the spirit while it renewed the forms of the primitive CHAP. XI. republic. Its leaders had written to Conrad III, asking him to help them to restore the Empire to its position under Constantine and Justinian; but the German, warned by St. Bernard, had preferred the friendship of the Pope. Filled with a vain conceit of their own importance, they repeated their offers to Frederick when he sought the crown from Hadrian the Fourth. A deputation, after dwelling in highflown language on the dignity of the Roman people, and their kindness in bestowing the sceptre on him, a Swabian and a stranger, proceeded to demand a largess ere he should enter the city. Frederick's anger did not hear them to the end: 'Is this your Roman wisdom? Who are ye that usurp the name of Roman dignities? Your honours and your authority are yours no longer; with us are consuls, senate, soldiers. It was not you who chose us to be rulers, but Charles and Otto that rescued you from the Greek and the Lombard, and conquered by their own might the imperial crown. That Frankish might is still the same: wrench, if you can, the club from Hercules. It is not for the people to give laws to the prince, but to obey his command.' This was Frederick's version of the 'Translation of the Empire.' " m 'Excellentissimo atque praeclaro urbis et orbis totius domino, Conrado, Dei gratia Romano regi semper Augusto, S. P. Q. R. salutem et Romani imperii felicem et inclitam gubernationem.' The letter winds up with the following lines in which both the teachings of Arnold and the influence of the Roman lawyers are recognizable. Cf. Otto Fris. I. c. 28 (ibid. pp. 366–367): 'Rex valeat, quidquid cupit obtineat, super hostes Imperium teneat, Romae sedeat, regat orbem Princeps terrarum, ceu fecit Iustinianus. Caesaris accipiat Caesar, quae sunt sua Praesul, Ut Christus iussit, Petro solvente tributum!' 1 Otto Fris. II. c. 21 (ibid. p. 405). m Later in his reign, Frederick condescended to negotiate with these Roman magistrates against a hostile Pope, and entered into a sort of treaty by which they were declared exempt from all jurisdiction but his own. CHAP. XI. cities. He who had been so stern to his own capital was not The Lombard likely to deal more gently with the rebels of Milan and Tortona. In the contest by which Frederick is chiefly known to modern Italy, he is commonly painted as the foreign tyrant, the forerunner of the Austrian oppressor," crushing under the hoofs of his cavalry the home of freedom and industry. Such a view is unjust to a great man and his cause. To the despot liberty is always licence; yet Frederick was the enforcer of admitted claims; the aggressions of Milan threatened her neighbours; the refusal, where no actual oppression was alleged, to admit his officers and allow his regalian rights, seemed a wanton breach of oaths and engagements, treason against God no less than himself." Nevertheless our sympathy must go with the cities, in whose victory we recognize the triumph of freedom and civilization. Their resistance was at first probably a mere aversion to unused control, and to the enforcement of imposts less offensive in former days than now, and by long dereliction apparently obsolete. Republican principles were not avowed, nor were sentiments of Italian nationality appealed to. But the progress of the conflict developed new motives and feelings, and gave the cities clearer notions of what they fought for. As the Emperor's antagonist, the Pope was their natural ally: he blessed their arms, and called on the barons of Romagna. See the first note to Shelley's Hellas. Sismondi's history is largely answerable for this conception of Barbarossa's position. • They say rebelliously, says Frederick, 'Nolumus hunc regnare super nos at nos maluimus honestam mortem quam ut,' &c.—Letter in Pertz, M. G. H., Legg. ii. p. 116. ... p'De tributo Caesaris nemo cogitabat; Omnes erant Caesares, nemo censum dabat; Civitas Ambrosii, velut Troia, stabat, Deos parum, homines minus formidabat.' Poems relating to the Emperor Frederick of Hohenstaufen, published by and Tuscany for aid; he made 'The Church' ere long CHAP. XI. their watchword, and helped them to conclude that league of mutual support by means whereof the party of the Italian Guelfs was formed. Another cry, too, began to be heard, hardly less inspiriting than the last, a cry that had been silent for thirteen centuries, the cry of freedom and municipal self-government-freedom little understood and terribly abused, self-government which the cities who claimed it for themselves refused to their subject allies, yet both of them, through their power of stimulating effort and quickening sympathy, as much nobler than the harsh and repressive system of a feudal monarchy as the citizen of republican Athens had risen above the slavish Asiatic or the