INTROD.]

PAPAL CHANCERY.-ROTA ROMANA, ETC.

43

college, who might be laymen, were called Examiners, and their office was to see that the bulls were drawn up in conformity with the minutes. The Taxator fixed the price of the bulls, which varied greatly according to their contents; the Plumbator affixed the leaden seal, or bulla, whence the instrument derived its name. There were three Courts for the administration of justice: viz. a Court of Appeal, called in early times Capella, but afterwards better known by the name of Rota Romana; the Signatura Justitiæ, and the Signatura Gratia. The Rota Romana was the highest Papal tribunal. Its members, called Auditores Rotæ, were fixed by Pope Sixtus IV. at twelve, and although paid by the Pope, were not all Italians, but contained at least one Frenchman, Spaniard, and German. The Signatura Gratia, where the Pope presided in person, and of which only select Cardinals or eminent prelates could be members, decided cases which depended on the grace and favour of the Pope. The Signatura Justitiæ, besides various other legal affairs, especially determined respecting the admissibility of appeals to the Pope.

To compliment and refresh the Pope, his Cardinals and courtiers, with presents, was a very ancient custom; but the numerous gifts of money which annually flowed to Rome were only one of the means which served to fill the Papal treasury. Another abundant source was the Papal bulls, of which a great quantity were published every year. It was not the Apostolic Chamber alone that benefited: every officer employed in preparing the bulls took his toll, from the Chief Secretary down to the Plumbator. Among other sources of revenue, besides the regular fees derived from investitures, &c., were the sale of indulgences and dispensations, the announcement of a year of grace, and what was called the Right of Reservation, by which the Popes claimed the privilege of filling a certain number of ecclesiastical offices and vacant benefices. This means had been gradually so much extended that at the time of the Papal Schism offices were publicly sold, and even the inferior ones brought large sums of money." It might be truly said with Jugurtha, Romæ omnia venire-at Rome all things are venal. Never was so rich a harvest reaped

from the credulity of mankind.2

'Le Bret, Magazin zum Gebrauch der Staats-und Kirchengeschichte, B. iii. S. 7. 2 See Muratori, Antiq. Ital. Med. Evi, vi., and Mosheim, Instit. Hist. Eccl.; Thomassin, Vetus et nova Ecclesiæ Dis ciplina; Walter, Lehrbuch des Kirchen

rechts; Binterim, Denkwürdigkeiten der christlich-katholischen Kirche; and the Jesuit Hunold Plattenberg, Notitia Congregationum et Tribunalium Curiæ Roman@, 1693.

44

THE CONCLAVE.

[INTROD

It remains to say a few words respecting the mode of electing the successors of St. Peter. In early times, the Roman Pontiff was chosen by the people as well as by the clergy; nor was his election valid unless confirmed by the Roman Emperor; till at length, in 1179, Pope Alexander III. succeeded in vesting the elective right solely in the Cardinals. In order to a valid election it was necessary that at least two-thirds of the college should agree; but as this circumstance had frequently delayed their choice, Pope Gregory X., before whose elevation there had been an interregnum of no less than three years, published, in 1274, a bull to regulate the elections, which afterwards became part of the Canon Law. This bull provided that the cardinals were to assemble within nine days after the demise of a Pope; and on the tenth they were to be closely imprisoned, each with a single domestic, in an apartment called the CONCLAVE, their only communication with the outward world being a small window through which they received their food and other necessaries. If they were not agreed in three days, their provisions were diminished; after the eighth day they were restricted to a small allowance of bread, water, and wine; and thus they were induced by every motive of health and convenience not unnecessarily to protract their decision.

Such in outline was the Papal government. The remainder of Italy was divided by a number of independent Powers, of which it will be necessary to mention only the more considerable. These were two monarchies, the Kingdom of Naples (or Sicily) and the Duchy of Milan; and three Republics, two of which, Venice and Genoa, were maritime and commercial; the third, Florence, inland and manufacturing.

