I sought the pathless woods,And drew the cowards thence and made them blush,And then made fury follow on their shame.I hailed the peasant in his fertile fields,Where, 'neath the burden of the cruel tribute,He dropped from famine 'midst the harvest sheaves,With his starved brood: “Open thou with thy scytheThe breasts of Frenchmen; let the earth no moreBe fertile to our tyrants.” I found my wayIn palaces, in hovels; tranquil, IBoth great and lowly did make drunk with rage.I knew the art to call forth cruel tearsIn every eye, to wake in every heartA love of slaughter, a ferocious needOf blood. And in a thousand strong right handsGlitter the arms I gave.
In the last act occurs one of those lyrical passages in which Niccolini excels, and two lines from this chorus are among the most famous in modern Italian poetry:
Perchè tanto sorriso del cieloSulla terra del vile dolor?
The scene is in a public place in Palermo, and the time is the moment before the massacre of the French begins. A chorus of Sicilian poets remind the people of their sorrows and degradation, and sing:
The wind vexes the forest no longer,In the sunshine the leaflets expand:With barrenness cursed be the landThat is bathed with the sweat of the slave!On the fields now the harvests are waving,On the fields that our blood has made red;Harvests grown for our enemy's breadFrom the bones of our children they wave!With a veil of black clouds would the tempestMight the face of this Italy cover;Why should Heaven smile so glorious overThe land of our infamous woe?All nature is suddenly wakened,Here in slumbers unending man sleeps;Dust trod evermore by the stepsOf ever-strange lords he lies low!
{Illustration: Giambattista Niccolini.}
“With this tragedy,” says an Italian biographer of Niccolini, “the poet potently touched all chords of the human heart, from the most impassioned love to the most implacable hate.... The enthusiasm rose to the greatest height, and for as many nights of the severe winter of 1830 as the tragedy was given, the theater was always thronged by the overflowing audience; the doors of the Cocomero were opened to the impatient people many hours before the spectacle began. Spectators thought themselves fortunate to secure a seat next the roof of the theater; even in the prompter's hole {Note: On the Italian stage the prompter rises from a hole in the floor behind the foot-lights, and is hidden from the audience merely by a canvas shade.} places were sought to witness the admired work.... And whilst they wept over the ill-starred love of Imelda, and all hearts palpitated in the touching situation of the drama,—where the public and the personal interests so wonderfully blended, and the vengeance of a people mingled with that of a man outraged in the most sacred affections of the heart,—Procida rose terrible as the billows of his sea, imprecating before all the wrongs of their oppressed country, in whatever servitude inflicted, by whatever aliens, among all those that had trampled, derided, and martyred her, and raising the cry of resistance which stirred the heart of all Italy. At the picture of the abject sufferings of their common country, the whole audience rose and repeated with tears of rage:
“Why should heaven smile so glorious overThe land of our infamous woe?”
By the year 1837 had begun the singular illusion of the Italians, that their freedom and unity were to be accomplished through a liberal and patriotic Pope. Niccolini, however, never was cheated by it, though he was very much disgusted, and he retired, not only from the political agitation, but almost from the world. He was seldom seen upon the street, but to those who had access to him he did not fail to express all the contempt and distrust he felt. “A liberal Pope! a liberal Pope!” he said, with a scornful enjoyment of that contradiction in terms. He was thoroughly Florentine and Tuscan in his anti-papal spirit, and he was faithful in it to the tradition of Dante, Petrarch, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Alfieri, who all doubted and combated the papal influence as necessarily fatal to Italian hopes. In 1843 he published his great and principal tragedy,Arnaldo da Brescia, which was a response to the ideas of the papal school of patriots. In due time Pius IX. justified Niccolini, and all others that distrusted him, by turning his back upon the revolution, which belief in him, more than anything else, had excited.
The tragedies which succeeded the Arnaldo were theFilippo Strozzi, published in 1847; theBeatriceCenci, a version from the English of Shelley, and theMario e i Cimbri.
