Disorder, robbery, and murder were every-day occurrences. When he first visited Rome, his friends deemed a hundred horsemen a necessary escort to protect him from the Orsini on his way to the city. Petrarch himself was attacked as he left the city.
This lawlessness was naturally attributed to Italian disunion. The subdivision of Italy into a multitude of practically independent states and urban communities stimulated the development of personal political ambition and produced the “age of despots.” The tyrants, in their struggle to maintain their power at home and increase their prestige abroad, inevitably resorted to the approved expedient of the usurper, territorial aggrandisement. The discomfiture or subjugation of their fellow Italian neighbours became the absorbing object of the foreign policy of Milan, Venice, and Florence, and of the lesser states as well. Peace, the natural enemy of the usurper, was thoroughly banished from Italy, and a perpetual state of war prevailed. There was an all-pervading, self-perpetuating antagonism between the various Italian States, which precluded all hope of national cooperation. “Servile Italy,” as Dante said, “a ship without a pilot!”
In the face of such evils, and hopeless of reform from within, a patriotic Italian of the fourteenth century might be pardoned for looking to a foreign ruler for the initiative in restoring order. The Italians of the time were so completely engrossed by their own complex interstate relations, and too thoroughly convinced of the absolute inferiority of “the barbarians,” seriously to apprehend that foreign intervention might ultimately develop into subjugation. History was, indeed, quite explicit upon this point. The German emperors had never been able to establish their control over Italy except partially and momentarily.
Rienzo had found in Petrarch a sympathetic confidant when, as early as 1343, upon visiting Avignon, he had unfolded his audacious schemes to him. When, four years later, at Pentecost, 1347, the innkeeper's son carried out his successful coup d'etat and got possession of the city of Rome, Petrarch was enchanted. The immediate results of Rienzo's accession to power were indeed almost magical: order was restored, the roads were rendered safe for the first time in the memory of man, and an Italian parliament was summoned to consider the unification of Italy. The Tribune's manifestoes aroused universal enthusiasm; and Petrarch pronounced him, long after the spell was broken, a most eloquent and persuasive orator and a graceful writer.
Petrarch seemed to see his own dreams realised; the ancient dignity and ascendancy of Rome were re-established; the tyrants, as he called the Roman nobility, including the Colonna family, had been expelled; the power was once more in the hands of the divinely elected people of Rome. Rome was soon to be the head of a unified and rejuvenated Italy, perhaps of a redeemed Europe. By November Petrarch was on his way to join Rienzo. He was probably actuated to some extent, however, by his desire to see Italy once more, and to escape from the reproaches of his former friends at the papal court, especially of Giovanni Colonna, whose favour he necessarily sacrificed by his public espousal of Rienzo's cause. But upon his reaching Genoa, letters forwarded to him from Avignon brought the sad story of the Tribune's fatal indiscretions. He thereupon gave up the idea of going to Rome, and contented himself with addressing a sharp reprimand to the delinquent ruler.
After scarcely seven months of power Rienzo ignominiously retired from the Capitol and fled to the solitudes of the Abruzzi. There, while living the life of a hermit, he was encouraged by prophetic revelations to renew his attempts to establish the Roman power. He determined to conciliate the new Emperor, Charles IV., foreigner as he was, and win him if possible to his fantastic plans.
The Emperor listened curiously to Rienzo's representations, but instead of joining him in a campaign for the realisation of the ideal Roman Empire he shut up the ex-Tribune as an enemy of the Church, and later turned him over to the pope at Avignon. Petrarch still sympathised with the unfortunate captive, and prepared an appeal to the Roman people in his favour. After a brief return to a restricted exercise of power as senator under the papal control, Rienzo was killed by a mob on October 8, 1354.
Petrarch's letters to Rienzo do not simply show an absorbing interest in the attempt of a national leader to restore the ancient prestige of Rome and to establish the unity of Italy; they seem to prove that there was a fundamental congruity, a spiritual affinity between the two men, which would have made them firm friends had they been brought together.
Some two years after Rienzo's retirement, Petrarch addressed his first letter to Charles of Bohemia, who already enjoyed the title of King of the Romans, but had not yet been crowned Emperor at Rome, as was then customary. Little real sympathy could exist between our ardent southern patriot and the northern ruler from beyond the Alps. Petrarch was too thoroughly Italian really to respect Charles personally. He could never place unreserved confidence in a German from the cold north, “where there is no noble ardour nor vital heat of empire.”
All Petrarch wanted from Charles was that he free the Italians from slavery, to reinstate justice, now prostituted to avarice, and once more to bring back peace, long fallen into utter oblivion. No more complete or specific program is offered in his letters; the poet satisfies himself with the constant reiteration of the eternal fitness of Rome's headship.
Petrarch wrote in a letter to Charles IV., Emperor August of the Romans:
“Let not solicitude for Transalpine affairs, nor the love of your native soil, detain you; but whenever you look upon Germany, think of Italy. There you were born, here you were nurtured; there you enjoy a kingdom, here both a kingdom and an empire; and, as I believe I may, with the consent of all nations and peoples, safely add, while the members of the Empire are everywhere, here you will find the head itself. There must, however, be no slothfulness if you would reach the desired result, for it will prove no small matter to re-unite all these precious fragments into a single body.
I well know that novelty always excites suspicion, but you are not summoned to an unknown land. Italy is no less familiar to you than Germany itself. Pledged to us by divine favour from your childhood, you followed, with extraordinary ability, the footsteps of your illustrious father. Under his guidance you made yourself acquainted with the Italian cities, the customs of the people, the configuration of the land, and mastered in this way the first principles of your glorious profession. Here, while still a boy, and with a prowess more than mortal, you gained many a famous victory. Yet great as were these deeds they but foreshadowed greater things; since, as a man, you could not look with apprehension upon a country which had afforded you, as a youth, the opportunity for such signal triumphs. You could forecast from the auspicious results of your first campaign what you might, as Emperor, anticipate upon the same field. Moreover, Italy has never awaited the coming of any foreign prince with more joy; for not only is there no one else to whom she can look for the healing of her wounds, but your yoke she does not regard as that of an alien. Thus your majesty, although you may not be aware of it, enjoys a peculiar position in our eyes. Why should I fear to say frankly what I think, and what will, I am confident, appear to you as true? By the marvellous favour of God our own national character is once more restored to us, after so many centuries, in you, our Augustus. Let the Germans claim you for themselves, if they please; we look upon you as an Italian. Hasten then, as I have so often said, and must continue to say, hasten!
... Do not longer deprive Italy, which deserves well of you, of your presence. ... Surely there is among all your important and sacred duties none more pressing than that you should restore gentle peace once more to Italy. ... Do this first, and the rest will find an appropriate time. Indeed, I cannot but feel that little or nothing would remain to be done when peace and order were again established in Italy.”Charles finally decided that it would be to his advantage to visit Italy and receive the imperial crown at Rome. His motives, however, had little in common with those which were set forth by Petrarch in the preceding letter.
References:
• Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy, 1321)
• Petrarch (Letter to Emperor Charles IV, February 24, 1351)
