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PREFACE

Everybody has been in Milan, but who knows Milan? The traveller in search of the picturesque and mediaeval sees nothing to arrest him--except comfortable hotels--in a city which seems to tell only of yesterday. A glance at the Cathedral, at St. Ambrogio, at the most famous of the pictures, and he hurries on. Yet a little longer stay reveals a wealth of artistic interest in the many fine churches, in the rich galleries and museums, and much also that is worth learning even in the outward aspect of the city in the present day. The historic buildings have mostly fallen, the old crooked ways have given place to broad thoroughfares, the picturesque life of the past has been smothered by the sombre bustle of modern commercialism. But her heritage of beauty is to some extent inalienable. She remains always Italian. Colour and atmosphere lend an indestructible charm even to her modernity. The warm brick of the buildings against the limpid blue sky, the gold and grey of sunshine and shadow, the shining canals that border some of the further streets with a still and pensive melancholy, make a lovely and characteristic harmony still, as in the days of the Quattrocentist artists who painted them in the backgrounds of their Madonnas and San Roccos. And there are some old streets left, mostly in the heart of the city, such as the Via del Pesce and the Via Tre Alberghi, long cobbled alleys ribboned with triple lines of pavement, where the tall houses and bowed-out balconies of curious ironwork, rusted by age and weather, if they cannot remember the days of Milan's earlier glory, must have known at least something of the sad centuries of bondage which followed, before they shook to the roar of the Cinque Giornate sixty years ago.

The compass of this small volume has made it impossible to tell otherwise than summarily of the great past of this city and of her artistic riches to-day. I have had to pass over, or barely mention, many noteworthy things. I am especially sorry that I could not include the places of interest in the immediate neighbourhood. A visit to the Certosa of Pavia, which sums up all the aims and achievements of Lombard Renaissance art, is necessary for an appreciation of the Milanese sculptors and painters, while the associations of the famous building with Gian Galeazzo Visconte and with the Sforza princes, make it a part of Milanese story. The old Church of Chiaravalle, with its incomparable Lombard-Gothic tower and its trecento frescoes, and picturesque Monza, where that historic emblem and wonder of twelfth century goldsmiths' art, the Iron Crown of Lombardy, is preserved with other priceless treasures, ought not to be missed by the traveller.

E. N.

The Story of Milan

"Verenanda est Roma in Apostolo. Sed nec spernendum Mediolanum in Ambrosio."--ARNULPHUS.

Milan is to-day the most modern of Italian cities. Her Risorgimento in the last century, accomplished with the pouring out of blood and the efforts of a strenuous virtue, makes for her a mighty and sufficing past in the near background, and she seems to stand wholly on this side of it, triumphant and new-create. Neither Nature nor the further centuries have, you feel, any longer part in her. Who of the numberless travellers from the North, as they lose the vision of mountain, lake and green champaign, just traversed, in the bustle and confinement of the crowded streets, realises that this solid mass of brick and stone, this vast hive of human beings, is the slow product of that enchanting country, of its rivers and fertile soil, built up and moulded by human passion and labour during thousands of years amid the changes and chances of extraordinarily varied fortunes. Only when his eyes, lifted above the regular roof-lines of the modern streets, light upon the Gothic pinnacles of the Duomo, and a further acquaintance with the city discovers, wedged among the growths of yesterday, the many relics of her older past--the Castle of the fifteenth century Sforza, Renaissance palaces and churches, St. Ambrogio and its compeers of the era of liberty, a rare fragment of the older imperial civilisation--does he become conscious of the long and painful course of the centuries, and remember that he stands in the secular capital of Lombardy, on ground as storied almost as the sacred dust of Rome.

Yet through all the changes, a quiet, continuous labour was going on, restraining and directing the courses of the rivers, draining the marshes, taming the wild luxuriance of the land to fertile use and order, and slowly building up out of the confusion of conflicting elements the solid foundations of the present.

But at the end of this century the imperial era was rapidly declining and giving way to a new order of things. A fresh period of irruptions from the North was at hand, and within the ancient polity itself a new organisation, the Christian Church, had arisen and was usurping spiritual authority. Milan had been early conspicuous in the history of Christianity. Legend names S. Barnabas himself as the founder and first occupant of her See, and she had testified to the new faith in the days of persecution by the blood of many martyrs. SS. Gervasio and Protasio, the youthful warrior pair, SS. Nazaro and Celso, master and faithful disciple, SS. Felix and Nabor, S. Valeria, San Vittore, and many others, are recorded with picturesque and touching details in Milanese legends and art. And in Milan the triumph of Christianity was first proclaimed, since here Constantine subscribed his edict of toleration in 313. But Christianity, established soon after as the State religion, had yet to struggle with the difficulty of conflicting counsels and doctrines within its own body. The tenets promulgated by the Council of Nicoea in 532 were by no means universally accepted by Christians in the fourth century, and in North Italy the teachings of Arius were widely followed, especially by the Gothic subjects of the Empire. Under the Empress Regent Justina they were the religion of the imperial Court in Milan, and the whole population was divided into fiercely hostile parties by the doctrinal question.

