A few months after this dancing malady had made its appearance at Aix-la-Chapelle, it broke out at Cologne, where the number of those possessed amounted to more than five hundred, and about the same time at Metz, the streets of which place are said to have been filled with eleven hundred dancers. Peasants left their ploughs, mechanics their workshops, housewives their domestic duties, to join the wild revels, and this rich commercial city became the scene of the most ruinous disorder. Secret desires were excited, and but too often found opportunities for wild enjoyment; and numerous beggars, stimulated by vice and misery, availed themselves of this new complaint to gain a temporary livelihood. Girls and boys quitted their parents, and servants their masters, to amuse themselves at the dances of those possessed, and greedily imbibed the poison of mental infection. Gangs of idle vagabonds, who understood how to imitate to the life the gestures and convulsions of those really affected, roved from place to place seeking maintenance and adventures, and thus, wherever they went, spreading this disgusting spasmodic disease like a plague; for in maladies of this kind the susceptible are infected as easily by the appearance as by the reality. At last it was found necessary to drive away these mischievous guests, who were equally inaccessible to the exorcisms of the priests and the remedies of the physicians. It was not, however, until after four months that the Rhenish cities were able to suppress these impostors, which had so alarmingly increased the original evil. In the mean time, when once called into existence, the plague crept on, and found abundant food in the tone of thought which prevailed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and even, though in a minor degree, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth, causing a permanent disorder of the mind, and exhibiting, in those cities to whose inhabitants it was a novelty, scenes as strange as they were detestable.

Strasburg was visited by the dancing plague, or St. Vitus' dance,[60] in the year 1418, and the same infatuation existed among the people there as in the towns of Belgium and the Lower Rhine. Many who were seized at the sight of those affected, excited attention at first by their confused and absurd behavior, and then by their constantly following the swarms of dancers. These were seen day and night passing through the streets, accompanied by musicians playing on bagpipes, and by innumerable spectators attracted by curiosity, to which were added anxious parents and relations, who came to look after those among the misguided multitude who belonged to their respective families. Imposture and profligacy played their part in this city also, but the morbid delusion itself seems to have predominated. On this account religion could only bring provisional aid, and therefore the town council benevolently took an interest in the afflicted. They divided them into separate parties, to each of which they appointed responsible superintendents to protect them from harm and perhaps also to restrain their turbulence. They were thus conducted on foot and in carriages to the chapels of St. Vitus, near Zabern and Rotestein, where priests were in attendance to work upon their misguided minds by masses and other religious ceremonies. After divine worship was completed, they were led in solemn procession to the altar, where they made some small offering of alms, and where it is probable that many were, through the influence of devotion and the sanctity of the place, cured of this lamentable aberration. It is worthy of observation, at all events, that the dancing mania did not recommence at the altars of the saint, and that from him alone assistance was implored, and through his miraculous interposition a cure was expected, which was beyond the reach of human skill. The personal history of St. Vitus is by no means unimportant in this matter. He was a Sicilian youth, who, together with Modestus and Crescentia, suffered martyrdom at the time of the persecution of the Christians, under Diocletian, in the year 303. The legends respecting him are obscure, and he would certainly have been passed over without notice among the innumerable apocryphal martyrs of the first centuries, had not the transfer of his body to St. Denis, and thence, in the year 836, to Corvey, raised him to a higher rank. From this time forth, it may be supposed that many miracles were manifested at his new sepulchre, which were of essential service in confirming the Roman faith among the Germans, and St. Vitus was soon ranked among the fourteen saintly helpers (Nothhelfer or Apotheker). His altars were multiplied, and the people had recourse to them in all kinds of distresses, and revered him as a powerful intercessor. As the worship of these saints was, however, at that time stripped of all historical connections, which were purposely obliterated by the priesthood, a legend was invented at the beginning of the fifteenth century, or perhaps even so early as the fourteenth, that St. Vitus had, just before he bent his neck to the sword, prayed to God that he might protect from the dancing mania all those who should solemnize the day of his commemoration, and fast upon its eve, and that thereupon a voice from heaven was heard, saying, "Vitus, thy prayer is accepted." Thus St. Vitus became the patron saint of those afflicted with the dancing plague, as St. Martin of Tours was at one time the succorer of persons in smallpox.

The connection which John the Baptist had with the dancing mania of the fourteenth century was of a totally different character. He was originally far from being a protecting saint to those who were attacked, or one who would be likely to give them relief from a malady considered as the work of the devil. On the contrary, the manner in which he was worshipped afforded an important and very evident cause for its development. From the remotest period, perhaps even so far back as the fourth century, St. John's Day was solemnized with all sorts of strange and rude customs, of which the originally mystical meaning was variously disfigured among different nations by super-added relics of heathenism. Thus the Germans transferred to the festival of St. John's Day an ancient heathen usage, the kindling of the Nodfyr, which was forbidden them by St. Boniface, and the belief subsists even to the present day that people and animals that have leaped through these flames, or their smoke, are protected for a whole year from fevers and other diseases, as if by a kind of baptism by fire. Bacchanalian dances, which have originated in similar causes among all the rude nations of the earth, and the wild extravagancies of a heated imagination, were the constant accompaniments of this half-heathen, half-Christian festival. At the period of which we are treating, however, the Germans were not the only people who gave way to the ebullitions of fanaticism in keeping the festival of St. John the Baptist. Similar customs were also to be found among the nations of Southern Europe and of Asia,[61] and it is more than probable that the Greeks transferred to the festival of John the Baptist, who is also held in high esteem among the Mahometans, a part of their Bacchanalian mysteries, an absurdity of a kind which it but too frequently met with in human affairs. How far a remembrance of the history of St. John's death may have had an influence on this occasion we would leave learned theologians to decide. It is of importance here to add only that in Abyssinia, a country entirely separated from Europe, where Christianity has maintained itself in its primeval simplicity against Mahometanism, John is to this day worshipped as protecting saint of those who are attacked with the dancing malady. In these fragments of the dominion of mysticism and superstition, historical connection is not to be found.

When we observe, however, that the first dancers in Aix-la-Chapelle appeared in July with St. John's name in their mouths, the conjecture is probable that the wild revels of St. John's Day, A.D. 1374, gave rise to this mental plague, which thenceforth has visited so many thousands with incurable aberration of mind and disgusting distortions of body.

This is rendered so much the more probable because some months previously the districts in the neighborhood of the Rhine and the Maine had met with great disasters. So early as February both these rivers had overflowed their banks to a great extent; the walls of the town of Cologne, on the side next the Rhine, had fallen down, and a great many villages had been reduced to the utmost distress. To this was added the miserable condition of Western and Southern Germany. Neither law nor edict could suppress the incessant feuds of the barons, and in Franconia especially the ancient times of club law appeared to be revived. Security of property there was none; arbitrary will everywhere prevailed; corruption of morals and rude power rarely met with even a feeble opposition; whence it arose that the cruel, but lucrative, persecutions of the Jews were in many places still practised, through the whole of this century, with their wonted ferocity. Thus, throughout the western parts of Germany, and especially in the districts bordering on the Rhine, there was a wretched and oppressed populace; and if we take into consideration that among their numerous bands many wandered about whose consciences were tormented with the recollection of the crimes which they had committed during the prevalence of the black plague, we shall comprehend how their despair sought relief in the intoxication of an artificial delirium. There is hence good ground for supposing that the frantic celebration of the festival of St. John, A.D. 1374, only served to bring to a crisis a malady which had been long impending; and if we would further inquire how a hitherto harmless usage, which like many others had but served to keep up superstition, could degenerate into so serious a disease, we must take into account the unusual excitement of men's minds and the consequences of wretchedness and want. The bowels, which in many were debilitated by hunger and bad food, were precisely the parts which in most cases were attacked with excruciating pain, and the tympanitic state of the intestines points out to the intelligent physician an origin of the disorder which is well worth consideration.

The dancing mania of the year 1374 was, in fact, no new disease, but a phenomenon well known in the Middle Ages, of which many wondrous stories were traditionally current among the people. In the year 1237, upward of a hundred children were said to have been suddenly seized with this disease at Erfurt, and to have proceeded dancing and jumping along the road to Arnstadt. When they arrived at that place they fell exhausted to the ground, and, according to an account of an old chronicle, many of them, after they were taken home by their parents, died, and the rest remained affected to the end of their lives with the permanent tremor. Another occurrence was related to have taken place on the Mosel bridge at Utrecht, on June 17, 1278, when two hundred fanatics began to dance, and would not desist until a priest passed who was carrying the host to a person that was sick, upon which, as if in punishment of their crime, the bridge gave way, and they were all drowned. A similar event also occurred, so early as the year 1027, near the convent church of Kolbig, not far from Bernburg. According to an oft-repeated tradition, eighteen peasants, some of whose names are still preserved, are said to have disturbed divine service on Christmas Eve by dancing and brawling in the church-yard, whereupon the priest, Ruprecht, inflicted a curse upon them, that they should dance and scream for a whole year without ceasing. This curse is stated to have been completely fulfilled, so that the unfortunate sufferers at length sank knee deep into the earth, and remained the whole time without nourishment, until they were finally released by the intercession of two pious bishops. It is said that upon this they fell into a deep sleep, which lasted three days, and that four of them died; the rest continuing to suffer all their lives from a trembling of their limbs.[62] It is not worth while to separate what may have been true and what the addition of crafty priests in this strangely distorted story. It is sufficient that it was believed, and related with astonishment and horror, throughout the Middle Ages, so that, when there was any exciting cause for this delirious raving, and wild rage for dancing, it failed not to produce its effects upon men whose thoughts were given up to a belief in wonders and apparitions.

