church, was apparently the great doubt of those doubtful times. But Europe was still ruled by feudal principles, just as it long had been, in every part of its society-f Kings, barons, and priests, at least, devoted themselves to feudality, seizing upon it as it were a cord by which they could be dragged on their own rugged ways. The points to which they were bent, although certainly wide enough apart, were in the same direction before them, so that in their struggling together, there was some progress towards our modern world, of which they never dreamed. Yet there was a strange confusion of various elements, that feudality could but painfully com-

t Les elements meme les plus etrangers a ce systeme (feodal) l'Eglise, les communes, la royaute, furent contraints de s'y accommoder ; les eglises devinrent suzeraines et vassales, les villes eurent des seigneurs et des vassaux, la royaule se cacha sous la suzerainete. * * De meme que tous les elements generaux de la societe entraient dans le cadre feodal, de meme les moindres details, les moindres faits de la vie commune devenaient matiere de feodalite. — Guizot, Civ, en Europe, Lecon IV.

prehend. The world was made up of great barons and ambitious prelates, of troubled kings and tumultuous communities, of turbid thinkers and what our Chaucer calls "sheepy people;" all these were thrown together in one huge, tumbling heap, which feudality was to beat up with its "iron flail." Church became feudal and worldly ; government was made up of much despotism and little law ; so that the purity of religion and the knowledge of liberty were lost as soon as acquired.

In most states the people were of no possible importance, but followed carelessly after popes in whom they believed, or lords whom they feared. No other destiny was clear to them than the destiny of suffering.*

From all these sources, of good but more of evil, there sprang strife and destruction, desires and fears, almost without end. Men and things were all isolated. The principle of the age was feudality, and the real principle of feudality was isolation. The priest only was united with his brethren, his brother-priests, certainly not with his brother men. The noble, the burgher, and the husbandman were as far apart in purposes as if they belonged to different worlds. There was no unity of action, no unity of

* E la povera gente sbigottita Ti scopre le sue piaghe a mille e mille.

Petrarca. Canz. VI.

thought ; everything depended upon individuals; * each man was bound to his single work, but that work, in solitude or in the world, was not unwatched by Providence. There was want of repose, want of change, want of success ; yet in spite of contrary currents, the great stream of human progress was flowing on. State and Church, if we may speak so generally, were then first brought near each other, but their approach was only accidental, and they were again more unhappily separated, f All that possessed the power to unite these parted and isolated interests, was fanatical enterprise, not only in such as the six great crusades, with which we are all familiar, but in such as the Flagellants or the Shepherds, J whose wild enthusiasm was common to their times. There was even a crusade of children, ninety thousand in number, who, with some grown men and women, set out from Germany,

t " That aew form [of society, followiug ' the destruction of the old Western empire,'] exhibited a marked aad recogaised divisioa between the so-called secular and spiritual powers, and thereby has maiataiaed ia Christian Europe this unhappy distinction, which necessarily prevailed ia the heathea empire between the church aad the state ; etc."— Arnold, Preface to Hist. Rome. Vol. I.

t Of which a brief and intelligible accouat may be found in Hallam's Middle Ages, Chap. ix. Pt. 1.

under the guidance, they believed to be inspired, of a child. They wandered as far as Genoa, but finding there that the sea could not be crossed by faith alone, they separated from each other, and were then, in great part, seized and sold to the Saracens as slaves. But this fanatic temper was far more savagely shown in the divisions which filled cities with strife, and families with misery. There is no better illustration of the spirit which prevailed in those passionate days, especially throughout Italy, than the story of Imilda Lambertazzi, the Juliet of Bologna. The enmities among the Bolognese were led in chief by the Lambertazzi and the Gieremei, two very principal families. Bonifazio Gieremei loved Imilda Lambertazzi, and was loved in return; but this "prodigious birth of love," far from persuading their kinsfolk to reconciliation, so enraged the brothers of Imilda, that they stabbed Bonifazio with a poisoned weapon, leaving their sister to die in sucking poison from the wound even such heart-devotion could not heal. The cruel death of that gallant lover, the vain sacrifice of that true woman, and the tumults which laid waste Bologna, when this sad story was known, are all peculiar to hate, discord, longing, love, such as then made up the changing scenes of life. There was something wrong in chivalry, that it could make men brave but not excellent, women charming but not virtuous. Its influence was to fill the world with noise, and nothing more ; and Livy's saying about the Gauls of ancient days, that they were a people born for useles tumults, [nata in vanos tumultus gens,] may be applied to the knights and dames of more recent times.* But chivalry professed great theories, and for them, at least, men may be grateful. If beauty or courage or piety could be followed ideally, they could be also followed really. The love, which was raised above all other things, was perfect in strength, in virtue, and in faith.