A part of the Arnaldo da Brescia was performed in Florence in 1858, not long before the war which has finally established Italian freedom. The name of the Cocomero theater had been changed to the Teatro Niccolini, and, in spite of the governmental anxiety and opposition, the occasion was made a popular demonstration in favor of Niccolini's ideas as well as himself. His biographer says: “The audience now maintained a religious silence; now, moved by irresistible force, broke out into uproarious applause as the eloquent protests of the friar and the insolent responses of the Pope awakened their interest; for Italy then, like the unhappy martyr, had risen to proclaim the decline of that monstrous power which, in the name of a religion profaned by it, sanctifies its own illegitimate and feudal origin, its abuses, its pride, its vices, its crimes. It was a beautiful and affecting spectacle to see the illustrious poet receiving the warm congratulations of his fellow-citizens, who enthusiastically recognized in him the utterer of so many lofty truths and the prophet of Italy. That night Niccolini was accompanied to his house by the applauding multitude.” And if all this was a good deal like the honors the Florentines were accustomed to pay to a very prettyballerinaor a successfulprima donna, there is no doubt that a poet is much worthier the popular frenzy; and it is a pity that the forms of popular frenzy have to be so cheapened by frequent use. The two remaining years of Niccolini's life were spent in great retirement, and in a satisfaction with the fortunes of Italy which was only marred by the fact that the French still remained in Rome, and that the temporal power yet stood. He died in 1861.
The work of Niccolini in which he has poured out all the lifelong hatred and distrust he had felt for the temporal power of the popes is the Arnaldo da Brescia. This we shall best understand through a sketch of the life of Arnaldo, who is really one of the most heroic figures of the past, deserving to rank far above Savonarola, and with the leaders of the Reformation, though he preceded these nearly four hundred years. He was born in Brescia of Lombardy, about the year 1105, and was partly educated in France, in the school of the famous Abelard. He early embraced the ecclesiastical life, and, when he returned to his own country, entered a convent, but not to waste his time in idleness and the corruptions of his order. In fact, he began at once to preach against these, and against the usurpation of temporal power by all the great and little dignitaries of the Church. He thus identified himself with the democratic side in politics, which was then locally arrayed against the bishop aspiring to rule Brescia. Arnaldo denounced the political power of the Pope, as well as that of the prelates; and the bishop, making this known to the pontiff at Rome, had sufficient influence to procure a sentence against Arnaldo as a schismatic, and an order enjoining silence upon him. He was also banished from Italy; whereupon, retiring to France, he got himself into further trouble by aiding Abelard in the defense of his teachings, which had been attainted of heresy. Both Abelard and Arnaldo were at this time bitterly persecuted by St. Bernard, and Arnaldo took refuge in Switzerland, whence, after several years, he passed to Rome, and there began to assume an active part in the popular movements against the papal rule. He was an ardent republican, and was a useful and efficient partisan, teaching openly that, whilst the Pope was to be respected in all spiritual things, he was not to be recognized at all as a temporal prince. When the English monk, Nicholas Breakspear, became Pope Adrian IV., he excommunicated and banished Arnaldo; but Arnaldo, protected by the senate and certain powerful nobles, remained at Rome in spite of the Pope's decree, and disputed the lawfulness of the excommunication. Finally, the whole city was laid under interdict until Arnaldo should be driven out. Holy Week was drawing near; the people were eager to have their churches thrown open and to witness the usual shows and splendors, and they consented to the exile of their leader. The followers of a cardinal arrested him, but he was rescued by his friends, certain counts of the Campagna, who held him for a saint, and who now lodged him safely in one of their castles. The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, coming to Rome to assume the imperial crown, was met by embassies from both parties in the city. He warmly favored that of the Pope, and not only received that of the people very coldly, but arrested one of the counts who had rescued Arnaldo, and forced him to name the castle in which the monk lay concealed. Arnaldo was then given into the hands of the cardinals, and these delivered him to the prefect of Rome, who caused him to be hanged, his body to be burned upon a spit, and his ashes to be scattered in the Tiber, that the people might not venerate his relics as those of a saint. “This happened,” says the priest Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, of Brescia, whose Life, published in 1790, I have made use of—“this happened in the year 1155 before the 18th of June, previous to the coronation of Frederick, Arnaldo being, according to my thinking, fifty years of age. His eloquence,” continues Guadagnini, “was celebrated by his enemies themselves; the exemplarity of his life was superior to their malignity, constraining them all to silence, although they were in such great number, and it received a splendid eulogy from St. Bernard, the luminary of that century, who, being strongly impressed against him, condemned him first as a schismatic, and then for the affair of the Council of Sens (the defense of Abelard), persecuted him as a heretic, and then had finally nothing to say against him. His courage and his zeal for the discipline of the Church have been sufficiently attested by the toils, the persecutions, and the death which he underwent for that cause.”
