| Our next adventure took place in
1266. Following Frederick II’s death in 1250, a chaotic "interregnum"
ensued during which time local nobles became more powerful. Eventually, Rudolph von
Hapsburg, Duke of Austria, would be elected Emperor in 1273 his powers so reduced by the
noble electors, who sought to preserve their newly acquired local rights, as to be
ineffective. Upon Frederick’s demise, his illegitimate son, Manfred, declared himself King of Sicily and Pope Urban IV offered the Kingdom to Charles of Anjou, younger brother of King Louis IX of France, in order to keep it out of the hands of the Hohenstaufen family. |
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| The matter had already been discussed in 1240 when Pope Gregory IX had offered the Kingdom of Sicily, a fief of the Apostolic See, to Louis’ brother Robert of Artois. At the time, the offer had been declined. But in 1245 the King conferred at length with Innocent IV at Cluny where the Pope had taken refuge to escape Frederick’s threats. It was at this meeting (depicted on the right in a miniature of the era), that the papal dispensation for the marriage of Louis’ brother, Charles of Anjou, to Beatrix, heiress of Provence, was granted and it was then that Louis IX and his mother, Blanche of Castile, promised Innocent IV their support. |
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Obtained his brother’s consent, Charles of Anjou moved into Italy leading a host of French knights which were joined in Rome by another host of Italian Guelph knights loyal to the Pope. The combined forces defeated Manfred at the Battle of Benevento in 1266 (depicted on the left), and those of Conradin two years later in 1268 at Tagliacozzo, thus ending forever the Hohenstaufen dynasty. |
| Significant to us, is the fact that during one of the many tournaments held to alleviate the monotony of a camped army, Pietro Emilio Zappi defeated Charles of Anjou in singular combat. As was the practice for vanquished knights, Charles offered to pay "ransom." But all our ancestor demanded was the right to bear Charles’ Coat of Arms over his own for himself, his Emilian followers, and their descendants in perpetual memory of the victory at Benevento and their significant contribution. |
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| France’s Coat of Arms were the "Azure, semi-de-lys Or" or simply "France," as born by the King of France. His heir, called "Le Dauphin," has his own emblem which is "France Dauphine." Essentially, half-France, half the Region of the Dauphine'. The remaining sons of France's Kings had the right to bear "France" with a "cadence" to indicate their seniority, second, third, or fourth son. Charles being the fourth son, his "cadence" was what in heraldic terms is called "label gules," or red label. | |
 Second Son
 Third Son
 Fourth
Son |
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| This was how we earned the right to add Charles' "Azure semi-de-lys Or label Gules" for ourselves and our followers, which motif was echoed in Imola's own and those of many other we led as "Gonfalonieri" in that occasion. Below is a non-exhaustive sample. |
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| The new century opened
unauspiciously. By the year 1300 the European economy was already in difficulties. The
continent was over-populated; a century of unbroken economic growth had produced a rapid
increase in population, especially in the cities, and it had become increasingly hard to
feed them for it had reached the limits of expansion, both on its frontiers and in
reclaiming land from forest and swamp. The arrival of the Mongols and the Ottomans had disrupted
trade routes, and certain areas of Europe were edging into depression. Then, the continent entered a semi-glaciation with cooler and wetter weather creating lower crop yields and a run of bad harvests which caused famines, epidemics and heavy mortality in many areas. As the century advanced, harvest failures became more frequent, leading the starving masses to eat whatever they could lay their hands on--dogs, cats, even grass. Plenty of sources document the famine, but I’ve chosen excerpts from Johannes de Trokelowe’s "Annates" which will illustrate the situation: " Apart from the other hardships with which England was afflicted, hunger grew in the land....Meat and eggs began to run out, capons and fowl could hardly be found, animals died of pest, swine could not be fed because of the excessive price of fodder. A quarter of wheat or beans or peas sold for twenty shillings [In 1313 a quarter of wheat sold for five shillings.], barley for a mark, oats for ten shillings. A quarter of salt was commonly sold for thirty-five shillings, which in former times was quite unheard of. The land was so oppressed with want that whe the king came to St. Albans on the feast of St. Laurence [August 10] it was hardly possible to find bread on sale to supply his immediate household....The summer rains were so heavy that grain could not ripen. It could hardly be gathered and used to bake bread down to the said feast day unless it was first put in vessels to dry. Around the end of autumn the dearth was mitigated in part, but toward Christmas it became as bad as before. Bread did not have its usual nourishing power and strength because the grain was not nourished by the warmth of summer sunshine. Hence those who ate it, even in large quantities, were hungry again after a little while. There can be no doubt that the poor wasted away when even the rich were constantly hungry.... The poor and needy, crushed with hunger, lying stiff and dead in the wards and streets.... Four pennies worth of coarse bread was not enough to feed a common man for one day. The usual kinds of meat, suitable for eating, were too scarce; horse meat was precious; plump dogs were stolen. And, according to many reports, men and women in many places secretly ate their own children.... " In these conditions, tempers flared and no-one, much less the clergy, was spared. In 1303 Pope Boniface VIII is captured in Anagni by local citizens and is abused beyond his capabilities to sustain the mistreatment. He dies in his seventies a month after his release.
