Rienzi’s Decline and Fall

This is the second half of Rienzi’s Revolution In Rome
our selection from The Close of the Middle Ages by Richard Lodge published in 1901.

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Previously in Rienzi’s Revolution In Rome.

Time: 1347
Place: Rome

The first attack, which was led by Stefano Colonna, was repulsed almost by accident; but Rienzi, who had shown more cowardice than generalship, disgusted his supporters by his indecent exultation over the bodies of the slain. And there was one fatal ambiguity in Rienzi’s position. He had begun by announcing himself as the ally and champion of the papacy, and Clement VI had been willing enough to stand by and watch the destruction of the baronage. But the growing independence and the arrogant pretensions of the Tribune exasperated the Pope. A new legate was despatched to Italy to denounce and excommunicate Rienzi as a heretic. The latter had no longer any support to lean upon. When a new attack was threatened, the people sullenly refused to obey the call to arms. Rienzi had not sufficient courage to risk a final struggle. On December 15th he abdicated and retired in disguise from Rome. His rise to power, his dazzling triumph, and his downfall were all comprised within the brief period of seven months.

For the next few years Rienzi disappeared from view. According to his own account he was concealed in a cave in the Apennines, where he associated with some of the wilder members of the sect of the Fraticelli and probably imbibed some of their tenets. Rome relapsed into anarchy, and men’s minds were distracted from politics by the ravages of the black death. The great jubilee held in Rome in 1350 became a kind of thanksgiving service of those whom the plague had spared.

It is said that Rienzi himself visited the scene of his exploits without detection among the crowds of pilgrims. But he was destined to reappear in a more public and disastrous manner. In his solitude his courage and his ambition revived, and he meditated new plans for restoring freedom to Rome and to Italy. The allegiance to the Church, which he had professed in 1347, was weakened by the conduct of Clement VI and by the influence of the Fraticelli, and he resolved in the future to ally himself with the secular rather than with the ecclesiastical power, with the Empire rather than with the papacy. In August, 1351, he appeared in disguise in Prague and demanded an audience of Charles IV. To him he proposed the far-reaching scheme which he had formed during his exile.

The Pope and the whole body of clergy were to be deprived of their temporal power; the petty tyrants of Italy were to be driven out; and the Emperor was to fix his residence in Rome as the supreme ruler of Christendom. All this was to be accomplished by Rienzi himself at his own cost and trouble. Charles IV listened with some curiosity to a man whose career had excited such universal interest, but he was the last man to be carried away by such chimerical suggestions.

The introduction into the political proposals of some of the religious and communistic ideas of the Fraticelli gave the Emperor a pretext for committing Rienzi to the Archbishop of Prague for correction and instruction. The Archbishop communicated with the Pope, and on the demand of Clement VI Charles agreed to hand Rienzi over to the papal court on condition that his life should be spared. In 1352 Rienzi was conveyed to Avignon and thrust into prison. He owed his life perhaps less to the Emperor’s request than to the opportune death of Clement VI in this year.

The new Pope, Innocent VI, was more independent of French control than his immediate predecessors. The French King was fully occupied with internal disorders and with the English war. Thus the Pope was able to give more attention to Italian politics, which were sufficiently pressing. The independence and anarchy of the Papal States constituted a serious problem, but the danger of their subjection to a foreign power was still more serious. In 1350 the important city of Bologna had been seized by the Visconti of Milan, and the progress of this powerful family threatened to absorb the whole of the Romagna. Innocent determined to resist their encroachments and at the same time to restore the papal authority, and in 1353 he intrusted this double task to Cardinal Albornoz.

Albornoz, equally distinguished as a diplomatist and as a military commander, resolved to ally the cause of the papacy with that of liberty. His programme was to overthrow the tyrants as the enemies both of the people and of the popes, and to restore municipal self-government under papal protection. His attention was first directed to the city of Rome, which, after many vicissitudes since 1347, had fallen under the influence of a demagogue named Baroncelli.

Baroncelli had revived to some extent the schemes of Rienzi, but had declared openly against papal rule. To oppose this new tribune, Albornoz conceived the project of using the influence of Rienzi, whose rule was now regretted by the populace that had previously deserted him. The Pope was persuaded to release Rienzi from prison and to send him to Rome, where the effect of his presence was almost magical. The Romans flocked to welcome their former liberator, and he was reinstalled in power with the title of senator, conferred upon him by the Pope. But his character was not improved by adversity, and his rule was more arbitrary and selfish than it had been before.

The execution of the condottiere, Fra Moreale, was an act of ingratitude as well as of treachery. Popular favor was soon alienated from a ruler who could no longer command either affection or respect, and, in a mob rising, Rienzi was put to death, October 8, 1354. But his return had served the purpose of Albornoz. Rome was preserved to the papacy, and the cardinal could proceed in safety with his task of subduing the independent tyrants of Romagna.

Central Italy had not yet witnessed the general introduction of mercenaries, and the native populations still fought their own battles. The policy of exciting revolts among the subject citizens was completely successful, and by 1360 almost the whole of Romagna had submitted to the papal legate. His triumph was crowned in this year, when, by skillful use of quarrels among the Visconti princes, he succeeded in recovering Bologna.

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