The scene of the first act of Niccolini's tragedy is near the Capitoline Hill, in Rome, where two rival leaders, Frangipani and Giordano Pierleone, are disputing in the midst of their adherents. The former is a supporter of the papal usurpations; the latter is a republican chief, who has been excommunicated for his politics, and is also under sentence of banishment; but who, like Arnaldo, remains in Rome in spite of Church and State. Giordano withdraws to the Campidôglio with his adherents, and there Arnaldo suddenly appears among them. When the people ask what cure there is for their troubles, Arnaldo answers, in denunciation of the papacy:
Liberty and God.A voice from the orient,A voice from the Occident,A voice from thy deserts,A voice of echoes from the open graves,Accuses thee, thou shameless harlot! DrunkArt thou with blood of saints, and thou hast lainWith all the kings of earth. Ah, you behold her!She is clothed on with purple; gold and pearlsAnd gems are heaped upon her; and her vestmentsOnce white, the pleasure of her former spouse,That now's in heaven, she has dragged in dust.Lo, is she full of names and blasphemies,And on her brow is writtenMystery!Ah, nevermore you hear her voice consoleThe afflicted; all she threatens, and createsWith her perennial curse in trembling soulsIneffable pangs; the unhappy—as we hereAre all of us—fly in their common sorrowsTo embrace each other; she, the cruel one,Sunders them in the name of Jesus; fathersShe kindles against sons, and wives she partsFrom husbands, and she makes a war betweenHarmonious brothers; of the Evangel sheIs cruel interpreter, and teaches hateOut of the book of love. The years are comeWhereof the rapt Evangelist of PatmosDid prophesy; and, to deceive the people,Satan has broken the chains he bore of old;And she, the cruel, on the infinite watersOf tears that are poured out for her, sits throned.The enemy of man two goblets placesUnto her shameless lips; and one is blood,And gold is in the other; greedy and fierceShe drinks so from them both, the world knows notIf she of blood or gold have greater thirst....Lord, those that fled before thy scourge of oldNo longer stand to barter offeringsAbout thy temple's borders, but withinMan's self is sold, and thine own blood is trafficked,Thou son of God!
The people ask Arnaldo what he counsels them to do, and he advises them to restore the senate and the tribunes, appealing to the glorious memories of the place where they stand, the Capitoline Hill:
Where the earth calls at every step, “Oh, pause,Thou treadest on a hero!”
They desire to make him a tribune, but he refuses, promising, however, that he will not withhold his counsel. Whilst he speaks, some cardinals, with nobles of the papal party, appear, and announce the election of the new Pope, Adrian. “What is his name?” the people demand; and a cardinal answers, “Breakspear, a Briton.” Giordano exclaims:
Impious race! you've chosen Rome for shepherdA cruel barbarian, and even his nameTortures our ears.Arnaldo.I never care to askWhere popes are born; and from long suffering,You, Romans, before heaven, should have learntThat priests can have no country....I know this man; his father was a thrall,And he is fit to be a slave. He madeFriends with the Norman that enslaves his country;A wandering beggar to Avignon's cloistersHe came in boyhood and was known to doAll abject services; there those false monksHe with astute humility cajoled;He learned their arts, and 'mid intrigues and hatesHe rose at last out of his native filthA tyrant of the vile.