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| French-born Clement V followed Boniface as
Pope. He did the best he could to accommodate the French throne by submitting on the issue
of clerical taxation. In 1309, shortly after his election, Clement moved the papacy from
Rome to Avignon, a town in southern France owned by Charles of Anjou, where the papacy was
to reside until 1376. Although the move was undertaken in part to insure the Pope freedom
of action, it appeared to many in Europe that the presence of the papacy in France
compromised the Pope's independence and made the papacy the vassal of the French crown.
Clement V died after swallowing a dish of
crushed emeralds which was supposed to heal.
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| The Popes in Avignon were very
efficient administrators, centralizing the Church government and establishing a system of
papal finance. The Church regained much of the power it had lost during its feud with the
Empire. What it gained in organization, however, was more than offset by what it lost in
prestige.
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The apex of dissolution was reached in 1342
with Clement VI, ancient bishop of Sens, Rouen
and Chancellor of France, who loved splendor. Spiritual benefits were offered for money
and Church leaders appointed for economic gains while the Pope himself organized sexual
orgies on "doctors' orders." Profiteers removed by Benoit XII came back by
thousands. Man of good taste and arts, Clement bought the city from Jeanne of Sicily and
constructed the most beautiful part of the palace of Popes, attracting artists, scientists
and men of letters. In his defense, it must be said he offered protection to the Jews who,
as usual, where accused by the entire Europe to be the cause of the Black Plague.
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| Many Christians wondered how a
Church that preached the doctrine of a poor, itinerant Jewish Rabbi could in all good
conscience provide such splendid surroundings for its present leaders. The feeling that
the clergy no longer cared for the spiritual concerns of its flock continued to worry many
in the Church and, eventually, became a genuine crisis during the Reformation.
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In 1376, Pope Gregory XI moved the papacy back to Rome and all Christendom breathed a sigh of relief. Italy, which had been steadily pulling away from the Church under the pressure of its secular governments, began its return to the Church. However, the violent factionalism in Rome almost undid Gregory's initiative. Gregory was so distraught at the conditions in Rome and remembered with such delight the splendor of Avignon that he made plans to move the papacy back to Avignon.
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| He died before he could realize those plans
but, when the College of Cardinals convened to choose the new Pope, the Roman mobs let it
be known in no uncertain terms that they would be highly displeased if an Italian were not
elected Pope. The cardinals elected the Italian Urban VI. He seemed a safe choice, and the
cardinals had every reason to hope that he would allow them an occasional excess. Once elected Pope, However, Urban showed himself to be a man of determination and high purpose. He chastised the French cardinals who had elected him as being too worldly. They fled back to France and declared their election of Urban to be void, since they had been coerced by the Roman mobs, and elected a new Pope, Clement VII. From 1378 to 1409 the Church had two Popes, each of whom had excommunicated the other. The situation was clearly an embarrassment to the devout laymen and members of the clergy. The solution to the problem, however, presented certain difficulties. Since the Pope was the highest authority in the Church, he was the one who should obviously solve the problem. In this case, however, the solution was the problem. Finally, cardinals in both camps decided to convene a general council of the Church. Both Popes insisted that their authority was superior to that of a council. Nevertheless, in 1409 the cardinals met in council at Pisa. That council deposed both Popes and elected a new one, Alexander V, but neither of the deposed Popes considered the actions of the council binding. The result was, instead of having two Popes in the Church, there were three. In 1415, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire called the great Churchmen from all of Europe to Constance, where he convened a council that ultimately healed the schism by installing Martin V as the new Pope. |
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| As if famine and religious problems
weren’t enough, on an autumn day in October 1347, Genoese trading ships returning
from their trading posts in Crimea put into the harbor of Messina, Sicily, with dead and
dying men at the oars. The stricken men had strange black swellings the size of an egg or
apple in the armpits and groin. These oozed blood and pus and were quickly followed by
black blotches on the skin from internal bleeding. The sailors experienced such intense
pain that death, which generally followed five days after the first symptoms, came as a