This disposition of mind, altogether so peculiar to the Middle Ages, and which, happily for mankind, has yielded to an improved state of civilization and the diffusion of popular instruction, accounts for the origin and long duration of this extraordinary mental disorder. The good sense of the people recoiled with horror and aversion from this heavy plague, which, whenever malevolent persons wished to curse their bitterest enemies and adversaries, was long after used as a malediction.[63] The indignation also that was felt by the people at large against the immorality of the age was proved by their ascribing this frightful affliction to the inefficacy of baptism by unchaste priests, as if innocent children were doomed to atone, in after years, for this desecration of the sacrament administered by unholy hands. We have already mentioned what perils the priests in the Netherlands incurred from this belief. They now, indeed, endeavored to hasten their reconciliation with the irritated and at that time very degenerate people by exorcisms, which, with some, procured them greater respect than ever, because they thus visibly restored thousands of those who were affected. In general, however, there prevailed a want of confidence in their efficacy, and then the sacred rites had as little power in arresting the progress of this deeply rooted malady as the prayers and holy services subsequently had at the altars of the greatly revered martyr St. Vitus. We may, therefore, ascribe it to accident merely, and to a certain aversion to this demoniacal disease, which seemed to lie beyond the reach of human skill, that we meet with but few and imperfect notices of the St. Vitus' dance in the second half of the fifteenth century. The highly colored descriptions of the sixteenth century contradict the notion that this mental plague had in any degree diminished in its severity, and not a single fact is to be found which supports the opinion that any one of the essential symptoms of the disease, not even excepting the tympany, had disappeared, or that the disorder itself had become milder in its attacks. The physicians never, as it seems, throughout the whole of the fifteenth century, undertook the treatment of the dancing mania, which, according to the prevailing notions, appertained exclusively to the servants of the Church. Against demoniacal disorders they had no remedies, and though some at first did promulgate the opinion that the malady had its origin in natural circumstances, such as a hot temperament, and other causes named in the phraseology of the schools, yet these opinions were the less examined, as it did not appear worth while to divide with a jealous priesthood the care of a host of fanatical vagabonds and beggars.

It was not until the beginning of the sixteenth century that the St. Vitus' dance was made the subject of medical research, and stripped of its unhallowed character as a work of demons. This was effected by Paracelsus, that mighty, but as yet scarcely comprehended, reformer of medicine, whose aim it was to withdraw diseases from the pale of miraculous interpositions and saintly influences, and explain their causes upon principles deduced from his knowledge of the human frame. "We will not, however, admit that the saints have power to inflict diseases, and that these ought to be named after them, although many there are who in their theology lay great stress on this supposition, ascribing them rather to God than to nature, which is but idle talk. We dislike such nonsensical gossip as is not supported by symptoms, but only by faith, a thing which is not human, whereon the gods themselves set no value."

Such were the words which Paracelsus addressed to his contemporaries, who were as yet incapable of appreciating doctrines of this sort; for the belief in enchantment still remained everywhere unshaken, and faith in the world of spirits still held men's minds in so close a bondage that thousands were, according to their own conviction, given up as a prey to the devil; while, at the command of religion as well as of law, countless piles were lighted, by the flames of which human society was to be purified.

Paracelsus divides the St. Vitus' dance into three kinds: First, that which arises from imagination (Vitista, chorea imaginativa, aestimativa), by which the original dancing plague is to be understood; secondly, that which arises from sensual desires, depending on the will (chorea lasciva); thirdly, that which arises from corporeal causes (chorea naturalis, coacta), which, according to a strange notion of his own, he explained by maintaining that in certain vessels which are susceptible of an internal pruriency, and thence produce laughter, the blood is set in commotion, in consequence of an alteration in the vital spirits, whereby involuntary fits of intoxicating joy, and a propensity to dance, are occasioned. To this notion he was, no doubt, led from having observed a milder form of St. Vitus' dance, not uncommon in his time, which was accompanied by involuntary laughter, and which bore a resemblance to the hysterical laughter of the moderns, except that it was characterized by more pleasurable sensations, and by an extravagant propensity to dance. There was no howling, screaming, and jumping, as in the severer form; neither was the disposition to dance by any means insuperable. Patients thus affected, although they had not a complete control over their understandings, yet were sufficiently self-possessed, during the attack, to obey the directions which they received. There were even some among them who did not dance at all, but only felt an involuntary impulse to allay the internal sense of disquietude, which is the usual forerunner of an attack of this kind, by laughter, and quick walking carried to the extent of producing fatigue. This disorder, so different from the original type, evidently approximates to the modern chorea, or rather is in perfect accordance with it, even to the less essential symptom of laughter. A mitigation in the form of the dancing mania had thus clearly taken place at the commencement of the sixteenth century.

On the communication of the St. Vitus' dance by sympathy, Paracelsus, in his peculiar language, expresses himself with great spirit, and shows a profound knowledge of the nature of sensual impressions, which find their way to the heart—the seat of joys and emotions—which overpower the opposition of reason; and while "all other qualities and natures" are subdued, incessantly impel the patient, in consequence of his original compliance, and his all-conquering imagination, to imitate what he has seen. On his treatment of the disease we cannot bestow any great praise, but must be content with the remark that it was in conformity with the notions of the age in which he lived. For the first kind, which often originated in passionate excitement, he had a mental remedy, the efficacy of which is not to be despised, if we estimate its value in connection with the prevalent opinions of those times. The patient was to make an image of himself in wax or resin, and by an effort of thought to concentrate all his blasphemies and sins in it. "Without the intervention of any other person, to set his whole mind and thoughts concerning these oaths in the image;" and when he had succeeded in this, he was to burn the image, so that not a particle of it should remain.[64] In all this there was no mention made of St. Vitus, or any of the other mediatory saints, which is accounted for by the circumstance, that, at this time, an open rebellion against the Romish Church had begun, and the worship of saints was by many rejected as idolatrous. For the second kind of St. Vitus' dance, Paracelsus recommended harsh treatment and strict fasting. He directed that the patients should be deprived of their liberty, placed in solitary confinement, and made to sit in an uncomfortable place, until their misery brought them to their senses and to a feeling of penitence. He then permitted them gradually to return to their accustomed habits. Severe corporal chastisement was not omitted; but, on the other hand, angry resistance on the part of the patient was to be sedulously avoided, on the ground that it might increase his malady, or even destroy him; moreover, where it seemed proper, Paracelsus allayed the excitement of the nerves by immersion in cold water. On the treatment of the third kind we shall not here enlarge. It was to be effected by all sorts of wonderful remedies, composed of the quintessences; and it would require, to render it intelligible, a more extended exposition of peculiar principles than suits our present purpose.

About this time the St. Vitus' dance began to decline, so that milder forms of it appeared more frequently, while the severer cases became more rare; and even in these, some of the important symptoms gradually disappeared. Paracelsus makes no mention of the tympanites as taking place after the attacks, although it may occasionally have occurred; and Schenck von Graffenberg, a celebrated physician of the latter half of the sixteenth century, speaks of this disease as having been frequent only in the time of his forefathers.



ELECTION OF ANTIPOPE CLEMENT VII

Beginning of the Great Schism

A.D. 1378

HENRY HART MILMAN

In 1308 Pope Clement V, a Frenchman, under the influence of King Philip the Fair, of France, transferred the papal chair from Rome to Avignon, a possession of the holy see beyond the Alps, in Philip's dominions. The sojourn there of Clement and his successors, which continued until 1376, is known as the "Babylonish captivity" of the popes.

Rome, from the first, was angry at this loss of supremacy, and aimed at recovering her prestige; and throughout the Christian world—France alone excepted—it was regarded as a scandal that the chair of St. Peter should rest on any soil but that of the Eternal City; but the French kings, and the cardinals of France—outnumbering all others in the sacred college—were determined to retain the pontifical seat in their own territory.

During the pontificate of Gregory XI (1371-1378) Italy was torn by civil dissensions; the "free companies"—bands of organized marauders—ravaged the country with fire and sword, plundering Guelf and Ghibelline alike. Gregory's legates in the government of the ecclesiastical states rendered themselves so odious to the people by their immorality and rapacity that a league of the more powerful political factions was formed for throwing off the yoke of the "absentee" papal rulers. This was the beginning of the War of Liberation (1375) that was to shake the papal power in Italy to its very foundations.

Gregory saw that, in order to preserve even a vestige of temporal power in the Italian states, he must act with crushing vigor. He therefore sent the cardinal legate, Robert, of Geneva—afterward Antipope Clement VII—into Italy with a company of Breton adventurers dreaded for their ferocity, and trained to plunder in the terrible wars of France. In spite of the atrocities committed by Robert and his hirelings, the revolt continued with unabated fury, and at last Gregory was constrained to return in person to Italy with the purpose of pacifying the turbulent forces. He entered Rome, January 17, 1377; but after a year of futile effort he died, leaving the confusion worse than he found it.

Since, according to ecclesiastical law, the election of a new pope must be held at the place of the last pontiff's decease, great clamor arose among the Romans, whose demands were seconded throughout Europe, for the election of a Roman pope and the ending of the "Babylonish captivity." The history of the Great Schism and election of the rival pontiffs is nowhere to be found in better form of narrative than that of Milman, which here follows.