The cardinals, confounded by Arnaldo's presence and invectives, withdraw, but leave one of their party to work on the fears of the Romans, and make them return to their allegiance by pictures of the desolating war which Barbarossa, now approaching Rome to support Adrian, has waged upon the rebellious Lombards at Rosate and elsewhere. Arnaldo replies:—
Romans,I will tell all the things that he has hid;I know not how to cheat you. Yes, RosateA ruin is, from which the smoke ascends.The bishop, lord of Monferrato, guidedThe German arms against Chieri and Asti,Now turned to dust; that shepherd pitilessDid thus avenge his own offenses onHis flying flocks; himself with torches armedThe German hand; houses and churches sawDestroyed, and gave his blessing on the flames.This is the pardon that you may expectFrom mitered tyrants. A heap of ashes nowCrowneth the hill where once Tortona stood;And drunken with her wine and with her blood,Fallen there amidst their spoil upon the dead,Slept the wild beasts of Germany: like ghostsDim wandering through the darkness of the night,Those that were left by famine and the sword,Hidden within the heart of thy dim caverns,Desolate city! rose and turned their stepsNoiselessly toward compassionate Milan.There they have borne their swords and hopes: I seeA thousand heroes born from the exampleTortona gave. O city, if I could,O sacred city! upon the ruins fallReverently, and take them in my loving arms,The relics of thy brave I'd gather upIn precious urns, and from the altars hereIn days of battle offer to be kissed!Oh, praise be to the Lord! Men die no moreFor chains and errors; martyrs now at lastHast thou, O holy Freedom; and fain were IAshes for thee!—But I see you grow pale,Ye Romans! Down, go down; this holy heightIs not for cowards. In the valley thereYour tyrant waits you; go and fall before himAnd cover his haughty foot with tears and kisses.He'll tread you in the dust, and then absolve you.The People.The arms we have are strange and few,Our walls Are fallen and ruinous.Arnaldo.Their hearts are wallsUnto the brave....And they shall rise again,The walls that blood of freemen has baptized,But among slaves their ruins are eternal.People.You outrage us, sir!Arnaldo.Wherefore do ye trembleBefore the trumpet sounds? O thou that wastOnce the world's lord and first in Italy,Wilt thou be now the last?People.No more! Cease, or thou diest!
Arnaldo, having roused the pride of the Romans, now tells them that two thousand Swiss have followed him from his exile; and the act closes with some lyrical passages leading to the fraternization of the people with these.
The second act of this curious tragedy, where there may be said to be scarcely any personal interest, but where we are aware of such an impassioned treatment of public interests as perhaps never was before, opens with a scene between the Pope Adrian and the Cardinal Guido. The character of both is finely studied by the poet; and Guido, the type of ecclesiastical submission, has not more faith in the sacredness and righteousness of Adrian, than Adrian, the type of ecclesiastical ambition, has in himself. The Pope tells Guido that he stands doubting between the cities of Lombardy leagued against Frederick, and Frederick, who is coming to Rome, not so much to befriend the papacy as to place himself in a better attitude to crush the Lombards. The German dreams of the restoration of Charlemagne's empire; he believes the Church corrupt; and he and Arnaldo would be friends, if it were not for Arnaldo's vain hope of reëstablishing the republican liberties of Rome. The Pope utters his ardent desire to bring Arnaldo back to his allegiance; and when Guido reminds him that Arnaldo has been condemned by a council of the Church, and that it is scarcely in his power to restore him, Adrian turns upon him:
What sayest thou?I can do all. Dare the audacious membersRebel against the head? Within these handsLie not the keys that once were given to Peter?The heavens repeat as 't were the word of God,My word that here has power to loose and bind.Arnaldo did not dare so much. The kingdomOf earth alone he did deny me. ThouArt more outside the Church than he.Guido(kneeling at Adrian's feet). O God,I erred; forgive! I rise not from thy feetTill thou absolve me. My zeal blinded me.I'm clay before thee; shape me as thou wilt,A vessel apt to glory or to shame.
Guido then withdraws at the Pope's bidding, in order to send a messenger to Arnaldo, and Adrian utters this fine soliloquy:
At every step by which I've hither climbedI've found a sorrow; but upon the summitAll sorrows are; and thorns more thickly springAround my chair than ever round a throne.What weary toil to keep up from the dustThis mantle that's weighed down the strongest limbs!These splendid gems that blaze in my tiara,They are a fire that burns the aching brow,I lift with many tears, O Lord, to thee!Yet I must fear not; He that did know howTo bear the cross, so heavy with the sinsOf all the world, will succor the weak servantThat represents his power here on earth.Of mine own isle that make the light o' the sunObscure as one day was my lot, amidstThe furious tumults of this guilty Rome,Here, under the superb effulgencyOf burning skies, I think of you and weep!
The Pope's messenger finds Arnaldo in the castle of Giordano, where these two are talking of the present fortunes and future chances of Rome. The patrician forebodes evil from the approach of the emperor, but Arnaldo encourages him, and, when the Pope's messenger appears, he is eager to go to Adrian, believing that good to their cause will come of it. Giordano in vain warns him against treachery, bidding him remember that Adrian will hold any falsehood sacred that is used with a heretic. It is observable throughout that Niccolini is always careful to make his rebellious priest a good Catholic; and now Arnaldo rebukes Giordano for some doubts of the spiritual authority of the Pope. When Giordano says:
These modern pharisees, upon the cross,Where Christ hung dying once, have nailed mankind,
Arnaldo answers:
He will know how to save that rose and conquered;
And Giordano replies:
Yes, Christ arose; but Freedom cannot breakThe stone that shuts her ancient sepulcher,For on it stands the altar.