brutal Macedonian. Nor was the fact that Italians were resisting a Transalpine invader without its effect. There was as yet no distinct national feeling, for half Lombardy, towns as well as rural nobles, fought under Frederick; but events made the cause of liberty always more clearly the cause of patriotism, and increased that fear and hate of the Tedescan for which Italy has had such bitter justification. success of Frederick. The Emperor was for a time successful: Tortona was Temporary taken, Milan razed to the ground, and her name apparently extinguished. Greater obstacles had been overcome, and a fuller authority was for the moment exercised than in the days of Otto the Great or Henry the Third. The glories of the first Frankish conqueror were triumphantly recalled, and Frederick was compared by his admirers to the hero whose canonization he had procured, and whom he strove in all things to imitate. He was esteemed,' says one, 'second only to Charles in piety and justice.' 'We ordain this,' says a decree: 'Ut ad Caroli imitationem a Charles the Great was canonized by Frederick's anti-pope in A.D. 1164 and confirmed afterwards by a Pope of undoubted title. N CHAP. XI. Victory of League. ius ecclesiarum statum reipublicae incolumem et legum integritatem per totum imperium nostrum servaremus.' But the hold the name of Charles had on the minds of the people, and the way in which he had become, so to speak, an eponym of Empire, has better witnesses than grave documents. A rhyming poet sings :". 'Quanta sit potentia vel laus Friderici Cum sit patens omnibus, non est opus dici; Qui rebelles lancea fodiens ultrici Repraesentat Karolum dextera victrici.' The Diet at Roncaglia was a chorus of gratulations over the re-establishment of order by the destruction of the dens of unruly burghers. This fair sky was soon clouded. From her quenchless the Lombard ashes uprose Milan; Cremona, forswearing old jealousies, helped to rebuild what she had destroyed, and the confederates, committed to what seemed an all but hopeless strife, clung faithfully together till on the field of Legnano the Empire's banner went down before the carroccio of the free city. Times were changed since Aistulf and Desiderius had trembled at the distant tramp of the Frankish hosts. A new nation was arising, slowly reared through suffering into strength, now at last by heroic deeds conscious of itself. The power of Charles had overleaped boundaries of nature and language that were too strong for his successor, and that grew henceforth ever firmer, till they made the Empire itself a delusive name. Frederick, though harsh in war, and now baulked of his most cherished hopes, could accept a state of things he had found it beyond his power to change: he signed Acta Concil. Harzhem, iii. p. 399. Poems relating to Frederick I, ut supra. The carroccio was a wagon with a flagstaff planted on it, which served the Lombards for a rallying-point in battle. cheerfully and kept dutifully the peace of Constance, CHAP. XI. which left him little but a titular supremacy over the Lombard towns. At home no Emperor since Henry III had been so Frederick as much respected and so generally prosperous. He had German king. vast hereditary possessions, including, we are told, no less than four hundred castles. Uniting in his person the Saxon and Swabian families, he healed on the northern side of the Alps the long feud of Welf and Waiblingen: his prelates were faithful to him, even against Rome: no turbulent rebel disturbed the public peace. Germany was proud of a hero who maintained her dignity so well abroad, and he crowned a glorious life with a happy death, leading the van of Christian chivalry against the Musulman." Frederick, the greatest of the Crusaders, as St. Louis is the best, is among the noblest types of mediaeval character in many of its shadows, in all its lights. Legal in form, though in practice sometimes admitting the exercise of an almost absolute authority, the government of Germany was, like that of other feudal kingdoms, restrained chiefly by the difficulty of coercing refractory vassals. All depended on the monarch's character, and one so vigorous and popular as Frederick could generally lead the majority with him and overawe the rest. A false impression of the real strength of his prerogative might be formed from the readiness with which he was obeyed, for this was largely due to the tact which was happily united with his firmness. He repaired the finances of the kingdom, controlled the dukes, introduced a more splendid ceremonial, endeavoured to exalt the central power by multiplying the nobles of the second rank, afterwards the 'college of princes,' and by trying to substitute the civil u He was drowned in the river Kalykadnus in Cilicia -some say while crossing it, others while bathing. |