Gregory XI had hardly expired when Rome burst out into a furious tumult. A Roman pope, at least an Italian pope, was the universal outcry. The conclave must be overawed; the hateful domination of a foreign, a French pontiff, must be broken up, and forever. This was not unforeseen. Before his death Gregory XI had issued a bull conferring the amplest powers on the cardinals to choose, according to their wisdom, the time and the place for the election. It manifestly contemplated their retreat from the turbulent streets of Rome to some place where their deliberations would not be overborne, and the predominant French interest would maintain its superiority. On the other hand there were serious and not groundless apprehensions that the fierce Breton and Gascon bands, at the command of the French cardinals, might dictate to the conclave. The Romans not only armed their civic troops, but sent to Tivoli, Velletri, and the neighboring cities; a strong force was mustered to keep the foreigners in check.

Throughout the interval between the funeral of Gregory and the opening of the conclave, the cardinals were either too jealously watched, or thought it imprudent to attempt flight. Sixteen cardinals were present at Rome, one Spaniard, eleven French, four Italians. The ordinary measures were taken for opening the conclave in the palace near St. Peter's. Five Romans, two ecclesiastics and three laymen, and three Frenchmen were appointed to wait upon and to guard the conclave. The Bishop of Marseilles represented the great chamberlain, who holds the supreme authority during the vacancy of the popedom. The chamberlain, the Archbishop of Arles, brother of the Cardinal of Limoges, had withdrawn into the castle of St. Angelo, to secure his own person and to occupy that important fortress.

The nine solemn days fully elapsed, on the 7th of April they assembled for the conclave. At that instant (inauspicious omen!) a terrible flash of lightning, followed by a stunning peal of thunder, struck through the hall, burning and splitting some of the furniture. The hall of conclave was crowded by a fierce rabble, who refused to retire. After about an hour's strife, the Bishop of Marseilles, by threats, by persuasion, or by entreaty, had expelled all but about forty wild men, armed to the teeth. These ruffians rudely and insolently searched the whole building; they looked under the beds, they examined the places of retreat. They would satisfy themselves whether any armed men were concealed, whether there was any hole, or even drain through which the cardinals could escape. All the time they shouted: "A Roman pope! we will have a Roman pope!" Those without echoed back the savage yell. Before long appeared two ecclesiastics, announcing themselves as delegated by the commonalty of Rome; they demanded to speak with the cardinals. The cardinals dared not refuse. The Romans represented, in firm but not disrespectful language, that for seventy years the holy Roman people had been without their pastor, the supreme head of Christendom. In Rome were many noble and wise ecclesiastics equal to govern the Church: if not in Rome, there were such men in Italy.

They intimated that so great were the fury and determination of the people that, if the conclave should resist, there might be a general massacre, in which probably they themselves, assuredly the cardinals, would perish. The cardinals might hear from every quarter around them the cry: "A Roman pope! if not a Roman, an Italian!" The cardinals replied, that such aged and reverend men must know the rules of the conclave; that no election could be by requisition, favor, fear, or tumult, but by the interposition of the Holy Ghost. To reiterated persuasions and menaces they only said: "We are in your power; you may kill us, but we must act according to God's ordinance. To-morrow we celebrate the mass for the descent of the Holy Ghost; as the Holy Ghost directs, so shall we do." Some of the French uttered words which sounded like defiance. The populace cried: "If ye persist to do despite to Christ, if we have not a Roman pope, we will hew these cardinals and Frenchmen in pieces."

At length the Bishop of Marseilles was able to entirely clear the hall. The cardinals sat down to a plentiful repast; the doors were finally closed. But all the night through they heard in the streets the unceasing clamor: "A Roman pope, a Roman pope!" Toward the morning the tumult became more fierce and dense. Strange men had burst into the belfry of St. Peter's; the clanging bells tolled as if all Rome was on fire.

Within the conclave, the tumult, if less loud and clamorous, was hardly less general. The confusion without and terror within did not allay the angry rivalry, or suspend that subtle play of policy peculiar to the form of election. The French interest was divided; within this circle there was another circle. The single diocese of Limoges, favored as it had been by more than one pope, had almost strength to dictate to the conclave. The Limousins put forward the Cardinal de St. Eustache. Against these the leader was the Cardinal Robert of Geneva, whose fierce and haughty demeanor and sanguinary acts as legate had brought so much of its unpopularity on the administration of Gregory XI. With Robert were the four Italians and three French cardinals. Rather than a Limousin, Robert would even consent to an Italian. They on the one side, the Limousins on the other, had met secretly before the conclave: the eight had sworn not on any account to submit to the election of a traitorous Limousin.

All the sleepless night the cardinals might hear the din at the gate, the yells of the people, the tolling of the bells. There was constant passing and repassing from each other's chamber, intrigues, altercations, manoeuvres, proposals advanced and rejected, promises of support given and withdrawn. Many names were put up. Of the Romans within the conclave two only were named, the old Cardinal of St. Peter's, the Cardinal Jacobo Orsini. The Limousins advanced in turn almost every one of their faction; no one but himself thought of Robert of Geneva.

In the morning the disturbance without waxed more terrible. A vain attempt was made to address the populace by the three cardinal priors; they were driven from the windows with loud derisive shouts, "A Roman! A Roman!" For now the alternative of an Italian had been abandoned; a Roman, none but a Roman, would content the people. The madness of intoxication was added to the madness of popular fury. The rabble had broken open the Pope's cellar and drunk his rich wines. In the conclave the wildest projects were started. The Cardinal Orsini was to dress up a Minorite friar (probably a Spiritual) in the papal robes, to show him to the people, and so for themselves to effect their escape to some safe place and proceed to a legitimate election. The cardinals, from honor or from fear, shrunk from this trick.

At length both parties seemed to concur. Each claimed credit for first advancing the name—which most afterward repudiated—of the Archbishop of Bari, a man of repute for theologic and legal erudition, an Italian, but a subject of the Queen of Naples, who was also Countess of Provence. They came to the nomination. The Cardinal of Florence proposed the Cardinal of St. Peter's. The Cardinal of Limoges arose: "The Cardinal of St. Peter's is too old. The Cardinal of Florence is of a city at war with the holy see. I reject the Cardinal of Milan as the subject of the Visconti, the most deadly enemy of the Church. The Cardinal Orsini is too young, and we must not yield to the clamor of the Romans. I vote for Bartholomew Prignani, Archbishop of Bari." All was acclamation; Orsini alone stood out; he aspired to be the pope of the Romans.

But it was too late; the mob was thundering at the gates, menacing death to the cardinals, if they had not immediately a Roman pontiff. The feeble defences sounded as if they were shattering down; the tramp of the populace was almost heard within the hall. They forced or persuaded the aged Cardinal of St. Peter's to make a desperate effort to save their lives. He appeared at the window, hastily attired in what either was or seemed to be the papal stole and mitre. There was a jubilant and triumphant cry: "We have a Roman pope, the Cardinal of St. Peter's. Long live Rome! Long live St. Peter!" The populace became even more frantic with joy than before with wrath. One band hastened to the Cardinal's palace, and, according to the strange usage, broke in, threw the furniture into the streets, and sacked it from top to bottom. Those around the hall of conclave, aided by the connivance of some of the cardinals' servants within, or by more violent efforts of their own, burst in in all quarters. The supposed pope was surrounded by eager adorers; they were at his feet; they pressed his swollen, gouty hands till he shrieked from pain, and began to protest, in the strongest language, that he was not the pope.

The indignation of the populace at this disappointment was aggravated by an unlucky confusion of names. The Archbishop was mistaken for John of Bari, of the bedchamber of the late pope, a man of harsh manners and dissolute life, an object of general hatred. Five of the cardinals, Robert of Geneva, Acquasparta, Viviers, Poitou, and De Verny, were seized in their attempt to steal away, and driven back, amid contemptuous hootings, by personal violence. Night came on again; the populace, having pillaged all the provisions in the conclave, grew weary of their own excesses. The cardinals fled on all sides. Four left the city; Orsini and St. Eustache escaped to Vicovaro, Robert of Geneva to Zagarolo, St. Angelo to Guardia; six, Limoges, D'Aigrefeuille, Poitou, Viviers, Brittany, and Marmoutiers, to the castle of St. Angelo; Florence, Milan, Montmayeur, Glandeve, and Luna, to their own strong fortresses.

The Pope lay concealed in the Vatican. In the morning the five cardinals in Rome were assembled round him. A message was sent to the bannerets of Rome, announcing his election. The six cardinals in St. Angelo were summoned; they were hardly persuaded to leave their place of security; but without their presence the Archbishop would not declare his assent to his elevation. The Cardinal of Florence, as dean, presented the Pope-elect to the sacred college, and discoursed on the text, "Such ought he to be, an undefiled high-priest." The Archbishop began a long harangue, "Fear and trembling have come upon me, the horror of great darkness." The Cardinal of Florence cut short the ill-timed sermon, demanding whether he accepted the pontificate. The Archbishop gave his assent; he took the name of Urban VI. Te Deum was intoned; he was lifted to the throne. The fugitives returned to Rome. Urban VI was crowned on Easter Day, in the Church of St. John Lateran. All the cardinals were present at the august ceremony. They announced the election of Urban VI to their brethren who had remained in Avignon. Urban himself addressed the usual encyclic letters, proclaiming his elevation, to all the prelates in Christendom.