Adrian, when Arnaldo appears before him, bids him fall down and kiss his feet, and speak to him as to God; he will hear Arnaldo only as a penitent. Arnaldo answers:
The feetOf his disciples did that meek One kissWhom here thou representest. But I hearNow from thy lips the voice of fiercest pride.Repent, O Peter, that deniest him,And near the temple art, but far from God!
The name of the kingIs never heard in Rome. And if thou areThe vicar of Christ on earth, well should'st thou knowThat of thorns only was the crown he wore.Adrian.He gave to me the empire of the earthWhen this great mantly I put on, and tookThe Church's high seat I was chosen to;The word of God did erst create the world,And now mine guides it. Would'st thou that the soulShould serve the body? Thou dost dream of freedom,And makest war on him who sole on earthCan shield man from his tyrants. O Arnaldo,Be Wise; believe me, all thy words are vain,Vain sound that perish or disperse themselvesAmidst the wilderness of Rome. I onlyCan speak the words that the whole world repeats.Arnaldo. Thy words were never Freedom's; placed betweenThe people and their tyrants, still the ChurchWith the weak cruel, with the mighty vile,Has been, and crushed in pitiless embracesThat emperors and pontiffs have exchanged.Man has been ever.
Why seek'st thou empire here, and great on earthArt mean in heaven? Ah! vainly in thy prayerThou criest, “Let the heart be lifted up!”'T is ever bowed to earth.
Now, then, if thou wilt,Put forth the power that thou dost vaunt; repressThe crimes of bishops, make the Church ashamedTo be a step-mother to the poor and lowly.In all the Lombard cities every priestHas grown a despot, in shrewd perfidyNow siding with the Church, now with the Empire.They have dainty food, magnificent apparel,Lascivious joys, and on their altars coldGathers the dust, where lies the miter dropt,Forgotten, from the haughty brow that wearsThe helmet, and no longer bows itselfBefore God's face in th' empty sanctuaries;But upon the fields of slaughter, smoking still,Bends o'er the fallen foe, and aims the blowsO' th' sacrilegious sword, with cruel triumphInsulting o'er the prayers of dying men.There the priest rides o'er breasts of fallen foes,And stains with blood his courser's iron heel.When comes a brief, false peace, and wearilyAmidst the havoc doth the priest sit down,His pleasures are a crime, and after rapineLuxury follows. Like a thief he climbsInto the fold, and that desired by dayHe dares amid the dark, and violenceIs the priest's marriage. Vainly did Rome hopeThat they had thrown aside the burden vileOf the desires that weigh down other men.Theirs is the ungrateful lust of the wild beast,That doth forget the mother nor knows the child.... On the altar of Christ,Who is the prince of pardon and of peace,Vows of revenge are registered, and torchesThat are thrown into hearts of leaguered citiesAre lit from tapers burning before God.Become thou king of sacrifice; ascendThe holy hill of God; on these perverseLaunch thou thy thunderbolts; and feared againAnd great thou wilt be. Tell me, Adrian,Must thou not bear a burden that were heavyEven for angels? Wherefore wilt thou joinDeath unto life, and make the word of God,That says, “My kingdom is not of this world,”A lie? Oh, follow Christ's example hereIn Rome; it pleased both God and herTo abase the proud and to uplift the weak.I'll kiss the foot that treads on kings!Adrian.Arnaldo,I parley not, I rule; and I, becomeOn earth as God in heaven, am judge of all,And none of me; I watch, and I dispenseTerrors and hopes, rewards and punishments,To peoples and to kings; fountain and sourceOf life am I, who make the Church of GodOne and all-powerful. Many thrones and peoplesShe has seen tost upon the madding wavesOf time, and broken on the immovable rockWhereon she sits; and since one errless spiritRules in her evermore, she doth not raveFor changeful doctrine, but she keeps eternalThe grandeur of her will and purposes.... Arnaldo,Thou movest me to pity. In vain thou seek'stTo warm thy heart over these ruins, gropingAmong the sepulchers of Rome. Thou'lt findNo bones to which thou canst say, “Rise!” Ah, hereRemaineth not one hero's dust. Thou thinkestThat with old names old virtues shall return?And thou desirest tribunes, senators,Equestrian orders, Rome! A greater gloryThy sovereign pontiff is who doth not guardThe rights uncertain of a crazy rabble;But tribune of the world he sits in Rome,And “I forbid,” to kings and peoples cries.I tell thee a greater than the impious powerThat thou in vain endeavorest to renewHere built the dying fisherman of Judea.Out of his blood he made a fatherlandFor all the nations, and this place, that onceA city was, became a world; the bordersThat did divide the nations, by Christ's lawAre ta'en away, and this the kingdom isFor which he asked his Father in his prayer.The Church has sons in every race; I rule,An unseen king, and Rome is everywhere!Arnaldo. Thou errest, Adrian. Rome's thunderboltsWake little terror now, and reason shakesThe bonds that thou fain would'st were everlasting.... Christ calls to herAs of old to the sick man, “Rise and walk.”She 'll tread on you if you go not before.The world has other truth besides the altar's.It will not have a temple that hides heaven.Thou wast a shepherd: be a father. The raceOf man is weary of being called a flock.