Of these Republics Venice was the foremost. Her power and pretensions both by sea and land were typified in her armorial device—a lion having two feet on the sea, a third on the plains, the fourth on the mountains.1 Her territorial dominions, were, however, the offspring of her vast commerce and of her naval supremacy; and it is as a naval Power that she chiefly merits our attention. On the lagoon islands, formed by the alluvial deposits of the Adige, Brenta, and other rivers, Venice, by many ages of industry and enterprise, had grown so great that towards the end of the thirteenth century she claimed to be Queen of the Adriatic, and extorted toll and tribute from all vessels navigating that sea.

See the letter of the Emperor Maximilian I. to the Elector of Saxony, ap. Ranke, Deutsche Gesch. B. i. S. 179.

INTROD.]

VENICE AND HER TERRITORIES.

45

Every year, on Ascension Day, the Doge repeated the ceremony. of a marriage with that bride whose dowry had been wafted from every quarter, when, standing on the prow of the Bucentaur, he cast into her waters the consecrated ring, exclaiming: "Desponsamus te, Mare, in signum veri perpetuique dominii." Some rag of alleged right commonly cloaks the most extravagant pretensions, and accordingly the Venetians pleaded a donation of Pope Alexander III., who had said to the Doge :-"The sea owes you submission as the wife to her husband, for you have acquired the dominion of it by victory." Some subsequent holders of the See of Peter were not, however, inclined to recognize this liberal gift of their predecessor; and it is related that Julius II. once asked Jerome Donato, the Venetian ambassador, for the title which conferred on the Republic the dominion of the gulf. "You will find it," replied Donato, "endorsed on the deed by which Constantine conveyed the domain of St. Peter to Pope Silvester."

We need not trace all the steps by which the Venetians gradually won the large possessions which they held in the middle of the fifteenth century, many of which had been acquired by purchase. Thus the Island of Corfù, as well as Zara in Dalmatia, was bought from Ladislaus of Hungary, King of Naples; Lepanto and Corinth from Centurione, a Genoese, and Prince of Achaia; Salonika from Andronicus, brother of Theodore, Despot of the Morea, which, however, was wrested from their hands by the Turks in 1430. As a naval Power, the views of Venice were chiefly directed to the acquisition of maritime towns and fortresses; but in Italy the Venetians were also straining every nerve to extend their territory, and had already made themselves masters of Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, Ravenna, Treviso, Feltre, Belluno, the Friuli, and part of the Cremonese.

Venice presents, perhaps, the most successful instance on record of an aristocratical Republic or oligarchy. We shall not here enter into the details of its government, which have been described at length by Mr. Hallam." However unfavourable to domestic liberty, the government of Venice was admirably adapted to promote the interest of the State in its intercourse with other nations, and from a remote period its diplomatic service was admirably

"We wed thee, O Sea, in token of our true and perpetual dominion."

Middle Ages, vol. i. ch. iii. pt. ii. That writer, however, appears to have omitted the Zonta, or Giunta, and the State Inquisitors. Daru's account of the Inquisitors is now recognized as erroneous

and exaggerated (Hist. de Venise, liv. xvi. § 20). His errors on this and other subjects have been rectified by Count Tiepolo, in his Discorsi sulla Storia Veneta, &c., and by Romanin, Gli Inquisitori di Stato. Comp. Hazlitt, Ven. Rep. vol. iii. p. 56 sq.

46

VENETIAN CONSTITUTION.