None could determine how far the nomination of the Archbishop of Bari was free and uncontrolled by the terrors of the raging populace; but the acknowledgment of Urban VI by all the cardinals, at his inauguration in the holy office—their assistance at his coronation without protest, when some at least might have been safe beyond the walls of Rome—their acceptance of honors, as by the cardinals of Limoges, Poitou, and Aigrefeuille—the homage of all—might seem to annul all possible irregularity in the election, to confirm irrefragably the legitimacy of his title.

Not many days had passed, when the cardinals began to look with dismay and bitter repentance on their own work. "In Urban VI," said a writer of these times (on the side of Urban as rightful pontiff), "was verified the proverb—None is so insolent as a low man suddenly raised to power." The high-born, haughty, luxurious prelates, both French and Italian, found that they had set over themselves a master resolved not only to redress the flagrant and inveterate abuses of the college and of the hierarchy, but also to force on his reforms in the most hasty and insulting way. He did the harshest things in the harshest manner.

The Archbishop of Bari, of mean birth, had risen by the virtues of a monk. He was studious, austere, humble, a diligent reader of the Bible, master of the canon law, rigid in his fasts; he wore haircloth next his skin. His time was divided between study, prayer, and business, for which he had great aptitude. From the poor bishopric of Acherontia he had been promoted to the archbishopric of Bari, and had presided over the papal chancery in Avignon. The monk broke out at once on his elevation in the utmost rudeness and rigor, but the humility changed to the most offensive haughtiness. Almost his first act was a public rebuke in his chapel to all the bishops present for their desertion of their dioceses. He called them perjured traitors. The Bishop of Pampeluna boldly repelled the charge; he was at Rome, he said, on the affairs of his see. In the full consistory Urban preached on the text, "I am the Good Shepherd," and inveighed in a manner not to be mistaken against the wealth and luxury of the cardinals. Their voluptuous banquets were notorious—Petrarch had declaimed against them. The Pope threatened a sumptuary law that they should have but one dish at their table: it was the rule of his own order. He was determined to extirpate simony. A cardinal who should receive presents he menaced with excommunication. He affected to despise wealth. "Thy money perish with thee!" he said to a collector of the papal revenue. He disdained to conceal the most unpopular schemes; he declared his intention not to leave Rome. To the petition of the bannerets of Rome for a promotion of cardinals, he openly avowed his design to make so large a nomination that the Italians should resume their ascendency over the Ultramontanes. The Cardinal of Geneva turned pale and left the consistory. Urban declared himself determined to do equal justice between man and man, between the kings of France and England. The French cardinals, and those in the pay of France, heard this with great indignation.

The manners of Urban were even more offensive than his acts. "Hold your tongue!" "You have talked long enough!" were his common phrases to his mitred counsellors. He called the Cardinal Orsini a fool. He charged the Cardinal of St. Marcellus of Amiens, on his return from his legation in Tuscany, with having robbed the treasures of the Church. The charge was not less insulting for its justice. The Cardinal of Amiens, instead of allaying the feuds of France and England, which it was his holy mission to allay, had inflamed them in order to glut his own insatiable avarice by draining the wealth of both countries in the Pope's name. "As Archbishop of Bari, you lie," was the reply of the high-born Frenchman. On one occasion such high words passed with the Cardinal of Limoges that but for the interposition of another cardinal the Pope would have rushed on him, and there had been a personal conflict.

Such were among the stories of the time. Friends and foes agree in attributing the schism, at least the immediate schism, to the imprudent zeal, the imperiousness, the ungovernable temper of Pope Urban. The cardinals among themselves talked of him as mad; they began to murmur that it was a compulsory, therefore invalid, election.

The French cardinals were now at Anagni: they were joined by the Cardinal of Amiens, who had taken no part in the election, but who was burning under the insulting words of the Pope, perhaps not too eager to render an account of his legation. The Pope retired to Tivoli; he summoned the cardinals to that city. They answered that they had gone to large expenses in laying in provisions and making preparations for their residence in Anagni; they had no means to supply a second sojourn in Tivoli. The Pope, with his four Italian cardinals, passed two important acts as sovereign pontiff. He confirmed the election of Wenceslaus, son of Charles IV, to the empire; he completed the treaty with Florence by which the republic paid a large sum to the see of Rome. The amount was seventy thousand florins in the course of the year, one hundred and eighty thousand in four years, for the expenses of the war. They were relieved from ecclesiastical censures, under which this enlightened republic, though Italian, trembled, even from a pope of doubtful title. Their awe showed perhaps the weakness and dissensions in Florence rather than the papal power.

The cardinals at Anagni sent a summons to their brethren inviting them to share in their counsels concerning the compulsory election of the successor to Gregory XI. Already the opinions of great legists had been taken; some of them, that of the famous Baldus, may still be read. He was in favor of the validity of the election.

But grave legal arguments and ecclesiastical logic were not to decide a contest which had stirred so deeply the passions and interests of two great factions. France and Italy were at strife for the popedom. The Ultramontane cardinals would not tamely abandon a power which had given them rank, wealth, luxury, virtually the spiritual supremacy of the world, for seventy years. Italy, Rome, would not forego the golden opportunity of resuming the long-lost authority. On the 9th of August the cardinals at Anagni publicly declared, they announced in encyclic letters addressed to the faithful in all Christendom, that the election of Urban VI was carried by force and the fear of death; that through the same force and fear he had been inaugurated, enthroned, and crowned; that he was an apostate, an accursed antichrist. They pronounced him a tyrannical usurper of the popedom, a wolf that had stolen into the fold. They called upon him to descend at once from the throne which he occupied without canonical title; if repentant, he might find mercy; if he persisted he would provoke the indignation of God, of the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, and all of the saints, for his violation of the Spouse of Christ, the common Mother of the Faithful. It was signed by thirteen cardinals. The more pious and devout were shocked at this avowal of cowardice; cardinals who would not be martyrs in the cause of truth and of spiritual freedom condemned themselves.

But letters and appeals to the judgment of the world, and awful maledictions, were not their only resources. The fierce Breton bands were used to march and to be indulged in their worst excesses under the banner of the Cardinal of Geneva. As Ultramontanists it was their interest, their inclination, to espouse the Ultramontane cause. They arrayed themselves to advance and join the cardinals at Anagni. The Romans rose to oppose them; a fight took place near the Ponte Salario, three hundred Romans lay dead on the field.

Urban VI was as blind to cautious temporal as to cautious ecclesiastical policy. Every act of the Pope raised him up new enemies. Joanna, Queen of Naples, had hailed the elevation of her subject the Archbishop of Bari. Naples had been brilliantly illuminated. Shiploads of fruit and wines, and the more solid gift of twenty thousand florins, had been her oblations to the Pope. Her husband, Otho of Brunswick, had gone to Rome to pay his personal homage. His object was to determine in his own favor the succession to the realm. The reception of Otho was cold and repulsive; he returned in disgust. The Queen eagerly listened to suspicions, skilfully awakened, that Urban meditated the resumption of the fief of Naples, and its grant to the rival house of Hungary. She became the sworn ally of the cardinals at Anagni. Honorato Gaetani, Count of Fondi, one of the most turbulent barons of the land, demanded of the Pontiff twenty thousand florins advanced on loan to Gregory XI. Urban not only rejected the claim, declaring it a personal debt of the late Pope, not of the holy see, he also deprived Gaetani of his fief, and granted it to his mortal enemy, the Count San Severino. Gaetani began immediately to seize the adjacent castles in Campania, and invited the cardinals to his stronghold at Fondi. The Archbishop of Arles, chamberlain of the late Pope, leaving the castle of St. Angelo under the guard of a commander who long refused all orders from Pope Urban, brought to Anagni the jewels and ornaments of the papacy, which had been carried for security to St. Angelo. The prefect of the city, De Vico, Lord of Viterbo, had been won over by the Cardinal of Amiens.

The four Italian cardinals still adhered to Pope Urban. They labored hard to mediate between the conflicting parties. Conferences were held at Zagarolo and other places; when the French cardinals had retired to Fondi, the Italians took up their quarters at Subiaco. The Cardinal of St. Peter's, worn out with age and trouble, withdrew to Rome, and soon after died. He left a testamentary document declaring the validity of the election of Urban. The French cardinals had declared the election void; they were debating the next step. Some suggested the appointment of a coadjutor. They were now sure of the support of the King of France, who would not easily surrender his influence over a pope at Avignon, and of the Queen of Naples, estranged by the pride of Urban, and secretly stimulated by the Cardinal Orsini, who had not forgiven his own loss of the tiara. Yet even now they seemed to shrink from the creation of an antipope. Urban precipitated and made inevitable this disastrous event. He was now alone; the Cardinal of St. Peter's was dead; Florence, Milan, and the Orsini stood aloof; they seemed only to wait to be thrown off by Urban, to join the adverse faction. Urban at first declared his intention to create nine cardinals; he proceeded at once, and without warning, to create twenty-six.[65] By this step the French and Italian cardinals together were now but an insignificant minority. They were instantly one. All must be risked or all lost.

On September 20th, at Fondi, Robert of Geneva was elected pope in the presence of all the cardinals (except St. Peter's) who had chosen, inaugurated, enthroned, and for a time obeyed Urban VI. The Italians refused to give their suffrages, but entered no protest. They retired into their castles and remained aloof from the schism. Orsini died before long at Tagliacozzo. The qualifications which, according to his partial biographer, recommended the Cardinal of Geneva, were rather those of a successor to John Hawkwood or to a duke of Milan, than of the apostles. Extraordinary activity of body and endurance of fatigue, courage which would hazard his life to put down the intrusive pope, sagacity and experience in the temporal affairs of the Church; high birth, through which he was allied with most of the royal and princely houses of Europe; of austerity, devotion, learning, holiness, charity, not a word. He took the name of Clement VII; the Italians bitterly taunted the mockery of this name, assumed by the captain of the Breton Free Companies—by the author, it was believed, of the massacre at Cesena.