Adrian's final reply is, that if Arnaldo will renounce his false doctrine and leave Rome, the Pope will, through him, give the Lombard cities a liberty that shall not offend the Church. Arnaldo refuses, and quits Adrian's presence. It is quite needless to note the bold character of the thought here, or the nobility of the poetry, which Niccolini puts as well into the mouth of the Pope whom he hates as the monk whom he loves.
Following this scene is one of greater dramatic force, in which the Cardinal Guido, sent to the Campidoglio by the Pope to disperse the popular assembly, is stoned by the people and killed. He dies full of faith in the Church and the righteousness of his cause, and his body, taken up by the priests, is carried into the square before St. Peter's. A throng, including many women, has followed; and now Niccolini introduces a phase of the great Italian struggle which was perhaps the most perplexing of all. The subjection of the women to the priests is what has always greatly contributed to defeat Italian efforts for reform; it now helps to unnerve the Roman multitude; and the poet finally makes it the weakness through which Arnaldo is dealt his death. With a few strokes in the scene that follows the death of Guido, he indicates the remorse and dismay of the people when the Pope repels them from the church door and proclaims the interdict; and then follow some splendid lyrical passages, in which the Pope commands the pictures and images to be veiled and the relics to be concealed, and curses the enemies of the Church. I shall but poorly render this curse by a rhymeless translation, and yet I am tempted to give it:
The Pope.To-day let the perfidiousLearn at thy name to tremble,Nor triumph o'er the ruinousPlace of thy vanished altars.Oh, brief be their days and uncertain;In the desert their wandering footsteps,Every tremulous leaflet affright them!The Cardinals.Anathema, anathema, anathema!Pope.May their widows sit down 'mid the ashesOn the hearths of their desolate houses,With their little ones wailing around them.Cardinals.Anathema, anathema, anathema!Pope.May he who was born to the furyOf heaven, afar from his countryBe lost in his ultimate anguish.Cardinals.Anathema, anathema, anathema!Pope.May he fly to the house of the alien oppressorThat is filled with the spoil of his brothers, with womenDestroyed by the pitiless hands that defiled them;There in accents unknown and derided, abase himAt portals ne'er opened in mercy, imploringA morsel of bread.Cardinals.Be that morsel denied him!Pope.I hear the wicked cry: I from the LordWill fly away with swift and tireless feet;His anger follows me upon the sea;I'll seek the desert; who will give me wings?In cloudy horror, who shall lead my steps?The eye of God maketh the night as day.O brothers, fulfill thenThe terrible duty;Throw down from the altarsThe dim-burning tapers;And be all joy, and be the love of GodIn thankless hearts that know not Peter, quenched,As is the little flame that falls and dies,Here in these tapers trampled under foot.