Suche love is goodly for to have ; Suche love maie the body save ; Suche love maie the soule amende ; The Highe God suche love us sende Forthwith ; the remenaunt of grace, So that above in thilke place, Where resteth love and all pees, [peace] Our joye maie be endeless.t

So in all things there was striving after ideal forms, which could not be seen without bringing light to eyes and hearts. Even to distracted feudal times, we owe many of our present fancies and present blessings. The grass grew again where hard-hoofed horses trod ; industry

* [Chivalry,] " to me so hateful, because it is in direct opposition to the impartial justice of the Gospel, and its comprehensive feeling of equal brotherhood, and because it so fostered a sense of honor rather than a sense of duty."— Arnold, Life and Coiresp. Ch. V. Let. 5 ; also see Hist. Rome, note to p. 476, 3d vol.

t John Gower, died 1408.

sprang up where it was more than once destroyed ; * and hopes crowded close with fears upon men's souls. As the old French Chronicler wrote Les Gestes de Dieu par les Francs, we can trace God's Achievements in the world's darkest years. Such a Divine Comedy as Dante wrote, such a Great Charter as King John gave to our English forefathers, were things gained for all ages. Little else than smoke may seem to have struggled forth from the shadowy mountain beyond the sea, but when we leave our daylight behind and climb up there in the nighttime, we shall see convulsive flames, which in wilder hours, shone over earth and kindled heaven.

The end of feudality was sure to come, so soon as its work was done and humanity was becoming mature. It had never been much more than a heavy chain borne by society for the sake of some sort of union, and when it could hang together no longer, it dropped, and was soon rusted away.f One among those who first taught men to distrust the claims which feudality, in Church and State, made upon them, was Abelard. Ardent, attractive and selfish,

t Tout en empruntant la forme feodale, les institutions, les elements de la societe qui n'etaient pas analogues au regime early risen and early fallen, he was himself a representative of what was around him. To the five thousand disciples, who sat together at his feet, he spoke as they had heard no man speak before, of great duties and great rights, belonging to their own intellects. Yet when they listened with throbbing hearts for words which should teach them how to work out together the truths he had made them believe, they could hear no more than the empty echoes of his voice repeating what they did not need to be told again.

Italy was first * of all countries in the feudal age, although it was less connected than any other with feudality. The character of Italian cities in their early history, is very generally known to have been peculiar to them alone. Where nobles and priests and laborers were all living close within the same walls, there was, of course, fairer chance for justice, and even for some sort of equality, than where a people was scattered over a wide country, exposed to adventurous knights or marauding men at arms. Yet, strange at first to believe, there was no greater unity of spirit between different citizens, such as Florentines and Milanese, than between such serfs as dwelt far apart upon the plains of feodal ne renonqaient pas a lew nature, a leur principe propre.— Guizot, Civ. en Europe, Lecon IV. * Giardin dell' impero, as Dante was proud to call it.

France. The isolation which feudal influences alone did not bring upon Italy, crept within the walls of its city-commonwealths, and ruled over them as triumphantly as if they had been citydespotisms. While they were thus divided by barriers stronger than the Apennines, there was much to fill them with passion and violence and distress. The Church of Rome by turns overshadowed Italy with fear, or brightened it with hope ; but as her better purposes could have brought abundant blessings, so her evil influences came laden with desolating sorrows.* There seemed to be contradiction in all things ; liberty dwelt side by side with tyranny, and the church was quite as much a den of thieves as the house of prayer. Still, along the Italian coast rolls a tideless sea, whose beauty might make a hermit wish to sail upon its waves ; and back, but a few miles from the shore, are deep-buried valleys, where man's spirit is humbled by the severe solemnity of a mountain-land. Great hopes, divine aspirings, heart-breaking fears, and lifedestroying failures belong to the whole history of Italy, but, more than all other times, to those in which Arnaldo da Brescia, Giovanni di Yicenza,

and Jacopo de' Bussolari, her early reformers, lived and died. Italy was great, when Germany was shamed in the person of her Emperor ; * when Spain was but a battle-field for Christians and Moors ; when France was buffeted by her own feudal barons ; when our mother country was unhonored and unknown. Commerce was covering such as the Venitians with wealth and renown ; jurisprudence was drawing thousands to its fountain-head at Bologna; and art had chosen that; rather than any other land, to be its paradise. Cimabue's devout pictures, of which a king f was fain to say, that they, of all things, had given him greatest pleasure since he was king, these still make us believe how high humanity did then aspire. Petrarch, trying many ways, but in few only succeeding, brings down to us the hopes, the sorrows, and the songs of his mysterious times. Dante, % the exile and the lonely-hearted, can tell us, now, why men were restless, when there was much to give them contentment, and unfortunate, when we behold so much in them that was glorious.