So began the schism which divided Western Christendom for thirty-eight years. Italy, excepting the kingdom of Joanna of Naples, adhered to her native pontiff; Germany and Bohemia to the pontiff who had recognized King Wenceslaus as emperor; England to the pontiff hostile to France;[66] Hungary to the pontiff who might support her pretentions to Naples; Poland and the Northern kingdoms, with Portugal, espoused the same cause. France at first stood almost alone in support of her subject, of a pope at Avignon instead of at Rome. Scotland only was with Clement, because England was with Urban. So Flanders was with Urban because France was with Clement. The uncommon abilities of Peter di Luna, the Spanish cardinal (afterward better known under a higher title), detached successively the Spanish kingdoms, Castile, Aragon, and Navarre, from allegiance to Pope Urban.



GENOESE SURRENDER TO VENETIANS

A.D. 1380

HENRY HALLAM

Prolonged commercial rivalry between Genoa and Venice brought them to a state of bitter jealousy which led to furious wars. In the second half of the twelfth century Genoa established her power on the Black Sea, and aimed at a commercial monopoly in that region. This aroused the Venetians to anger and led to open hostilities. The first war growing out of these antagonisms between the two republics began in 1257, and throughout the rest of the thirteenth century hostilities were almost continuous.

In 1351 the Venetians formed an alliance against Genoa with the Greeks and Aragonese, and, in the ensuing war, the advantage gained by Genoa was confirmed by a treaty of peace in 1355. But this peace lasted only until 1378, when a dispute arose between Genoa and Venice in relation to the island of Tenedos, in the AEgean Sea, of which the Venetians had taken possession.

The Venetians, having denounced Genoa as false to all its oaths and obligations, formally declared war in April, after several acts of hostility had occurred in the Levant. Of all the wars between the rival states, this was the most remarkable and led to the most important consequences.

Genoa did not stand alone in this war. A formidable confederacy was raised against Venice, which had given provocation to many enemies. Of this Francis Carrara, seignior of Padua, and the King of Hungary were the leaders. But the principal struggle was, as usual, upon the waves. During the winter of 1378 a Genoese fleet kept the sea, and ravaged the shores of Dalmatia. The Venetian armament had been weakened by an epidemic disease, and when Vittor Pisani, their admiral, gave battle to the enemy, he was compelled to fight with a hasty conscription of landsmen against the best sailors in the world.

Entirely defeated, and taking refuge at Venice with only seven galleys, Pisani was cast into prison, as if his ill-fortune had been his crime. Meanwhile the Genoese fleet, augmented by a strong reenforcement, rode before the long natural ramparts that separate the lagunes of Venice from the Adriatic. Six passages intersect the islands which constitute this barrier, besides the broader outlets of Brondolo and Fossone, through which the waters of the Brenta and the Adige are discharged. The Lagoon itself, as is well known, consists of extremely shallow water, unnavigable for any vessel except along the course of artificial and intricate passages.

Notwithstanding the apparent difficulties of such an enterprise, Pietro Doria, the Genoese admiral, determined to reduce the city. His first successes gave him reason to hope. He forced the passage, and stormed the little town of Chioggia, built upon the inside of the isle bearing that name, about twenty-five miles south of Venice. Nearly four thousand prisoners fell here into his hands—an augury, as it seemed, of a more splendid triumph.

In the consternation this misfortune inspired at Venice, the first impulse was to ask for peace. The ambassadors carried with them seven Genoese prisoners, as a sort of peace-offering to the admiral, and were empowered to make large and humiliating concessions, reserving nothing but the liberty of Venice. Francis Carrara strongly urged his allies to treat for peace. But the Genoese were stimulated by long hatred, and intoxicated by this unexpected opportunity of revenge. Doria, calling the ambassadors into council, thus addressed them: "Ye shall obtain no peace from us, I swear to you, nor from the lord of Padua, till first we have put a curb in the mouths of those wild horses that stand upon the place of St. Mark. When they are bridled you shall have enough of peace. Take back with you your Genoese captives, for I am coming within a few days to release both them and their companions from your prisons."

When this answer was reported to the senate, they prepared to defend themselves with the characteristic firmness of their government. Every eye was turned toward a great man unjustly punished, their admiral, Vittor Pisani. He was called out of prison to defend his country amid general acclamations. Under his vigorous command the canals were fortified or occupied by large vessels armed with artillery; thirty-four galleys were equipped; every citizen contributed according to his power; in the entire want of commercial resources—for Venice had not a merchant-ship during this war—private plate was melted; and the senate held out the promise of ennobling thirty families who should be most forward in this strife of patriotism.

The new fleet was so ill-provided with seamen that for some months the admiral employed them only in manoeuvring along the canals. From some unaccountable supineness, or more probably from the insuperable difficulties of the undertaking, the Genoese made no assault upon the city. They had, indeed, fair grounds to hope its reduction by famine or despair. Every access to the Continent was cut off by the troops of Padua; and the King of Hungary had mastered almost all the Venetian towns in Istria and along the Dalmatian coast. The doge Contarini, taking the chief command, appeared at length with his fleet near Chioggia, before the Genoese were aware. They were still less aware of his secret design. He pushed one of the large round vessels, then called cocche, into the narrow passage of Chioggia which connects the Lagoon with the sea, and, mooring her athwart the channel, interrupted that communication. Attacked with fury by the enemy, this vessel went down on the spot, and the Doge improved his advantage by sinking loads of stones until the passage became absolutely unnavigable.

It was still possible for the Genoese fleet to follow the principal canal of the Lagoon toward Venice and the northern passages, or to sail out of it by the harbor of Brondolo; but, whether from confusion or from miscalculating the dangers of their position, they suffered the Venetians to close the canal upon them by the same means they had used at Chioggia, and even to place their fleet in the entrance of Brondolo so near to the Lagoon that the Genoese could not form their ships in line of battle. The circumstances of the two combatants were thus entirely changed. But the Genoese fleet, though besieged in Chioggia, was impregnable, and their command of the land secured them from famine.

Venice, notwithstanding her unexpected success, was still very far from secure; it was difficult for the Doge to keep his position through the winter; and if the enemy could appear in open sea, the risks of combat were extremely hazardous. It is said that the senate deliberated upon transporting the seat of their liberty to Candia, and that the Doge had announced his intention to raise the siege of Chioggia, if expected succors did not arrive by January 1, 1380. On that very day Carlo Zeno, an admiral who, ignorant of the dangers of his country, had been supporting the honor of her flag in the Levant and on the coast of Liguria, appeared with a reenforcement of eighteen galleys and a store of provisions.

From that moment the confidence of Venice revived. The fleet, now superior in strength to the enemy, began to attack them with vivacity. After several months of obstinate resistance, the Genoese—whom their republic had ineffectually attempted to relieve by a fresh armament—blocked up in the town of Chioggia, and pressed by hunger, were obliged to surrender. Nineteen galleys only, out of forty-eight, were in good condition; and the crews were equally diminished in the ten months of their occupation of Chioggia. The pride of Genoa was deemed to be justly humbled; and even her own historian confesses that God would not suffer so noble a city as Venice to become the spoil of a conqueror.

Though the capture of Chioggia did not terminate the war, both parties were exhausted, and willing, next year, to accept the mediation of the Duke of Savoy. By the peace of Turin, Venice surrendered most of her territorial possessions to the King of Hungary. That Prince and Francis Carrara were the only gainers. Genoa obtained the isle of Tenedos, one of the original subjects of dispute—a poor indemnity for her losses. Though, upon a hasty view, the result of this war appears more unfavorable to Venice, yet in fact it is the epoch of the decline of Genoa. From this time she never commanded the ocean with such navies as before; her commerce gradually went into decay; and the fifteenth century—the most splendid in the annals of Venice—is, till recent times, the most ignominious in those of Genoa. But this was partly owing to internal dissensions, by which her liberty, as well as glory, was for a while suspended.



REBELLION OF WAT TYLER

A.D. 1381

JOHN LINGARD

Richard II, of England, at eleven years of age, succeeded to a heritage of foreign complications and wars, which were a legacy from the reign of his grandfather, Edward III.

At the request of the commons, the lords, in the King's name, appointed nine persons to be a permanent council, and it was resolved that during the King's minority the appointment of all the chief officers of the crown should be with the parliament. The administration was conducted in the King's name, and the whole system was for some years kept together by the secret authority of the King's uncles, especially of the Duke of Lancaster, who was in reality the regent.

France, Scotland, and Castile continued their hostilities against England, and during the first two years of Richard's reign the ministers had no difficulty in obtaining ample grants of money to carry on the wars. In the third year the expense of the campaign in Brittany compelled them to solicit yet additional aid.

Various methods of taxation failing to raise the amount required, the commons, in great discontent, demanded alterations in the council, and after long debate reluctantly consented to the imposition of a new and unusual tax of three groats[67] on every person, male and female, above fifteen years of age. For the relief of the poor it was provided that in the cities and towns the aggregate amount should be divided among the inhabitants according to their abilities, so that no individual should pay less than one groat, or more than sixty groats for himself and his wife. Parliament thereupon was dismissed; but the collection of the tax gave rise to an insurrection which threatened the life of the King and the existence of the government.