In the first scene of the third act, which is a desolate place in the Campagna, near the sea, Arnaldo appears. He has been expelled from Rome by the people, eager for the opening of their churches, and he soliloquizes upon his fate in language that subtly hints all his passing moods, and paints the struggle of his soul. It appears to me that it is a wise thing to make him almost regret the cloister in the midst of his hatred of it, and then shrink from that regret with horror; and there is also a fine sense of night and loneliness in the scene:
Like this sandIs life itself, and evermore each pathIs traced in suffering, and one footprint stillObliterates another; and we are allVain shadows here that seem a little while,And suffer, and pass. Let me not fight in vain,O Son of God, with thine immortal word,Yon tyrant of eternity and time,Who doth usurp thy place on earth, whose feetAre in the depths, whose head is in the clouds,Who thunders all abroad,The world is mine!Laws, virtues, liberty I have attemptedTo give thee, Rome. Ah! only where death isAbides thy glory. Here the laurel onlyFlourishes on the ruins and the tombs.I will repose upon this fallen columnMy weary limbs. Ah, lower than this ye lie,You Latin souls, and to your ancient heightWho shall uplift you? I am all weighed downBy the great trouble of the lofty hopesOf Italy still deluded, and I findWithin my soul a drearer desert farThan this, where the air already darkens round,And the soft notes of distant convent bellsAnnounce the coming night.... I cannot hear themWithout a trembling wish that in my heartWakens a memory that becomes remorse....Ah, Reason, soon thou languishest in us,Accustomed to such outrage all our lives.Thou know'st the cloister; thou a youth didst enterThat sepulcher of the living where is war,—Remember it and shudder! The damp windStirs this gray hair. I'm near the sea.Thy silence is no more; sweet on the earCometh the far-off murmur of the floodsIn the vast desert; now no more the darknessImprisons wholly; now less gloomilyLowers the sky that lately threatened storm.Less thick the air is, and the trembling lightO' the stars among the breaking clouds appears.Praise to the Lord! The eternal harmonyOf all his work I feel. Though these vague beamsReveal to me here only fens and tombs,My soul is not so heavily weighed downBy burdens that oppressed it....I rise to grander purposes: man's tentsAre here below, his city is in heaven.I doubt no more; the terror of the cloisterNo longer assails me.
Presently Giordano comes to join Arnaldo in this desolate place, and, in the sad colloquy which follows, tells him of the events of Rome, and the hopelessness of their cause, unless they have the aid and countenance of the Emperor. He implores Arnaldo to accompany the embassy which he is about to send to Frederick; but Arnaldo, with a melancholy disdain, refuses. He asks where are the Swiss who accompanied him to Rome, and he is answered by one of the Swiss captains, who at that moment appears. The Emperor has ordered them to return home, under penalty of the ban of the empire. He begs Arnaldo to return with them, but Arnaldo will not; and Giordano sends him under a strong escort to the castle of Ostasio. Arnaldo departs with much misgiving, for the wife of Ostasio is Adelasia, a bigoted papist, who has hitherto resisted the teaching to which her husband has been converted.
As the escort departs, the returning Swiss are seen. One of their leaders expresses the fear that moves them, when he says that the Germans will desolate their homes if they do not return to them. Moreover, the Italian sun, which destroys even those born under it, drains their life, and man and nature are leagued against them there. “What have you known here!” he asks, and his soldiers reply in chorus:
The pride of old names, the caprices of fate,In vast desert spaces the silence of death,Or in mist-hidden lowlands, his wandering fires;No sweet song of birds, no heart-cheering sound,But eternal memorials of ancient despair,And ruins and tombs that waken dismayAt the moan of the pines that are stirred by the wind.Full of dark and mysterious peril the woods;No life-giving fountains, but only bare sands,Or some deep-bedded river that silently moves,With a wave that is livid and stagnant, betweenIts margins ungladdened by grass or by flowers,And in sterile sands vanishes wholly away.Out of huts that by turns have been shambles and tombs,All pallid and naked, and burned by their fevers,The peasant folk suddenly stare as you pass,With visages ghastly, and eyes full of hate,Aroused by the accent that's strange to their ears.Oh, heavily hang the clouds here on the head!Wan and sick is the earth, and the sun is a tyrant.
Then one of the Swiss soldiers speaks alone:
The unconquerable love of our own landDraws us away till we behold againThe eternal walls the Almighty builded there.Upon the arid ways of faithless landsI am tormented by a tender dreamOf that sweet rill which runs before my cot.Oh, let me rest beside the smiling lake,And hear the music of familiar words,And on its lonely margin, wild and fair,Lie down and think of my beloved ones.
There is no page of this tragedy which does not present some terrible or touching picture, which is not full of brave and robust thought, which has not also great dramatic power. But I am obliged to curtail the proof of this, and I feel that, after all, I shall not give a complete idea of the tragedy's grandeur, its subtlety, its vast scope and meaning.