welcome relief. Due to the lack of hygiene, the disease raced through the port town. Rumors of a plague in the Orient had circulated in Europe since 1346. In an age given to hyperbole, everyone believed the news of 23 million people dying to be exaggerated. Not until 1347 did Europe finally come to understand the terrible accuracy of that figure. By January, 1348, the plague had infected other port towns, especially Marseille and Tunis. In Europe it traveled up the Rhone river to call on the papal court at Avignon. It quickly spread to Bordeaux, Lyon, and Paris, then to Burgundy, Normandy, and England. From Sicily it traveled to Italy, Switzerland, and Hungary. Bohemia and Russia were largely unaffected until 1351. The general course of the disease in a geographic area ran about six months. It would then fade during winter, unless the area affected was densely populated, to resume with renewed vigor the following spring. Accurate mortality rates are difficult to find. The best estimates, based on a conservative reading of the records, place the mortality rate at about one-third of Europe's population. This would translate into about twenty million people dying between 1348 and 1350. Approximately 50% of the citizens of Paris, 60% of Bremen and Hamburg, and 75% of Florence, died in one year, their entire economic systems collapsing. In Venice, which kept excellent records, 60% died over the course of 18 months: 500-600 a day at the height. Certain professions suffered higher mortality, especially those whose duties brought them into contact with the sick--doctors and clergy. In Montpellier, only seven of 140 Dominican friars survived. In Perpignan, only one of nine physicians survived, and two of 18 barber-surgeons. The death rate at Avignon was 50% and was even higher among the clergy. One-third of the cardinals died. Clement VI had to consecrate the Rhone river so corpses could be sunk in it, for there was neither time nor room to bury them. The dead outnumbered the living by such a margin that in some cities the bodies were allowed to pile up outside in the streets, adding to the contagion. The more communal the living quarters were, the more thoroughly the plague could do its task. This meant that many convents and monasteries became extermination camps for their inhabitants. In some, every person died. The "black death," as the plague was known, influenced virtually every aspect of life in the latter part of the century. The plague touched everyone, rich and poor alike. The noted Florentine historian, Villani, wrote this: "And many lands and cities were made desolate. And the plague lasted until......." Villani left a blank at the end of the sentence, planning to fill in a date after the plague had abated. He never did. Villani died in 1348 from the plague. The whole community of scholars suffered as universities and schools, usually located in regions hardest hit, were closed or even abandoned. Sixteen of the forty professors at Cambridge died. Likewise in the institutions of the Church. The priests died and no one could hear confession. Bishops died, and so did their successors and even their successors. The plague took its toll among the nobility: King Alfonso XI of Castile was the only reigning monarch to die of the plague but many others, including the queens of Aragon and France, and the son of the Byzantine emperor died. The effect at local levels was more severe. City councils were ravaged and whole families of local nobles were wiped out. Courts closed down and wills could not be probated. Marchione di Coppo Stefani wrote his Florentine Chronicle in the late 1370s "In the year of the Lord 1348 there was a very great pestilence in the city and district of Florence. It was of such a fury and so tempestuous that in houses in which it took hold previously healthy servants who took care of the ill died of the same illness. Almost none of the ill survived past the fourth day. Neither physicians nor medicines were effective. When it took hold in a house it often happened that no one remained who had not died. And it was not just that men and women died, but even sentient animals died. Dogs, cats, chickens, oxen,donkeys sheep showed the same symptoms and died of the same disease. And almost none, or very few, who showed these symptoms, were cured." Many paintings and illuminations illustrate both the famine and the plague, but I believe the reading is graphic enough.I won't speak of the plague again, but one of its worst effects was that it came not once, but over and over. It was never as bad as the first instance, but all through the second half of the fourteenth century, every generation was visited by the plague. A couple of times it covered Europe again, but not with such devastation. It struck again and again in the 15th century, but less frequently. It was this recurrence that so reduced the population of Europe, and created such havoc with its economy, as countries never really had the chance to recover properly before another outbreak would occur. Those were the worst centuries, but there were local epidemics for another two hundred years. |
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| The plague’s effects on the
economy were profound. If there were too many people in Europe before the plague, there
were certainly too few afterwards. Entire feudal families had been wiped out, thus freeing
a large number of serfs who, left without guide, or direction, started heading towards the
cities. In addition, thousands of peasants, whose entire family had succumbed to the
plague and had seen their houses burned in an effort to stop it, also began moving from
the country into the city hoping to find work. Thus, harvests were abandoned and
production slumped. All areas experienced an acute shortage of labor which pushed wages up
and caused a further fall in the demand for goods. The cities were controlled by guilds which wanted to limit the number of workers, thereby driving up salaries. Thus, many of those who sought financial security in the city were unable to find work and, becoming part of the urban unemployed, start roaming the countryside in large bands, pillaging and looting. |
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In France, the economic hardship resulted in an uprising of the lower-class, called the "Jacquerie" (taken from the French peasant "Jacques Bonhomme"). The peasants burned castles, murdered and raped their lords and lords' wives. But this was going on just about everywhere in Europe. |
| At about the same time in England,
for instance, the Black Death had caused a shortage of labor, a freeing of serfs, a rise
in salary and a decrease in rent. The aristocratic passed legislation that lowered wages
to the amount before the plague and that required lower wages for laborers without land.