It was at this critical point of her political and ecclesiastical destinies that there appeared in Milan one of those epoch-making characters who from time to time arise at moments of hesitation in the history of human communities, and apparently initiate and determine their subsequent course. The great figure of her Bishop Ambrose, Saint and Doctor of the Church, scourge of the Arians, subduer of emperors, stands for Milan at the opening of a new era, to which his dominant mind gives impress, direction and inspiration. From this time forward, Milan is no more the imperial, but the Ambrosian city. Throughout her mediaeval existence the consecrating memory of St. Ambrogio, her patron and protector, set like a spiritual jewel in a hundred exquisite and devoutly fantastic legends, is present in her government, her struggles for liberty, her art and peaceful industry, her daily life and the peculiar ritual of her religious worship.

The conflict between Empress and Bishop was won by Ambrose. Justina's efforts to depose him and set up a new bishop were completely frustrated by his timely discovery of the bodies of the Milanese martyrs, SS. Gervasio and Protasio, a miraculous event which raised him to an invincible position in the opinion of all Christendom. The triumph of the great bishop, though it savours now of bigotry, was of deep and far-reaching significance. It was the revolt of the new and as yet hardly tried Church against the ancient imperial authority. It pointed to the future. It initiated that obstinate and long-continued struggle between the temporal and spiritual powers which makes the history of the Middle Ages in Italy. For Milan and for Lombardy it meant more; it was a protest against the influence of the foreigner, against a strange domination in thought. The Arian heresy was alien and unnatural to Italian sentiment; its followers were chiefly among the large population of Goths settled by this time in Italy. Ambrose, in rallying round him the masses of the people and conquering the established powers, was in fact appealing to the elements out of which the Commune of later days was to develop--to those instincts of liberty and nationality of which the Mediaeval Church was to be the glorious guide and champion.

The later and more famous triumph of Ambrose--when, before the doors of the same Basilica Nova, he stood, armed only with the insignia of his sacerdotal office, and barred the entrance of the sanctuary to the blood-stained Emperor Theodosius, till, awed by his spiritual dignity, the wearer of the purple sank before the white-robed priest and did public penance for the massacre of Thessalonica--was another and greater proof of the ascendency of the ecclesiastical over the imperial power. But the significance of the scene reaches further, and embraces the whole sphere of humanity. In standing bishop and kneeling king we see, not the individuals and their immediate motives, ambitious, despotic, superstitious, as they may partly have been, not even the struggle of great transitory interests, but a wider, deeper, more enduring principle--the recognition of the supremacy of spirit over brute force, the victory of the Christian ideal of love and pity over the earthly lusts of blood and revenge, of the religion which adores the helpless Mother and Child over the deified Force of the ancient creeds.

The return of the episcopal See to Milan indicates some degree of revival in the city. But two hundred years more were to pass before her Church resumed its old importance, and Milan her rightful rank in North Italy. Under Charlemagne, who conquered Desiderio in 774, and created a so-called Kingdom of Italy, Milan held only the third place among the metropolitan Sees, yielding precedence after Rome to Ravenna. The Frankish king, whose great scheme of a restored Roman Empire included a united Latin Church under the Pope as supreme head, not only exalted the spiritual authority of Rome over the other Sees, but even endeavoured to suppress the peculiarities of the Ambrosian liturgy and force Milan into uniformity with the rest of the Latin Church. He is said to have descended upon the city and seized all the liturgical books, burning some and carrying others away into Germany. But even his will was helpless against the cherished custom of centuries. Some religious men, so the chronicler declares, succeeded in hiding copies of the books, and as soon as the Emperor had disappeared, they were unearthed and the old rites resumed as before.

The political changes of the ninth and tenth centuries favoured the revival of the Lombard See. With the disruption of Charlemagne's swollen empire, and the removal of the temporal support, the spiritual sovereignty of Rome and the unity of the Church broke down, at least in practice, and the grand and comprehensive idea of a single rule of Christendom under the twin sceptres of Emperor and Pope--that inspiration of great minds in the Middle Ages--failed now, as later, of realisation. Amid the ungoverned turbulence of the Roman nobles and citizens the Papacy gradually sank to the lowest depths of corruption and impotence, and any deference to its authority once paid by the Milanese primates was soon forgotten.