There is a striking dialogue between a Roman partisan of Arnaldo, who, with his fancy oppressed by the heresy of his cause, is wavering in his allegiance, and a Brescian, whom the outrages of the priests have forever emancipated from faith in their power to bless or ban in the world to come. Then ensues a vivid scene, in which a fanatical and insolent monk of Arnaldo's order, leading a number of soldiers, arrests him by command of Adrian. Ostasio's soldiers approaching to rescue him, the monk orders him to be slain, but he is saved, and the act closes with the triumphal chorus of his friends. Here is fine occasion for the play of different passions, and the occasion is not lost.
With the fourth act is introduced the new interest of the German oppression; and as we have had hitherto almost wholly a study of the effect of the papal tyranny upon Italy, we are now confronted with the shame and woe which the empire has wrought her. Exiles from the different Lombard cities destroyed by Barbarossa meet on their way to seek redress from the Pope, and they pour out their sorrows in pathetic and passionate lyrics. To read these passages gives one a favorable notion of the liberality or the stupidity of the government which permitted the publication of the tragedy. The events alluded to were many centuries past, the empire had long ceased to be; but the Italian hatred of the Germans was one and indivisible for every moment of all times, and we may be sure that to each of Niccolini's readers these mediaeval horrors were but masks for cruelties exercised by the Austrians in his own day, and that in those lyrical bursts of rage and grief there was full utterance for his smothered sense of present wrong. There is a great charm in these strophes; they add unspeakable pathos to a drama which is so largely concerned with political interests; and they make us feel that it is a beautiful and noble work of art, as well as grand appeal to the patriotism of the Italians and the justice of mankind.
When we are brought into the presence of Barbarossa, we find him awaiting the arrival of Adrian, who is to accompany him to Rome and crown him emperor, in return for the aid that Barbarossa shall give in reducing the rebellious citizens and delivering Arnaldo into the power of the papacy. Heralds come to announce Adrian's approach, and riding forth a little way, Frederick dismounts in order to go forward on foot and meet the Pope, who advances, preceded by his clergy, and attended by a multitude of his partisans. As Frederick perceives the Pope and quits his horse, he muses:
I leave thee,O faithful comrade mine in many perils,Thou generous steed! and now, upon the groundThat should have thundered under thine advance,With humble foot I silent steps must trace.But what do I behold? Toward us comes,With tranquil pride, the servant of the lowly,Upon a white horse docile to the reinAs he would kings were; all about the pathThat Adrian moves on, warriors and peopleOf either sex, all ages, in blind homage,Mingle, press near and fall upon the ground,Or one upon another; and man, whom GodMade to look up to heaven, becomes as dustUnder the feet of pride; and they believeThe gates of Paradise would be set wideTo any one whom his steed crushed to death.With me thou never hast thine empire shared;Thou alone hold'st the world! He will not turnOn me in sign of greeting that proud head,Encircled by the tiara; and he sees,Like God, all under him in murmured prayerOr silence, blesses them, and passes on.What wonder if he will not deign to touchThe earth I tread on with his haughty foot!He gives it to be kissed of kings; I tooMust stoop to the vile act.
Since the time of Henry II. it had been the custom of the emperors to lead the Pope's horse by the bridle, and to hold his stirrup while he descended. Adrian waits in vain for this homage from Frederick, and then alights with the help of his ministers, and seats himself in his episcopal chair, while Frederick draws near, saying aside:
I read there in his face his insolent prideVeiled by humility.
He bows before Adrian and kisses his foot, and then offers him the kiss of peace, which Adrian refuses, and haughtily reminds him of the fate of Henry. Frederick answers furiously that the thought of this fate has always filled him with hatred of the papacy; and Adrian, perceiving that he has pressed too far in this direction, turns and soothes the Emperor:
I am truth,And thou art force, and if thou part'st from me,Blind thou becomest, helpless I remain.We are but one at last....Caesar and Peter,They are the heights of God; man from the earthContemplates them with awe, and never questionsWhich thrusts its peak the higher into heaven.Therefore be wise, and learn from the exampleOf impious Arnaldo. He's the foeOf thrones who wars upon the altar.
But he strives in vain to persuade Frederick to the despised act of homage, and it is only at the intercession of the Emperor's kinsmen and the German princes that he consents to it. When it is done in the presence of all the army and the clerical retinue, Adrian mounts, and says to Frederick, with scarcely hidden irony: