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the shame, of her slavery. If we calmly weigh the merits and defects of the ecclesiastical government, it may be praised in its present state, as a mild, decent, and tranquil system, exempt from the dangers of a minority, the sallies of youth, the expenses of luxury, and the calamities of war. But these advantages are overbalanced by a frequent, perhaps a septennial, election of a sovereign, who is seldom a native of the country; the reign of a young statesman of threescore, in the decline of his life and abilities, without hope to accomplish, and without children to inherit, the labours of his transitory reign. The successful candidate is drawn from the church, and even the convent; from the mode of education and life the most adverse to reason, humanity, and freedom. In the trammels of servile faith, he has learned to believe because it is absurd, to revere all that is contemptible, and to despise whatever might deserve the esteem of a rational being; to punish error as a crime, to reward mortification and celibacy as the first of virtues; to place the saints of the calendar* above the heroes of Rome and the sages of Athens; and to consider the missal, or the crucifix, as more useful instruments than the plough or the loom. In the office of nuncio, or the rank of cardinal, he may acquire some knowledge of the world; but the primitive stain will adhere to his mind and manners: from study and experience he may suspect the mystery of his profession; but the sacerdotal artist will imbibe some portion of the bigotry which he inculcates. The genius of Sixtus the Fifth+ proofs of this may be seen in Ranke's second section of his ch. 2 on the Prevalence of Secular Views and Interests in the Church, vol. i. p. 42-46, edit. Bohn.—ED.] * A Protestant may

disdain the unworthy preference of St. Francis or St. Dominic, but he will not rashly condemn the zeal or judgment of Sixtus V. who placed the statues of the apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, on the vacant columns of Trajan and Antonine. [It must not be forgotten that Gibbon had for a time worn, and therefore describes from experience, these "trammels of servile faith." Lord Byron could not refrain from condemning the zeal which made

"apostolic statues climb

To crush the imperial urn, whose ashes slept sublime." (Childe Harold, canto iv. stanza 110.) See also Historical Illustrations, p. 214, and Ranke's Popes, vol. i. p. 364, edit. Bohn.-ED.] +A wandering Italian, Gregorio Leti, has given the Vita di Sisto-Quinto (Amstel. 1721, 3 vols. in 12mo.), a copious and amusing work, but which does not command our absolute confidence. Yet the character of the man, and the

burst from the gloom of a Franciscan cloister. In a reign of five years he exterminated the outlaws and banditti, abolished the profane sanctuaries of Rome,* formed a naval and military force, restored and emulated the monuments of antiquity, and after a liberal use and large increase of the reve nue left five millions of crowns in the castle of St. Angelo. But his justice was sullied with cruelty, his activity was prompted by the ambition of conquest; after his decease the abuses revived; the treasure was dissipated; he entailed on posterity thirty-five new taxes and the venality of offices; and, after his death, his statue was demolished by an ungrateful, or an injured, people.† The wild and original character of Sixtus the Fifth stands alone in the series of the pontiffs; the maxims and effects of their temporal government may be collected from the positive and comparative view of the arts and philosophy, the agriculture and trade, the wealth

principal facts, are supported by the annals of Spondanus and Mura tori (A.D. 1585-1590), and the contemporary history of the great Thuanus (1. 82, c. 1, 2; 1. 84, c. 10; 1. 100, c. 8). [The life of Sixtus V. is an interesting part of Ranke's work (vol. i. p. 333-393). In these sixty pages are well related the humble origin of Felix Peretti, this early training, his first steps in the Church, his connection with the Inquisition and Jesuits, his attainment of the Papal chair, his adminis trative activity, his oppressive taxes, his public works, the sale of offices, by which he obtained nearly a million and a half of silver scudi, and his influence on the intellectual tendency of the age, by employing the Fine Arts as the most efficient handmaids of the church. -ED.] *These privileged places, the quartieri or franchises, were adopted from the Roman nobles, by the foreign ministers. Julius II. had once abolished the abominandum et detestandum franchitiarum hujusmodi nomen; and after Sixtus V. they again revived. I cannot discern either the justice or magnanimity of Louis XIV., who, in 1687, sent his ambassador, the marquis de Lavard, into Rome, with an armed force of a thousand officers, guards, and domestics, to maintain this iniquitous claim, and insult pope Innocent XI. in the heart of his capital. (Vita di Sisto V. tom. iii. p. 260-278; Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. xv. p. 494-496 ; Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV. tom. ii. c. 14, p. 58, 59.)

