faith of their people; Frederick, on the other
hand, crowned his system of government by a religious inquisition,
which will seem the more reprehensible when we remember that in the
persons of the heretics he was persecuting the representatives of a free
municipal life. Lastly, the internal police, and the kernel of the army for
foreign service, was composed of Saracens who had been brought over
from Sicily to Nocera and Lucera-- men who were deaf to the cry of
misery and careless of the ban of the Church. At a later period the
subjects, by whom the use of weapons had long been forgotten, were
passive witnesses of the fall of Manfred and of the seizure of the
government by Charles of Anjou; the latter continued to use the system
which he found already at work.
At the side of the centralizing Emperor appeared a usurper of the most
peculiar kind; his vicar and son-in-law, Ezzelino da Romano. He stands
as the representative of no system of government or administration, for
all his activity was wasted in struggles for supremacy in the eastern part
of Upper Italy; but as a political type he was a figure of no less
importance for the future than his imperial protector Frederick. The
conquests and usurpations which had hitherto taken place in the Middle
Ages rested on real or pretended inheritance and other such claims, or
else were effected against unbelievers and excommunicated persons.
Here for the first time the attempt was openly made to found a throne
by wholesale murder and endless barbarities, by the adoption in short,
of any means with a view to nothing but the end pursued. None of his
successors, not even Cesare Borgia, rivalled the colossal guilt of
Ezzelino; but the example once set was not forgotten, and his fall led to
no return of justice among the nations and served as no warning to
future transgressors.
It was in vain at such a time that St. Thomas Aquinas, born subject of
Frederick, set up the theory of a constitutional monarchy, in which the
prince was to be supported by an upper house named by himself, and a
representative body elected by the people. Such theories found no echo
outside the lecture - room, and Frederick and Ezzelino were and remain
for Italy the great political phenomena of the thirteenth century. Their
personality, already half legendary, forms the most important subject of
'The Hundred Old Tales,' whose original composition falls certainly
within this century. In them Ezzelino is spoken of with the awe which
all mighty impressions leave behind them. His person became the
centre of a whole literature from the chronicle of eye-witnesses to the
half-mythical tragedy of later poets.
Despots of the Fourteenth Century
The tyrannies, great and small, of the fourteenth century afford constant
proof that examples such as these were not thrown away. Their
misdeeds cried forth loudly and have been circumstantially told by
historians. As States depending for existence on themselves alone, and
scientifically organized with a view to this object, they present to us a
higher interest than that of mere narrative.
The deliberate adaptation of means to ends, of which no prince out of
Italy had at that time a conception, joined to almost absolute power
within the limits of the State, produced among the despots both men
and modes of life of a peculiar character. The chief secret of
government in the hands of the prudent ruler lay in leaving the
incidence of taxation as far as possible where he found it, or as he had
first arranged it. The chief sources of income were: a land tax, based on
a valuation; definite taxes on articles of consumption and duties on
exported and imported goods: together with the private fortune of the
ruling house. The only possible increase was derived from the growth
of business and of general prosperity. Loans, such as we find in the free
cities, were here unknown; a well-planned confiscation was held a
preferable means of raising money, provided only that it left public
credit unshaken--an end attained, for example, by the truly Oriental
practice of deposing and plundering the director of the finances.
Out of this income the expenses of the little court, of the bodyguard, of
the mercenary troops, and of the public buildings were met, as well as
of the buffoons and men of talent who belonged to the personal
attendants of the prince. The illegitimacy of his rule isolated the tyrant
and surrounded him with constant danger, the most honorable alliance
which he could form was with intellectual merit, without regard to its
origin. The liberality of the northern princes of the thirteenth century
was confined to the knights, to the nobility which served and sang. It
was otherwise with the Italian despot.
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