One sees more easily what was to be done for Italy in the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth

* When Henry VI. stood barefoot at Canossa, (1077,) or when, just one hundred years later, Frederic Barbarossa knelt on St. Mark's Square, (1177.)

t Charles of Anjou.

centuries, than how it was to he done. Popes were beginning to he too much concerned ahout mere temporal interests, to look out upon wider and remoter prospects. Emperors were soon too far abased in all men's eyes, to have any other influence than that of arms. Nor was it long after the beginning of this same period, that the liberties of the Italian free cities were lying, like corpses on a battle-field, at the mercy of the Signori, the Lords, who had every where prevailed against them. All the great powers seemed to have shrunk away, and men, more than ever individually dependent upon themselves, felt how sore was the need of strength, of spirit, of reform. The only active and stable element of society was in the religious orders of the Romish Church. They were to Italy of the Middle Ages, what Ephors or Augurs had been in ancient days, and from out their midst came Italy's earliest reformers. Their monasteries, hid from view like the Cyclops' dwelling of old, were filled with "sons of Heaven and Earth," busy in forging bolts to shake the world.* The works done in them would have been more perfect, had not they who labored too nearly resembled the Cyclops themselves, in having or using but a single eye. So that the great purposes which came from them were

* It is curious in reading two or three lines of Homer to carry out this comparison between the Cyclops and the monks of the Middle Ages. See Odyssey, ix., 106 - 1 15.

not always wise, and even the great deeds which were done through them were not always secure. Yet monasteries were sanctuaries of learning, when learning was most universally abandoned ; schools of policy, when times were most dangerous ; and, above all, asylums of charity, when poor people most needed protection. The prophets of the Dark Ages prepared themselves within convent-walls to go forth and do good to their fellow-beings.

II

Arnaldo da Brescia was born in the beginning of the twelfth century. The strife between popes and emperors was already at an end, but it had left lessons of liberty which were not wholly lost. Love of freedom began to take the place of fanaticism, and all the more readily, that the impurities of Church and priesthood were swollen to loathsomeness during the long contests with the Empire. There were anti-popes and anti-factions in Rome, short-lived indeed, but desolating as though they had endured for centuries. Nobles were turbulent and people were ignorant ; so that priests seemed to have their own way, when opposition was made to them by one among their own number. Arnaldo da Brescia's voice was bravelyraised against violence and immorality. He resisted, almost alone, the new claims his Church was urging to full possession of ecclesiastical property, which it had hitherto been content to administer according to early laws. " My kingdom," said Arnaldo, in memory of his Divine Master, " My kingdom is not of this world, and this shall the Church follow." He gave expression to good desires still clinging about men's hearts. Not only to Church, but to all society, he would have brought back truth and love, the cornerstones of Christian freedom. He was the first and favorite pupil of Abelard, whose teachings then attracted all the best among young Italians to France. But Arnaldo' s character was greatly different from that of his speculative and mystical teacher. He was a student, not only because he loved learning, but because he would make learning useful to the world in which he lived. His studies seem to have been connected with the reforms he planned, long before his first labors began in Brescia, where he took religious orders after his return from France. He preached of all things

" that give the flower Of fleeting life its lustre and its perfume ;"

but what most distinguished him was the manliness with which he resisted the oppressions and prodigalities of the bishop of Brescia. There was no one else who dared to rebuke Rome, itself, but

Arnaldo never feared. His pure life won him friends ; his great eloquence brought him followers ; but his self-denying truth was soon a mark to many enemies. As early as 1139, Arnaldo's doctrines were condemned by one of those Lateran Councils which would have put down humanity.* He was declared guilty of schism, ordered to cease from preaching, and then sentenced to exile. Rejected by Italy, by his own native land, he found peace and usefulness in Switzerland.

A Republican party had long existed in Rome. It recognized the superiority of the Emperor's temporal, and the Pope's spiritual powers, but did not know how to establish its own claims. Not only the people, but a great part of the nobility, exasperated beyond all prudence, rose against their pope, and so alarmed him, that he denied his own authority, and fled away from Rome. But he left his tumultuous subjects in a very unprofitable state of confusion and feebleness. Some among them remembered Arnaldo's name and teachings, at Brescia, and to him they turned in their own doubtfulness, summoning his presence and his counsel. He had been five years beyond the mountains, when the sound of these

* Even as Dante said, although with an unlike meaning: Quando Laterano Alle cose mortali andd di sopra. 2 faint and imploring voices came to him in exile ; and without hesitation he called some Swiss to follow him, and hastened with them to Rome. His energy soon breathed new life into hopes that had nearly perished without him, at their very birth. His objects were not to build up a democracy, but to form some sort of government which should be able to protect itself equally against imperial tyranny and papal wrong. A senate, already assembled, was by his advise increased in number and strengthened by laws. He made Consuls the chief magistrates of the State, and for their support revived the equestrian order, at least in name. All that he believed would make Rome glorious, he was earnest in planning, earnest in doing ; but although Rome, more easily than any other place on the earth, might have accepted the resurrection he attempted of ancient forms, * it was no time for the old Commonwealth to be renewed. The Capitol-rock,f was buried beneath long, heavy years. The purposes to which Arnaldo was now devoting himself, although chiefly political, were not altogether separated from more Christian reforms. The tumult and strife he found in Rome were, at his bidding, stilled. The authority he established was the authority of justice. The manners he formed by

his own example, were, although he succeeded but in part, the manners of a well-ordered people. He was the restorer of liberty, and the restorer of purity, so far as Rome was willing to profess and defend them. So passed eight full years.