At this period [1381] a secret ferment seems to have pervaded the mass of the people in many nations of Europe. Men were no longer willing to submit to the impositions of their rulers, or to wear the chains which had been thrown round the necks of their fathers by a warlike and haughty aristocracy. We may trace this awakening spirit of independence to a variety of causes, operating in the same direction; to the progressive improvement of society, the gradual diffusion of knowledge, the increasing pressure of taxation, and above all to the numerous and lasting wars by which Europe had lately been convulsed. Necessity had often compelled both the sovereigns and nobles to court the good-will of the people; the burghers in the towns and inferior tenants in the country had learned, from the repeated demands made upon them, to form notions of their own importance; and the archers and foot-soldiers, who had served for years in the wars, were, at their return home, unwilling to sit down in the humble station of bondmen to their former lords. In Flanders the commons had risen against their Count Louis, and had driven him out of his dominions; in France the populace had taken possession of Paris and Rouen, and massacred the collectors of the revenue. In England a spirit of discontent agitated the whole body of the villeins, who remained in almost the same situation in which we left them at the Norman Conquest. They were still attached to the soil, talliable at the will of the lord, and bound to pay the fines for the marriage of their females, to perform customary labor, and to render the other servile prestations incident to their condition. It is true that in the course of time many had obtained the rights of freemen. Occasionally the king or the lord would liberate at once all the bondmen on some particular domain, in return for a fixed rent to be yearly assessed on the inhabitants.

But the progress of emancipation was slow; the improved condition of their former fellows served only to embitter the discontent of those who still wore the fetters of servitude; and in many places the villeins formed associations for their mutual support, and availed themselves of every expedient in their power to free themselves from the control of their lords. In the first year of Richard's reign a complaint was laid before parliament that in many districts they had purchased exemplifications out of the Domesday Book in the king's court, and under a false interpretation of that record had pretended to be discharged of all manner of servitude both as to their bodies and their tenures, and would not suffer the officers of their lords either to levy distress or to do justice upon them. It was in vain that such exemplifications were declared of no force, and that commissions were ordered for the punishment of the rebellious. The villeins, by their union and perseverance, contrived to intimidate their lords, and set at defiance the severity of the law. To this resistance they were encouraged by the diffusion of the doctrines so recently taught by Wycliffe, that the right of property was founded in grace, and that no man, who was by sin a traitor to God, could be entitled to the services of others; at the same time itinerant preachers sedulously inculcated the natural equality of mankind, and the tyranny of artificial distinctions; and the poorer classes, still smarting under the exactions of the late reign, were by the impositions of the new tax wound up to a pitch of madness. Thus the materials had been prepared; it required but a spark to set the whole country in a blaze.

It was soon discovered that the receipts of the treasury would fall short of the expected amount; and commissions were issued to different persons to inquire into the conduct of the collectors, and to compel payment from those who had been favored or overlooked. One of these commissioners, Thomas de Bampton, sat at Brentwood in Essex; but the men of Fobbings refused to answer before him; and when the chief justice of the common pleas attempted to punish their contumacy, they compelled him to flee, murdered the jurors and clerks of the commission, and, carrying their heads upon poles, claimed the support of the nearest townships. In a few days all the commons of Essex were in a state of insurrection, under the command of a profligate priest, who had assumed the name of Jack Straw.

The men of Kent were not long behind their neighbors in Essex. At Dartford one of the collectors had demanded the tax for a young girl, the daughter of a tyler. Her mother maintained that she was under the age required by the statute; and the officer was proceeding to ascertain the fact by an indecent exposure of her person, when her father, who had just returned from work, with a stroke of his hammer beat out the offender's brains. His courage was applauded by his neighbors. They swore that they would protect him from punishment, and by threats and promises secured the cooperation of all the villages in the western division of Kent.

A third party of insurgents was formed by the men of Gravesend, irritated at the conduct of Sir Simon Burley. He had claimed one of the burghers as his bondman, refused to grant him his freedom at a less price than three hundred pounds, and sent him a prisoner to the castle of Rochester. With the aid of a body of insurgents from Essex, the castle was taken and the captive liberated. At Maidstone they appointed Wat the tyler, of that town, leader of the commons of Kent, and took with them an itinerant preacher of the name of John Ball, who for his seditious and heterodox harangues had been confined by order of the archbishop. The mayor and aldermen of Canterbury were compelled to swear fidelity to the good cause; several of the citizens were slain; and five hundred joined them in their intended march toward London. When they reached Blackheath their numbers are said to have amounted to one hundred thousand men. To this lawless and tumultuous multitude Ball was appointed preacher, and assumed for the text of his first sermon the following lines:

"When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?"

He told them that by nature all men were born equal; that the distinction of bondage and freedom was the invention of their oppressors, and contrary to the views of their Creator; that God now offered them the means of recovering their liberty, and that, if they continued slaves, the blame must rest with themselves; that it was necessary to dispose of the archbishop, the earls and barons, the judges, lawyers, and questmongers; and that when the distinction of ranks was abolished, all would be free, because all would be of the same nobility and of equal authority. His discourse was received with shouts of applause by his infatuated hearers, who promised to make him, in defiance of his own doctrines, archbishop of Canterbury and chancellor of the realm.

By letters and messengers the knowledge of these proceedings was carefully propagated through the neighboring counties. Everywhere the people had been prepared; and in a few days the flame spread from the southern coast of Kent to the right bank of the Humber. In all places the insurgents regularly pursued the same course. They pillaged the manors of their lords, demolished the houses, and burned the court rolls; cut off the heads of every justice and lawyer and juror who fell into their hands; and swore all others to be true to King Richard and the commons; to admit of no king of the name of John; and to oppose all taxes but fifteenths, the ancient tallage paid by their fathers. The members of the council saw, with astonishment, the sudden rise and rapid spread of the insurrection; and, bewildered by their fears and ignorance, knew not whom to trust or what measures to pursue.

The first who encountered the rabble on Blackheath was the Princess of Wales, the King's mother, on her return from a pilgrimage to Canterbury. She liberated herself from danger by her own address; and a few kisses from "the fair maid of Kent" purchased the protection of the leaders, and secured the respect of their followers. She was permitted to join her son, who, with his cousin Henry, Earl of Derby, Simon, Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor, Sir Robert Hales, master of the Knights of St. John and treasurer, and about one hundred sergeants and knights had left the castle of Windsor, and repaired for greater security to the Tower of London. The next morning the King in his barge descended the river to receive the petitions of the insurgents. To the number of ten thousand, with two banners of St. George, and sixty pennons, they waited his arrival at Rotherhithe; but their horrid yells and uncouth appearance so intimidated his attendants, that instead of permitting him to land, they took advantage of the tide, and returned with precipitation. Tyler and Straw, irritated by this disappointment, led their men into Southwark, where they demolished the houses belonging to the Marshalsea and the king's bench, while another party forced their way into the palace of the Archbishop at Lambeth, and burned the furniture with the records belonging to the chancery.

The next morning they were allowed to pass in small companies, according to their different townships, over the bridge into the city. The populace joined them; and as soon as they had regaled themselves at the cost of the richer inhabitants, the work of devastation commenced. They demolished Newgate, and liberated the prisoners; plundered and destroyed the magnificent palace of the Savoy, belonging to the Duke of Lancaster; burned the temple with the books and records; and despatched a party to set fire to the house of the Knights Hospitallers at Clerkenwell, which had been lately built by Sir Robert Hales. To prove, however, that they had no views of private emolument, a proclamation was issued forbidding any one to secrete part of the plunder; and so severely was the prohibition enforced that the plate was hammered and cut into small pieces, the precious stones were beaten to powder, and one of the rioters, who had concealed a silver cup in his bosom, was immediately thrown, with his prize, into the river. To every man whom they met they put the question, "With whom holdest thou?" and unless he gave the proper answer, "With King Richard and the commons," he was instantly beheaded. But the principal objects of their cruelty were the natives of Flanders. They dragged thirteen Flemings out of one church, seventeen out of another, and thirty-two out of the Vintry, and struck off their heads with shouts of triumph and exultation. In the evening, wearied with the labor of the day, they dispersed through the streets, and indulged in every kind of debauchery.

During this night of suspense and terror, the Princess of Wales held a council with the ministers in the Tower. The King's uncles were absent; the garrison, though perhaps able to defend the place, was too weak to put down the insurgents; and a resolution was taken to try the influence of promises and concession. In the morning the Tower Hill was seen covered with an immense multitude, who prohibited the introduction of provisions, and with loud cries demanded the heads of the chancellor and treasurer. In return, a herald ordered them, by proclamation, to retire to Mile End, where the King would assent to all their demands. Immediately the gates were thrown open. Richard with a few unarmed attendants rode forward; the best intentioned of the crowd followed him, and at Mile End he saw himself surrounded with sixty thousand petitioners. Their demands were reduced to four: the abolition of slavery; the reduction of the rent of land to fourpence the acre; the free liberty of buying and selling in all fairs and markets; and a general pardon for past offences. A charter to that effect was engrossed for each parish and township; during the night thirty clerks were employed in transcribing a sufficient number of copies; they were sealed and delivered in the morning; and the whole body, consisting chiefly of the men of Essex and Hertfordshire, retired, bearing the King's banner as a token that they were under his protection.