[INTROD. conducted. As early as the thirteenth century its ambassadors were instructed to note down everything worthy of observation in the countries to which they were sent; and these reports, or Relazioni, were read before the Pregadi, or Senate, and then deposited among the State archives. The practice was continued to the latest times; and there is a Relazione of the early period of the French Republic, full of striking and impartial details.1

Under the Venetian constitution, the power of the Doge was very limited, and, indeed, he was often no more than the unwilling puppet of the Council;-a fact abundantly illustrated by the tragical story of Francesco Foscari, who was Doge from 1423 to 1457, and consequently at the time when Constantinople fell. During his reign, if such it can be called, for to himself it was little else than a source of bitterness and humiliation, Venice reached her highest pitch of prosperity and glory. Continually

thwarted by the ruling oligarchy, Foscari twice tendered his resignation, which was, however, refused; and on the last occasion, in 1443, he was obliged to promise that he would hold the ducal office during life. A year or two afterwards he was compelled to pronounce sentence of banishment on his only surviving son, Jacopo, accused of receiving bribes from foreign governments. Still graver charges were brought against Jacopo, who died an exile in Crete, in January, 1456. The aged Doge himself was deposed in 1457, through the machinations of his enemy Loredano, now at the head of the Council of Ten. He retired with the sympathy of the Venetians, which, however, none ventured to display; and a few days afterwards he died. With short intervals of peace, he had waged war with the Turks thirty years; and it was during his administration that the treaty was concluded with them which we shall have to record in the sequel.

Before science had enlarged the bounds of navigation and opened new channels to commercial enterprise, Venice, from its position, seemed destined by nature to connect the Eastern and the Western Worlds. During many ages, accordingly, she was the chief maritime and commercial State of Europe. At the beginning of the fifteenth century more than 3,300 Venetian merchantmen, employing crews of 25,000 sailors, traversed the Mediterranean in all directions, passed the Straits of Gibraltar, coasted the shores of Spain, Portugal, and France, as the vessels

Ranke, Fürsten und Völker, Vorrede. Copies of these papers were frequently made, which have been preserved in some

of the principal libraries of Europe, and form valuable materials for history.

INTROD.]

GENOA AND HER COLONIES.

47

of Phoenicia and Carthage had done of old, and carried on a lucrative trade with the English and the Flemings. The Venetians enjoyed almost a monopoly of the commerce of the Levant; but in that with Constantinople and the Black Sea they were long rivalled, and indeed surpassed, by the Genoese.'

Yet in the middle of the fifteenth century the commerce and power of Genoa, the second maritime Republic of Italy, were in a declining state. As the Venetians enjoyed an almost exclusive trade with India and the East, through the ports of Egypt, Syria, and Greece, so the Genoese possessed the chief share of that with the northern and eastern parts of Europe. The less costly, but perhaps more useful, products of these regionswax, tallow, skins, and furs, together with all the materials for ship-building, as timber, pitch and tar, hemp for sails and cordage -found their way to the ports of the Black Sea, down the rivers which empty into it; and it was along these shores that the Genoese had planted their colonies. Early in the fourteenth century they had founded Caffa, in the Crimea; and this was followed by the planting of other colonies and factories, as Tana, near Azof, at the mouth of the Tanaïs, or Don, and others; some of which, however, were shared by the Venetians and other Italians. All the trade of this sea necessarily found its way through the Bosphorus, where it was commanded by the Genoese and Venetian establishments at Constantinople.

The rival interests of their commerce occasioned, during a long period, bloody contests between the Venetians and Genoese, for supremacy at sea. Genoa had not the wonderfully organized government and self-supporting power of Venice; she lacked that admixture of the aristocratic element which gave such stability to her rival, and was frequently obliged to seek a refuge from her own dissensions by submitting herself to foreign dominion: yet such were the energy of her population and the strength derived from her commerce, that she was repeatedly able to shake off these trammels, as well as to make head against her powerful rival in the Adriatic. We find her by turns under the protection of the Empire, of Naples, of Milan, of France; but as the factious spirit of her population compelled her to submit to these Powers, so the same cause again freed her from their grasp. In 1435 the Genoese revolted from Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, because

1 An elaborate statement of the com- just before his death.-Hazlitt, l'en. Rep. merce of Venice in 1423, will be found pp. 27-35. in the speeches of the Doge Mocenigo