The peasants rise against this oppression in what is called the English Peasants'Revolt
when they marched into London, murdered the Lord Chancellor and Treasurer and were met by
Richard II. Richard promised the abolition of serfdom and a lower of rent. But, after the
peasants leave, Richard had the peasant groups followed and murdered. The Hundred Years' War added war to plague and famine. The English inflicted great defeats on France at Crecy and Poitiers. Soon would appear the "routiers," mercenary armies that served one king or the other or, when no-one hired them, would roam the countryside in search of plunder. When the war abated in the west, the unemployed warriors moved to Italy, where they fought in "free companies" for any state, or individual, that would employ them. There, too, they destroyed, looted and pillaged over a wide area. A French chronicler narrates how these events affected Avignon which, sited in an island smack in the middle of the Rhone, was very well protected and fortified by a double set of ramparts as you may see below. |
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| "En
cette époque de la guerre de cent ans, la vallée du Rhône était écumée par des
bandes de routiers pour la plupart composées de mercenaires renvoyés par les Anglais à
la suite de la trève de BORDEAUX du 23 mars 1357. Parmi les grandes compagnies restées
tristement célèbres, on retiendra "LA COMPAGNIE BLANCHE", "LES TARDS
VENUS" avec à leur tête un ex-chevalier gascon, SEGUIN de BADEFOLS, qui prendront
PONT-SAINT-ESPRIT dans la nuit du 28 au 29 décembre 1360, "I'armée d'ARNAUD DE
CERVOLLE" qui avait servi le duc d'ALENÇON à la bataille de POITlERS, prince
pillard, archiprêtre de VELINES en PERIGORD, qui obligea le Pape à lui verser la somme
de mille florins le 29 septembre 1358, contre son départ et la levée du siège qu'il
avait mis à AVIGNON.Une fois satisfait, il empoche la rancon et licencie ses troupes sur
place. Celles-ci privées de chef furent encore plus dangereuses. Le 8 mars 1360, les hostilités cessent entre la France et l'Angleterre après la signature du traité de BRETIGNY. Une nouvelle fois la région est envahie par les mercenaires débauchés, qui, livrés à eux-mêmes, reforment des bandes composées, cette fois, en majorité d'Anglais brigands et pillards. Le grand prieur d'EMPOSTE en ARAGON, JUAN FERNANDEZ de HEREDIA, obtient aprés le siège de PONT-SAINT-ESPRIT que ces bandes iront se battre en ITALIE, sous les ordres du marquis de MONTFERRAT, moyennant la somme de quatorze mille cinq cents florins d'or, pour laquelle le Pape, les Avignonnais et les Comtadins durent se cotiser. 4 ans plus tard, le 5 novembre 1365, c'est Bertrand DU GUESCLIN, à la tête des"PELERlNS DE DIEU" constitués de trente mille croisés, qui est en vue des remparts. La menace de pillage représentée par cette armée fut, là aussi, évitée grâce à l'absolution de leurs péchés par le Pape et surtout par la remise d'une rançon de 200.000 florins d'or." In other words, following the cease-fire of Bordeaux, several companies assault Avignon in succession. Among these, one led by Arnaud de Cervolle--who had served in the Duke of Alencon's army during the Battle of Poitiers and was archdeacon of Velines, in Perigord--who forces the Pope to deliver a ransom of 1,000 gold florins to lift the siege. However, Arnaud pockets the money and flees, leaving his men ever more furious and dangerous. Then, after the treaty of Bretigny, once again the region was invaded by mercenaries and pillagers, the majority English brigands. Juan Fernandez de Heredia pays them 14,500 gold florins to lift the siege and go fight in Italy for the Marquis of Monferrato (Gee...thank you very much, Don Juan!). Four years later, it was the turn of Bertrand Du Guesclin who, at the head of 30,000 "God's Pilgrims," was diverted by the Pope who gave them absolution of their sins and payment of 200,000 gold florins. The price of Avignon, set at 1,000 florins in 1357, had quickly escalated to 200,00 by 1365. Talk about inflation!
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Continues.... |
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Imola
Casal Fiumanense
Castel del Rio
Castel Guelfo
Mordano
Cesena