and

This outrage produced a decree, which was inscribed on marble, and placed in the Capitol. It is expressed in a style of manly simplicity and freedom: Si quis, sive privatus, sive magistratum gerens, de collocandâ vivo pontifici statuâ mentionem facere ausit, legitimo S. P. Q. R. decreto in perpetuum infamis et publicorum munerum expers esto. MDXC. Mense Augusto. (Vita di Sisto V. tom. iii. p. 469.) I believe that this decree is still observed, and I know that every monarch who deserves a statue, should himself impose the prohibition,

and population, of the ecclesiastical State. For myself, it is my wish to depart in charity with all mankind, nor am I willing, in these last moments, to offend even the pope and clergy of Rome.*

* The histories of the Church, Italy and Christendom, have contributed to the chapter which I now conclude. In the original Lives of the Popes, we often discover the city and republic of Rome; and the events of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are preserved in the rude and domestic chronicles, which have carefully inspected, and shall recapitulate in the order of time. 1. Monaldeschi (Ludovici Boncomitis) Fragmenta Annalium Roman. A.D. 1328, in the Scriptores Rerum Italicarum of Muratori, tom. xii. p. 525. N.B. The credit of this fragment is somewhat hurt by a singular interpolation, in which the author relates his own death at the age of one hundred and fifteen years.

2. Fragmenta Historiæ Romanæ (vulgo Tomaso Fortifiocca), in Romana Dialecto Vulgari (A.D. 1327-1354), in Muratori, Antiquitat. Italiæ medii Evi, tom. iii. p. 247-548: the authentic ground-work of the history of Rienzi.

3. Delphini (Gentilis) Diarium Romanum (A.D. 1370-1410), in the Rerum Italicarum, tom. iii. p. 2. 846.

4. Antonii (Petri) Diarium Rom. (A.D. 1404-1417) tom. xxiv. p. 969. 5. Petroni (Pauli) Miscellanea Historica Romana (A.D. 1433-1446), tom. xxiv. p. 1101.

6. Volaterrani (Jacob.) Diarium Rom. (A.D. 1472-1484) tom. xxiii. p. 81.

7. Anonymi Diarium Urbis Romæ (A.D. 1481–1492), tom. iii. p. 2, p. 1069.

8. Infessura (Stephani) Diarium Romanum (A.D. 1294, or 1378-1494), tom. iii. p. 2, p. 1109.

9. Historia Arcana Alexandri VI. sive Excerpta ex Diario Joh. Burcardi (A.D. 1492-1503), edita a Godefr. Gulielm. Leibnizio, Hanover, 1697, in quarto. The large and valuable Journal of Burcard might be completed from the MSS. in different libraries of Italy and France. (M. de Foncemagne, in the Mémoires de l'Acad. des Inscrip. tom. xvii. p. 597-606.)

Except the last, all these fragments and diaries are inserted in the Collections of Muratori, my guide and master in the history of Italy. His country, and the public, are indebted to him for the following works on that subject: 1. Rerum Italicarum Scriptores (A.D. 5001500), quorum potissima pars nunc primum in lucem prodit, &c. twenty-eight vols. in folio, Milan, 1723-1738, 1751. A volume of chronological and alphabetical tables is still wanting as a key to this great work, which is yet in a disorderly and defective state. 2. Antiquitates Italia medii Ævi, six vols. in folio, Milan, 1738-1743, in seventy-five curious dissertations on the manners, government, religion, &c. of the Italians of the darker ages, with a large supplement of charters, chronicles, &c. 3. Dissertazioni sopra le Antichità Italiane, three vols, in quarto, Milano, 1751, a free version by the author, which

CHAPTER LXXI.-PROSPECT OF THE RUINS OF ROME IN THE

FIFTEENTH CENTURY. FOUR CAUSES OF DECAY AND DESTRUCTION.EXAMPLE OF THE COLISEUM.-RENOVATION OF THE CITY.-CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE WORK.