The first thing done by English Pope Adrian, after his accession,* was to excommunicate Arnaldo da Brescia. Such an absurd sentence was easily resisted, so long as the Romans were faithful to him, who had done all for them. A few months later, one of the Cardinals having been killed in a street brawl, the Pope laid the city itself under an interdict, which he declared should continue in force until the man, who dared to oppose his will, was expelled or slain. One scarcely believes his eyes in reading that Arnaldo was driven away by the Romans, at the Pope's command, but it was really so ; and after living among these weak-hearted men, their best benefactor, after giving Rome the peacefullest years of her mediceval history, Arnaldo went out, banished, insulted, deserted, to take refuge with some country-noblemen, who were still true to him. Frederic Barbarossa was just then coming, in youth and ambition, to put on his imperial crown in Rome. From him, Pope Adrian demanded assistance in crushing the violent tumults which

* Nicholas Breakspere, a vigorous and choleric English monk was made Pope in 1153.

broke out after Arnaldo's departure, and Frederic was easily persuaded to do the Pope's bidding. The nobles, with whom Arnaldo believed himself secure, surrendered him to the Emperor's officers sent to seize him, and Rome, senate and people, abandoned him to meet his fate undefended, but not unmourned. The preacher of virtue, the worker-out of liberty, the one true heart that beat with perfect love for God and man, Arnaldo da Brescia, was burned upon the Piazza del Popolo (1155.) His ashes were thrown into the Tiber, and the better hopes of Rome were scattered to the winds.

But labors, like those in which Arnaldo died, do never utterly perish. His example, full of confidence while he lived, was full of consolation when he was dead. The Roman senate and people, unworthy such devotion as he gave them, submitted to the popes they could not resist without him. But in Arnaldo's native Lombardy, the same Emperor Frederic, who had sacrificed him to Pope Adrian, lost seven armies, one after another, in attempting to destroy all Lombard liberty, and was finally and utterly defeated at Legnano, twenty years after the death of Arnaldo. Lluomo all uom sobranza — man prevaileth against man.

III

It was in the earlier part of the following century (xmth) that Giovanni di Vicenza preached peace to troubled times. Naples was wasted by the tumultuous contests among her nobility ; Florence was the prey of blood-thirsty factions ; Lombardy was divided by Guelph and Ghibeline wars ; worse than all, Rome had unsheathed the flaming sword, with which persecutions and murders were to be dealt out to men, in religion's name. Italy, always in want of repose, never needed it more than then, and to direct the hopes, which good men could not help forming, there came to many places monks preaching against unnatural war. The prayer of the age, like Dante's, was for peace.

Giovanni di Vicenza, a Dominican friar, first preached, with any repute, at Bologna, (1233.) He was noble by birth, and young in years, perhaps not more than twenty, at that time. The eloquence of his days was a strange medley of sacred and profane things, but such were Giovanni's natural powers, that all the citizens and country people of Bologna believed in what he said to them, and followed where he led them " with cross and banners." An old chronicle of Bologna declares, that " every man, both great and small, went with the friar, blessing the name of Christ."

He was able to reconcile the oldest enemies, and to reform the oldest abuses, not only in Bologna, but throughout the greater part of Lombardy. Every people, among whom he went, welcomed him as if he had been a conqueror, with all sorts of rejoicing and submission. The magistrates of the cities, in which he preached, brought him their laws to be revised and framed for peace such as they had not hitherto known. Another Italian chronicler describes Giovanni as one who, " pleasing to God and to man, made many preachings through cities, villages, and camps ; and with him was God." The scene of his greatest triumph was at Paquara, near Verona. One * of the last days in summer, four hundred thousand people, as some say, and certainly a greater multitude than had ever before been gathered in Lombardy, assembled on the plains about the town. They came, with magistrates and city-ensigns, from all the surrounding states, and most " for reverence sake," were barefoot and bareheaded. In the midst of this far-stretching crowd, their prophet Giovanni di Vicenza appeared upon a wooden platform, or rather observatory, built up ninety feet high. There he preached to them upon the words our Saviour spoke to His disciples : " Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you," and even iron-armed soldiers who were there and