The Holy Roman Empire. Viscount James Bryce

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in S. Maria Novella at Florence.

      The second painting is of greatly later date. It is a fresco in the chapter-house of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella141 at Florence, usually known as the Capellone degli Spagnuoli. It has been commonly ascribed, on Vasari's authority, to Simone Martini of Siena, but an examination of the dates of his life seems to discredit this view142. Most probably it was executed between A.D. 1340 and 1350. It is a huge work, covering one whole wall of the chapter-house, and filled with figures, some of which, but seemingly on no sufficient authority, have been taken to represent eminent persons of the time – Cimabue, Arnolfo, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Laura, and others. In it is represented the whole scheme of man's life here and hereafter – the Church on earth and the Church in heaven. Full in front are seated side by side the Pope and the Emperor: on their right and left, in a descending row, minor spiritual and temporal officials; next to the Pope a cardinal, bishops, and doctors; next to the Emperor, the king of France and a line of nobles and knights. Behind them appears the Duomo of Florence as an emblem of the Visible Church, while at their feet is a flock of sheep (the faithful) attacked by ravening wolves (heretics and schismatics), whom a pack of spotted dogs (the Dominicans143) combat and chase away. From this, the central foreground of the picture, a path winds round and up a height to a great gate where the Apostle sits on guard to admit true believers: they passing through it are met by choirs of seraphs, who lead them on through the delicious groves of Paradise. Above all, at the top of the painting and just over the spot where his two lieutenants, Pope and Emperor, are placed below, is the Saviour enthroned amid saints and angels[149].

      Anti-national character of the Empire.

      Here, too, there needs no comment. The Church Militant is the perfect counterpart of the Church Triumphant: her chief danger is from those who would rend the unity of her visible body, the seamless garment of her heavenly Lord; and that devotion to His person which is the sum of her faith and the essence of her being, must on earth be rendered to those two lieutenants whom He has chosen to govern in His name.

      A theory, such as that which it has been attempted to explain and illustrate, is utterly opposed to restrictions of place or person. The idea of one Christian people, all whose members are equal in the sight of God, – an idea so forcibly expressed in the unity of the priesthood, where no barrier separated the successor of the Apostle from the humblest curate, – and in the prevalence of one language for worship and government, made the post of Emperor independent of the race, or rank, or actual resources of its occupant. The Emperor was entitled to the obedience of Christendom, not as hereditary chief of a victorious tribe, or feudal lord of a portion of the earth's surface, but as solemnly invested with an office. Not only did he excel in dignity the kings of the earth: his power was different in its nature; and, so far from supplanting or rivalling theirs, rose above them to become the source and needful condition of their authority in their several territories, the bond which joined them in one harmonious body. The vast dominions and vigorous personal action of Charles the Great had concealed this distinction while he reigned; under his successors the imperial crown appeared disconnected from the direct government of the kingdoms they had established, existing only in the form of an undefined suzerainty, as the type of that unity without which men's minds could not rest. It was characteristic of the Middle Ages, that demanding the existence of an Emperor, they were careless who he was or how he was chosen, so he had been duly inaugurated; and that they were not shocked by the contrast between unbounded rights and actual helplessness. At no time in the world's history has theory, pretending all the while to control practice, been so utterly divorced from it. Ferocious and sensual, that age worshipped humility and asceticism: there has never been a purer ideal of love, nor a grosser profligacy of life.

      The power of the Roman Emperor cannot as yet be called international; though this, as we shall see, became in later times its most important aspect; for in the tenth century national distinctions had scarcely begun to exist. But its genius was clerical and old Roman, in nowise territorial or Teutonic: it rested not on armed hosts or wide lands, but upon the duty, the awe, the love of its subjects.

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      1

      The author has in preparation, and hopes before long to complete and publish, a set of chronological tables which may be made to serve as a sort of skeleton history of mediæval Germany and Italy.

      2

      According to the vicious financial system that prevailed, the curiales in each city were required to collect the taxes,

1

The author has in preparation, and hopes before long to complete and publish, a set of chronological tables which may be made to serve as a sort of skeleton history of mediæval Germany and Italy.

2

According to the vicious financial system that prevailed, the curiales in each city were required to collect the taxes, and when there was a deficit, to supply it from their own property.

3

See the eloquent passage of Claudian, In secundum consulatum Stilichonis, 129, sqq., from which the following lines are taken (150-60): —

'Hæc est in gremio victos quæ sola recepit,Humanumque genus communi nomine fovit,Matris, non dominæ, ritu; civesque vocavitQuos domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit.Hujus pacificis debemus moribus omnesQuod veluti patriis regionibus utitur hospes:Quod sedem mutare licet: quod cernere ThulenLusus, et horrendos quondam penetrare recessus:Quod bibimus passim Rhodanum, potamus Oronten,Quod cuncti gens una sumus. Nec terminus unquamRomanæ ditionis erit.'

4

In the Roman jurisprudence, ius sacrum is a branch of ius publicum.

5

Tertullian, writing circ. A.D. 200, says: 'Sed quid ego amplius de religione atque pietate Christiana in imperatorem quem necesse est suspiciamus ut eum quem Dominus noster elegerit. Et merito dixerim, noster est magis Cæsar, ut a nostro Deo constitutus.' —Apologet. cap. 34.

6

See the book of Optatus, bishop of Milevis, Contra Donatistas. 'Non enim respublica est in ecclesia, sed ecclesia in republica, id est, in imperio Romano, cum super imperatorem non sit nisi solus Deus:' (p. 999 of vol. ii. of Migne's Patrologiæ Cursus completus.) The treatise of Optatus is full of interest, as shewing the growth of the idea of the visible Church, and of the primacy of Peter's chair, as constituting its centre and representing its unity.

7

'Addiderat consilium coercendi intra terminos imperii.' – Tac. Ann.

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<p>141</p>

The church in which the opening scene of Boccaccio's Decameron is laid.

<p>142</p>

So Kugler (Eastlake's ed. vol. i. p. 144), and so also Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, in their New History of Painting in Italy, vol. ii. pp. 85 sqq.

<p>143</p>

Domini canes. Spotted because of their black-and-white raiment.

There is of course a great deal more detail in the picture, which it does not appear necessary to describe. St. Dominic is a conspicuous figure.

It is worth remarking that the Emperor, who is on the Pope's left hand, and so made slightly inferior to him while superior to every one else, holds in his hand, instead of the usual imperial globe, a death's head, typifying the transitory nature of his power.