But Tyler and Straw had formed other and more ambitious designs. The moment the King was gone, they rushed, at the head of four hundred men, into the Tower. The Archbishop, who had just celebrated mass, Sir Robert Hales, William Apuldore, the King's confessor, Legge, the farmer of the tax, and three of his associates, were seized, and led to immediate execution.[68] As no opposition was offered, they searched every part of the Tower, burst into the private apartment of the Princess, and probed her bed with their swords. She fainted, and was carried by her ladies to the river, which she crossed in a covered barge. The royal wardrobe, a house in Carter Lane, was selected for her residence.

The King joined his mother at the wardrobe; and the next morning, as he rode through Smithfield with sixty horsemen, encountered Tyler at the head of twenty thousand insurgents. Three different charters had been sent to that demagogue, who contemptuously refused them all. As soon as he saw Richard, he made a sign to his followers to halt, and boldly rode up to the King. A conversation immediately began. Tyler, as he talked, affected to play with his dagger; at last he laid his hand on the bridle of his sovereign; but at the instant Walworth, the Lord Mayor, jealous of his design, plunged a short sword into his throat. He spurred his horse, rode about a dozen yards, fell to the ground, and was despatched by Robert Standish, one of the King's esquires. The insurgents, who witnessed the transaction, drew their bows to revenge the fall of their leader, and Richard would inevitably have lost his life had he not been saved by his own intrepidity. Galloping up to the archers he exclaimed: "What are ye doing, my lieges? Tyler was a traitor. Come with me, and I will be your leader." Wavering and disconcerted, they followed him into the fields of Islington, whither a force of one thousand men-at-arms, which had been collected by the Lord Mayor and Sir Robert Knowles, hastened to protect the young King; and the insurgents, falling on their knees, begged for mercy. Many of the royalists demanded permission to punish them for their past excesses; but Richard firmly refused, ordered the suppliants to return to their homes, and by proclamation forbade, under pain of death, any stranger to pass the night in the city.

On the southern coast the excesses of the insurgents reached as far as Winchester; on the eastern, to Beverley and Scarborough; and, if we reflect that in every place they rose about the same time, and uniformly pursued the same system, we may discover reason to suspect that they acted under the direction of some acknowledged though invisible leader. The nobility and gentry, intimidated by the hostility of their tenants, and distressed by contradictory reports, sought security within the fortifications of their castles. The only man who behaved with promptitude and resolution was Henry Spenser, the young and warlike Bishop of Norwich. In the counties of Norfolk, Cambridge, and Huntington tranquillity was restored and preserved by this singular prelate, who successively exercised the offices of general, judge, and priest. In complete armor he always led his followers to the attack; after the battle he sat in judgment on his prisoners; and before execution he administered to them the aids of religion. But as soon as the death of Tyler and the dispersion of the men of Kent and Essex were known, thousands became eager to display their loyalty; and knights and esquires from every quarter poured into London to offer their services to the King. At the head of forty thousand horse he published proclamations, revoking the charters of manumission which he had granted, commanding the villeins to perform their usual services, and prohibiting illegal assemblies and associations. In several parts the commons threatened to renew the horrors of the late tumult in defence of their liberties; but the approach of the royal army dismayed the disaffected in Kent; the loss of five hundred men induced the insurgents of Essex to sue for pardon; and numerous executions in different counties effectually crushed the spirit of resistance. Among the sufferers were Lister and Westbroom, who had assumed the title and authority of kings in Norfolk and Suffolk; and Straw and Ball, the itinerant preachers, who have been already mentioned, and whose sermons were supposed to have kindled and nourished the insurrection.[69]

When the parliament met, the two houses were informed by the Chancellor, that the King had revoked the charters of emancipation, which he had been compelled to grant to the villeins, but at the same time wished to submit to their consideration whether it might not be wise to abolish the state of bondage altogether. The minds of the great proprietors were not, however, prepared for the adoption of so liberal a measure; and both lords and commons unanimously replied that no man could deprive them of the services of their villeins without their consent; that they had never given that consent, and never would be induced to give it, either through persuasion or violence. The King yielded to their obstinacy; and the charters were repealed by authority of parliament. The commons next deliberated, and presented their petitions. They attributed the insurrection to the grievances suffered by the people from: 1. The purveyors, who were said to have exceeded all their predecessors in insolence and extortion; 2. From the rapacity of the royal officers in the chancery and exchequer, and the courts of king's bench and common pleas; 3. From the banditti, called maintainers, who, in different counties, supported themselves by plunder, and, arming in defence of each other, set at defiance all the provisions of the law; and 4. From the repeated aids and taxes, which had impoverished the people and proved of no service to the nation. To silence these complaints, a commission of inquiry was appointed; the courts of law and the King's household were subjected to regulations of reform, and severe orders were published for the immediate suppression of illegal associations. But the demand of a supply produced a very interesting altercation. The commons refused, on the ground that the imposition of a new tax would goad the people to a second insurrection. They found it, however, necessary to request of the King a general pardon for all illegal acts committed in the suppression of the insurgents, and received for answer that it was customary for the commons to make their grants before the King bestowed his favors. When the subsidy was again pressed on their attention they replied that they should take time to consider it, but were told that the King would also take time to consider of their petition. At last they yielded; the tax upon wool, wool-fells, and leather was continued for five years, and in return a general pardon was granted for all loyal subjects, who had acted illegally in opposing the rebels, and for the great body of the insurgents, who had been misled by the declamations of the demagogues.



WYCLIFFE TRANSLATES THE BIBLE INTO ENGLISH

A.D. 1382

J. PATERSON SMYTH

It may safely be said that no greater service has been rendered at once to religion and to literature than the translation of the Bible into the English tongue. This achievement did not indeed, like that of Luther's German translation, come as it were by a single stroke. Luther's Bible caused him to be regarded as the founder of the present literary language of Germany—New High German—which his translation permanently established. The English Bible, on the other hand, was the growth of centuries. But to the contributions of able hands through many generations, during which the English language itself passed through a wonderful formative development, the incomparable beauty of King James' version owes its existence, and our literature its greatest ornaments.

It is impossible to say when the first translation of any part of the Bible into English was made. No English Bible of earlier date than the fourteenth century has ever been found. But translations, even of the whole Bible, older than Wcyliffe's are, by at least two eminent witnesses, said to have existed. "As for olde translacions, before Wycliffe's time," says Sir Thomas More, "they remain lawful and be in some folkes handes." "The hole byble," he declares (Dyalogues, p. 138, ed. 1530), "was long before Wycliffe's days, by vertuous and well learned men, translated into the English tong." And Cranmer, in his prologue to the second edition of the "Great Bible," bears testimony equally explicit to the translation of Scripture "in the Saxons tongue." And when that language "waxed olde and out of common usage," he says, the Bible "was again translated into the newer language." There has never been any means of testing these statements, which were probably due to some inexplicable error. Abundant evidence exists relating to many Saxon and later translations of various parts of the Bible before the time of Wycliffe. Among the most notable of the early translators were the Venerable Bede and Alfred the Great. Some portions of Scripture were likewise translated into Anglo-Norman in the thirteenth century. Some of the early fragments are still preserved in English libraries.

Three versions of the Psalter in English, from the early years of the fourteenth century, still exist, one of which was by Richard Rolle, the Yorkshire hermit, who also translated the New Testament.

But so far as known, the first complete Bible in English was the work of John Wycliffe, assisted by Nicholas de Hereford—whom some would name first in this partnership, though the product of their joint labors is known as "Wycliffe's Bible."

John Wycliffe, the "Morning Star of the Reformation," was born near Richmond, Yorkshire, about 1324. He became a fellow, and later master of Balliol College, Oxford, afterward held several rectorships—the last being that of Lutterworth, upon which he entered in 1374. For opposing the papacy and certain church doctrines and practices, he was condemned by the university, and his followers—known as Lollards—were persecuted. Something of his life in connection with these matters is fitly dealt with by Smyth in connection with his account of the famous translation.

After the early Anglo-Saxon versions comes a long pause in the history of Bible translation. Amid the disturbance resulting from the Danish invasion there was little time for thinking of translations and manuscripts; and before the land had fully regained its quiet the fatal battle of Hastings had been fought, and England lay helpless at the Normans' feet. The higher Saxon clergy were replaced by the priests of Normandy, who had little sympathy with the people over whom they came, and the Saxon manuscripts were contemptuously flung aside as relics of a rude barbarism. The contempt shown to the language of the defeated race quite destroyed the impulse to English translation, and the Norman clergy had no sympathy with the desire for spreading the knowledge of the Scriptures among the people, so that for centuries those Scriptures remained in England a "spring shut up, a fountain sealed."

Yet this time must not be considered altogether lost, for during those centuries England was becoming fitted for an English Bible. The future language of the nation was being formed; the Saxon and Norman French were struggling side by side; gradually the old Saxon grew unintelligible to the people; gradually the French became a foreign tongue, and with the fusion of the two races a language grew up which was the language of united England.

Passing, then, from the quiet death-beds of Alfred and of Bede, we transfer ourselves to the great hall of the Blackfriars' monastery, London, on a dull, warm May day in 1378, amid purple robes and gowns of satin and damask, amid monks and abbots, and bishops and doctors of the Church, assembled for the trial of John Wycliffe, the parish priest of Lutterworth.

