haracterised the Plebs of the
ancient Forum. Amongst a ferocious, yet not a brave populace, the
nobles supported themselves less as sagacious tyrants than as relentless
banditti. The popes had struggled in vain against these stubborn and
stern patricians. Their state derided, their command defied, their
persons publicly outraged, the pontiff-sovereigns of the rest of Europe
resided, at the Vatican, as prisoners under terror of execution.
When, thirty-eight years before the date of the events we are about to
witness, a Frenchman, under the name of Clement V., had ascended the
chair of St. Peter, the new pope, with more prudence than valour, had
deserted Rome for the tranquil retreat of Avignon; and the luxurious
town of a foreign province became the court of the Roman pontiff, and
the throne of the Christian Church.

Thus deprived of even the nominal check of the papal presence, the power
of the nobles might be said to have no limits, save their own caprice,
or their mutual jealousies and feuds. Though arrogating through fabulous
genealogies their descent from the ancient Romans, they were, in
reality, for the most part, the sons of the bolder barbarians of the
North; and, contaminated by the craft of Italy, rather than imbued with
its national affections, they retained the disdain of their foreign
ancestors for a conquered soil and a degenerate people. While the rest
of Italy, especially in Florence, in Venice, and in Milan, was fast and
far advancing beyond the other states of Europe in civilisation and in
art, the Romans appeared rather to recede than to improve;--unblest by
laws, unvisited by art, strangers at once to the chivalry of a warlike,
and the graces of a peaceful, people. But they still possessed the
sense and desire of liberty, and, by ferocious paroxysms and desperate
struggles, sought to vindicate for their city the title it still assumed
of "the Metropolis of the World." For the last two centuries they had
known various revolutions--brief, often bloody, and always unsuccessful.
Still, there was the empty pageant of a popular form of government. The
thirteen quarters of the city named each a chief; and the assembly of
these magistrates, called Caporioni, by theory possessed an authority
they had neither the power nor the courage to exert. Still there was the
proud name of Senator; but, at the present time, the office was confined
to one or to two persons, sometimes elected by the pope, sometimes by
the n