obles. The authority attached to the name seems to have had no
definite limit; it was that of a stern dictator, or an indolent puppet,
according as he who held it had the power to enforce the dignity he
assumed. It was never conceded but to nobles, and it was by the nobles
that all the outrages were committed. Private enmity alone was gratified
whenever public justice was invoked: and the vindication of order was
but the execution of revenge.

Holding their palaces as the castles and fortresses of princes, each
asserting his own independency of all authority and law, and planting
fortifications, and claiming principalities in the patrimonial
territories of the Church, the barons of Rome made their state still
more secure, and still more odious, by the maintenance of troops of
foreign (chiefly of German) mercenaries, at once braver in disposition,
more disciplined in service, and more skilful in arms, than even the
freest Italians of that time. Thus they united the judicial and the
military force, not for the protection, but for the ruin of Rome. Of
these barons, the most powerful were the Orsini and Colonna; their feuds
were hereditary and incessant, and every day witnessed the fruits of
their lawless warfare, in bloodshed, in rape, and in conflagration.
The flattery or the friendship of Petrarch, too credulously believed by
modern historians, has invested the Colonna, especially of the date now
entered upon, with an elegance and a dignity not their own. Outrage,
fraud, and assassination, a sordid avarice in securing lucrative offices
to themselves, an insolent oppression of their citizens, and the
most dastardly cringing to power superior to their own (with but few
exceptions), mark the character of the first family of Rome. But,
wealthier than the rest of the barons, they were, therefore, more
luxurious, and, perhaps, more intellectual; and their pride was
flattered in being patrons of those arts of which they could never
have become the professors. From these multiplied oppressors the Roman
citizens turned with fond and impatient regret to their ignorant and
dark notions of departed liberty and greatness. They confounded the
times of the Empire with those of the Republic; and often looked to the
Teutonic king, who obtained his election from beyond the Alps, but his
title of emperor from the Romans, as the deserter of his legitimate
trust and proper home; vainly imagining that, if both the Emperor and
the Pontiff fixe