In the last days of pope Eugenius the Fourth, two of his servants, the learned Poggius* and a friend, ascended the Capitoline hill; reposed themselves among the ruins of columns and temples; and viewed from that commanding spot the wide and various prospect of desolation.† The place and the object gave ample scope for moralizing on the vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave; and it was agreed, that in proportion to her

may be quoted with the same confidence as the Latin text of the Antiquities. 4. Annali d'Italia, eighteen vols. in octavo, Milan, 1753 -1756, a dry though accurate and useful abridgment of the history of Italy from the birth of Christ to the middle of the eighteenth century. 5. Dell' Antichità Estense ed Italiane, two vols. in folio, Modena, 1717. 1740. In the history of this illustrious race, the parent of our Brunswick kings, the critic is not seduced by the loyalty or gratitude of the subject. In all his works, Muratori approves himself a diligent and laborious writer, who aspires above the prejudices of a Catholic priest. He was born in the year 1672, and died in the year 1750, after passing near sixty years in the libraries of Milan and Modena. (Vita del Proposto Ludovico Antonio Muratori, by his nephew and successor Gian. Francesco Soli Muratori, Venezia, 1756, in quarto.) [Gibbon appears in this note to lose sight of the early German origin of the Guelphs. (See vol. v. p. 428.) The name and lands of this ancient house were brought into the family of D'Este by the marriage of the heiress Cunegonda with the marquis Albert Azzo. (See vol. vi. p. 475.) Her son assumed the patronymic and territorial rights of her race; he and his posterity branched off from his father's line and became German princes. Even the marriage of his son with Matilda, countess of Tuscany, gave him no permanent standing in Italy. (Muratori, Annali d'Italia, xiv. 438; xv. 24-37, Venezia, 1790.)-ED.]

I have already (note p. 182, in chap. 65) mentioned the age, cha racter, and writings of Poggius; and particularly noticed the date of this elegant moral lecture on the varieties of fortune. [Gibbon forgot here that in his former note he had fixed 1430 as the date of this composition, "a short time before the death of Pope Martin V." -ED.] + Consedimus in ipsis Tarpeiæ arcis ruinis pone ingens portæ cujusdam, ut puto, templi marmoreum limen, plurimasque passim confractas columnas, unde magna ex parte prospectus urbis patet (p. 5).

former greatness, the fall of Rome was the more awful and deplorable. "Her primæval state, such as she might appear in a remote age, when Evander entertained the stranger of Troy, has been delineated by the fancy of Virgil. This Tarpeian rock was then a savage and solitary thicket; in the time of the poet, it was crowned with the golden roofs of a temple; the temple is overthrown, the gold has been pillaged, the wheel of fortune has accomplished her revolution, and the sacred ground is again disfigured with thorns and brambles. The hill of the Capitol, on which we sit, was formerly the head of the Roman empire, the citadel of the earth, the terror of kings; illustrated by the footsteps of so many triumphs, enriched with the spoils and tributes of so many nations. This spectacle of the world, how is it fallen! how changed! how defaced! the path of victory is obliterated by vines, and the benches of the senators are concealed by a dunghill. Cast your eyes on the Palatine hill, and seek among the shapeless and enormous fragments, the marble theatre, the obelisks, the colossal statues, the porticoes of Nero's palace: survey the other hills of the city, the vacant space is interrupted only by ruins and gardens. The forum of the Roman people, where they assembled to enact their laws and elect their magistrates, is now enclosed for the cultivation of pot-herbs, or thrown open for the reception of swine and buffaloes. The public and private edifices, that were founded for eternity, lie prostrate, naked, and broken, like the limbs of a mighty giant; and the ruin is the more visible, from the stupendous relics that have survived the injuries of time and fortune."+

These relics are minutely described by Poggius, one of the first who raised his eyes from the monuments of legendary, to those of classic, superstition. 1. Besides a bridge, an arch, a sepulchre, and the pyramid of Cestius, he could discern, of the age of the republic, a double row of vaults,

....

* Eneid. 8. 97-369. This ancient picture, so artfully introduced, and so exquisitely finished, must have been highly interesting to an inhabitant of Rome; and our early studies allow us to sympathize in the feelings of a Roman. + Capitolium adeo immutatum ut vineæ in senatorum subsellia successerint, stercorum ac purgamentorum receptaculum factum. Respice ad Palatinum montem vasta rudera. . cæteros colles perlustra, omnia vacua ædificiis, ruinis vineisque oppleta conspicies. (Poggius de Varietat. Fortunæ, p. 21.) See Poggius, p. 8-22.

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