The great hall, crowded to its heavy oaken doors, witnesses to the interest that is centred in the trial, and all eyes are fixed on the pale, stern old man who stands before the dais silently facing his judges. He is quite alone, and his thoughts go back, with some bitterness, to his previous trial, when the people crowded the doors shouting for their favorite, and John of Gaunt and the Lord Marshal of England were standing by his side. He has learned since then not to put his trust in princes. The power of his enemies has rapidly grown; even the young King (Richard II) has been won over to their cause, and patrons and friends have drawn back from his side, whom the Church has resolved to crush.

The judges have taken their seats, and the accused stands awaiting the charges to be read, when suddenly there is a quick cry of terror. A strange rumbling sound fills the air, and the walls of the judgment hall are trembling to their base—the monastery and the city of London are being shaken by an earthquake! Friar and prelate grow pale with superstitious awe. Twice already has this arraignment of Wycliffe been strangely interrupted. Are the elements in league with this enemy of the Church? Shall they give up the trial?

"No!" thunders Archbishop Courtenay, rising in his place. "We shall not give up the trial. This earthquake but portends the purging of the kingdom; for as there are in the bowels of the earth noxious vapors which only by a violent earthquake can be purged away, so are these evils brought by such men upon this land which only by a very earthquake can ever be removed. Let the trial go forward!"

What think you, reader, were the evils which this pale ascetic had wrought, needing a very earthquake to cleanse them from the land? Had he falsified the divine message to the people in his charge? Was he turning men's hearts from the worship of God? Was his priestly office disgraced by carelessness or drunkenness or impurity of life?

Oh, no. Such faults could be gently judged at the tribunal in the Blackfriars' hall. Wycliffe's was a far more serious crime. He had dared to attack the corruptions of the Church, and especially the enormities of the begging friars; he had indignantly denounced pardons and indulgences and masses for the soul as part of a system of gigantic fraud; and worst of all, he had filled up the cup of his iniquity by translating the Scriptures into the English tongue; "making it," as one of the chroniclers angrily complains, "common and more open to laymen and to women than it was wont to be to clerks well learned and of good understanding. So that the pearl of the Gospel is trodden under foot of swine."

The feeling of his opponents will be better understood if we notice the position of the Church in England at the time. The meridian of her power had been already passed. Her clergy as a class were ignorant and corrupt. Her people were neglected, except for the money to be extorted by masses and pardons, "as if," to quote the words of an old writer, "God had given his sheep, not to be pastured, but to be shaven and shorn." This state of things had gone on for centuries, and the people like dumb, driven cattle had submitted. But those who could discern the signs of the times must have seen now that it could not go on much longer. The spread of education was rapidly increasing, several new colleges having been founded in Oxford during Wycliffe's lifetime. A strong spirit of independence, too, was rising among the people. Already Edward III and his parliament had indignantly refused the Pope's demand for the annual tribute to be sent to Rome. It was evident that a crisis was near. And, as if to hasten the crisis, the famous schism of the papacy had placed two popes at the head of the Church, and all Christendom was scandalized by the sight of the rival "vicars of Jesus Christ" anathematizing each other from Rome and Avignon, raising armies and slaughtering helpless women and children, each for the aggrandizing of himself.

The minds of men in England were greatly agitated, and Wycliffe felt that at such a time the firmest charter of the Church would be the open Bible in her children's hands; the best exposure of the selfish policy of her rulers, the exhibiting to the people the beautiful, self-forgetting life of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Gospels. "The sacred Scriptures," he said, "are the property of the people, and one which no one should be allowed to wrest from them. Christ and his apostles converted the world by making known the Scriptures to men in a form familiar to them, and I pray with all my heart that through doing the things contained in this book we may all together come to the everlasting life." This Bible translation he placed far the first in importance of all his attempts to reform the English Church, and he pursued his object with a vigor and against an opposition that remind one of the old monk of Bethlehem and his Bible a thousand years before.

The result of the Blackfriars' synod was that after three days' deliberation Wycliffe's teaching was condemned, and at a subsequent meeting he himself was excommunicated. He returned to his quiet parsonage at Lutterworth—for his enemies dared not yet proceed to extremities—and there, with his pile of old Latin manuscripts and commentaries, he labored on at the great work of his life, till the whole Bible was translated into the "modir tongue," and England received for the first time in her history a complete version of the Scriptures in the language of the people.

And scarce was his task well finished when, like his great predecessor Bede, the brave old priest laid down his life. He himself had expected that a violent death would have finished his course. His enemies were many and powerful; the Primate, the King, and the Pope were against him—with the friars, whom he had so often and so fiercely defied; so that his destruction seemed but a mere question of time. But while his enemies were preparing to strike, the old man "was not, for God took him."

It was the close of the old year, the last Sunday of 1384, and his little flock at Lutterworth were kneeling in hushed reverence before the altar, when suddenly, at the time of the elevation of the sacrament, he fell to the ground in a violent fit of the palsy, and never spoke again until his death on the last day of the year.

In him England lost one of her best and greatest sons, a patriot sternly resenting all dishonor to his country, a reformer who ventured his life for the purity of the Church and the freedom of the Bible—an earnest, faithful "parson of a country town," standing out conspicuously among the clergy of the time.

"For Criste's lore and his apostles twelve He taughte—and first he folwede it himselve."

Here is a choice specimen from one of the monkish writers of the time describing his death: "On the feast of the passion of St. Thomas of Canterbury, John Wycliffe, the organ of the devil, the enemy of the Church, the idol of heretics, the image of hypocrites, the restorer of schism, the storehouse of lies, the sink of flattery, being struck by the horrible judgment of God, was seized with the palsy throughout his whole body, and that mouth which was to have spoken huge things against God and his saints, and holy Church, was miserably drawn aside, and afforded a frightful spectacle to beholders; his tongue was speechless and his head shook, showing painfully plainly that the curse which God had thundered forth against Cain was also inflicted on him."

Some time after his death a petition was presented to the Pope, which to his honor he rejected, praying him to order Wycliffe's body to be taken out of consecrated ground and buried in a dunghill. But forty years after, by a decree of the Council of Constance, the old reformer's bones were dug up and burned, and the ashes flung into the little river Swift which "runneth hard by his church at Lutterworth." And so, in the often-quoted words of old Fuller, "as the Swift bear them into the Severn, and the Severn into the narrow seas, and they again into the ocean, thus the ashes of Wycliffe is an emblem of his doctrine, which is now dispersed all over the world."

But it is with his Bible translation that we are specially concerned. As far as we can learn, the whole Bible was not translated by the reformer. About half the Old Testament is ascribed to Nicholas de Hereford, one of the Oxford leaders of the Lollards; the remainder, with the whole of the New Testament, being done by Wycliffe himself. About eight years after its completion the whole was revised by Richard Purvey, his curate and intimate friend, whose manuscript is still in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. Purvey's preface is a most interesting old document, and shows not only that he was deeply in earnest about his work, but that he thoroughly understood the intellectual and moral conditions necessary for its success.

"A simpel creature," he says, "hath translated the Scripture out of Latin into Englische. First, this simpel creature had much travayle with divers fellows and helpers to gather many old Bibles and other doctors and glosses to make one Latin Bible. Some deal true and then to study it anew the texte and any other help he might get, especially Lyra on the Old Testament, which helped him much with this work. The third time to counsel with olde grammarians and old divines of hard words and hard sentences how they might best be understood and translated, the fourth time to translate as clearly as he could to the sense, and to have many good fellows and cunnying at the correcting of the translacioun. A translator hath great nede to studie well the sense both before and after, and then also he hath nede to live a clene life and be full devout in preiers, and have not his wit occupied about worldli things that the Holy Spyrit author of all wisdom and cunnynge and truthe dresse him for his work and suffer him not to err." And he concludes with the prayer, "God grant to us all grace to ken well and to kepe well Holie Writ, and to suffer joiefulli some paine for it at the laste."

Like all the earlier English translations, Wycliffe's Bible was based on the Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome; and this is the great defect in his work, as compared with the versions that followed. He was not capable of consulting the original Greek and Hebrew even if he had access to them—in fact, there was probably no man in England at the time capable of doing so; and therefore, though he represents the Latin faithfully and well, he of course handed on its errors as faithfully as its perfections. But, such as it is, it is a fine specimen of fourteenth-century English. He translated not for scholars or for nobles, but for the plain people, and his style was such as suited those for whom he wrote—plain, vigorous, homely, and yet with all its homeliness full of a solemn grace and dignity, which made men feel that they were reading no ordinary book. He uses many striking expressions, such as (II Tim. ii. 4): "No man holding knighthood to God, wlappith himself with worldli nedes;" and many of the best-known phrases in our present Bible originated with him; e.g., "the beame and the mote," "the depe thingis of God," "strait is the gate and narewe is the waye," "no but a man schall be born againe," "the cuppe of blessing which we blessen," etc.

Here is a specimen from Wycliffe's Gospels:

In thilke dayes came Joon Baptist prechynge in the desert of Jude, saying, Do ye penaunce: for the kyngdom of heuens shall neigh. Forsothe this is he of whom it is said by Ysaye the prophete, A voice of a cryinge in desert, make ye redy the wayes of the Lord, make ye rightful the pathes of hym. Forsothe that like Joon hadde cloth of the beeris of cameylis and a girdil of skyn about his leendis; sothely his mete weren locustis and hony of the wode. Thanne Jerusalem wente out to hym, and al Jude, and al the cuntre aboute Jordan, and thei weren crystened of hym in in Jordon, knowlechynge there synnes.

It is somewhere recorded that at a meeting in Yorkshire recently a long passage of Wycliffe's Bible was read, which was quite intelligible throughout to those who heard.