Archbishop Ansperto was the chief restorer of the city as well as of the Church of Milan. He rebuilt and repaired the broken walls, the buildings ruined by the barbarians, and by his wise and resolute government gave a much-needed security to the life and property of the citizens. It was a greatly increased power which he transmitted to his successors, who wielded it with the same autocratic spirit. In the confusion of the Carlovingian break-up, when no one knew who was the rightful sovereign of the old Lombard kingdom, or who held the prerogative of electing him, the Archbishops of Milan assumed the part of king-makers, and laid the Crown, now on the head of an Italian prince, now on that of some heir of the Carlovingian tradition. The constant aim of the archbishops was to increase and consolidate their power, and the weakness of the royal authority gave them their chance. The story of the city in these two centuries is chiefly composed of the contests of the Primates with the successive wearers of the Lombard crown, who in their turn endeavoured to tyrannise over the See by seizing the right to elect its occupant, and filling it with their own rapacious and arrogant favourites. These royal appointments were violently opposed by the people, so that the city was distracted by constant schisms and civil warfare. From 948 to 953 the strife between Adelmano, the choice of the citizens, and Manasses, an ambitious and intriguing foreign priest, whom Berengarius had appointed to the See, filled Milan with tumult and bloodshed, during which the Ambrosian Church was despoiled of much of its treasure. The election in 953 of a third aspirant, Walperto, to whom the others gave way, closed at last the miserable war. With the coronation of Otho the Great in St. Ambrogio, by this archbishop, who had crossed the Alps in person to summon the German prince to the deliverance of Italy from the cruel tyranny of Berengarius, a blessed period of peace and consequent prosperity began for Milan, favourable to the development of those popular forces in the city--hitherto depressed by constant terror and insecurity--which were to make her history in the coming centuries.

Ariberto's ambition for the glory and predominance of Milan was well supported by the people. They followed the militant prelate with enthusiasm to the subjugation of Pavia, which had refused to acknowledge Conrad as king , and a little later they made a furious assault under his command upon the little neighbouring city of Lodi, and forced its freedom-loving inhabitants to submit to Ariberto's yoke and accept a bishop of his choosing. Thus Milan, impelled by the pride and ambition and necessity of expansion bred of strength and riches, was the first to provoke that spirit of hatred and revenge among the sister cities of Lombardy, which could only be expiated by centuries of bloodshed and sorrow.

That struggle was already foreshadowed in Ariberto's time. The pride of the Archbishop and the city which he governed soon came into violent contact with the will of the Emperor. Conrad resented the prelate's increasing encroachment upon the royal prerogatives. Besides the sovereign right of making war, the Archbishop claimed the privilege of investing the bishops of his jurisdiction and the secular nobles also with their fiefs. His assumption of autocratic authority provoked a large party of the lesser nobles, who made an insurrection against him in 1036, and being defeated and driven out of the city, united with the aggrieved citizens of Lodi and broke into open warfare. A fierce battle was fought at Campo Malo, in which Ariberto appears to have been worsted. The Emperor, regarding the moment as favourable for asserting his authority, crossed the Alps to restore peace. But on arriving in Milan he did not find the humility and submission which he expected, and offended, or perhaps alarmed, by the haughtiness of the Prince Prelate and the excited temper of the populace, he retired to Pavia, and there summoned Ariberto to appear before a Diet, to answer the accusations of his enemies. The Archbishop obeyed, and without allowing him time for defence, Conrad commanded his arrest. He was carried to Piacenza and there kept in captivity. But Conrad had hardly reckoned with the power which lay behind his great vassal. Instead of accepting this chastisement with resignation, Milan broke into an uproar of lamentation at the news of her pastor's imprisonment. With fastings, processions and litanies, with oblations, and benefactions to the poor, the pious citizens hoped to propitiate Heaven on his behalf, while the more worldly-minded sought to procure his rescue. At last, after two months, Ariberto himself found a means of escape with the aid of the Abbess of the great convent of San Sisto in Piacenza. This lady, at the request of a trusty servant whom the prelate managed to send to her, despatched to him twenty mules laden with divers kinds of delicate meats, and ten waggon loads of wine, out of the goodly stores of the convent. With these provisions Ariberto made a great feast for his Teuton guards, who soon stupefied themselves with the good wine. The Milanese chronicler Landolfo describes the scene--' ... They became beyond measure intoxicated--persisting in their potations until the middle of the night, and each one provoking his neighbour to drink more and more.... They began to quarrel and threaten one another with rolling eyes and terrible voices, and then to weep with thick tears pouring down their faces, and so drunk were they with the wine that they did not know what they were doing, and their limbs would not serve their office so that they fell down prostrate. The servants of Ariberto, seeing them in this plight, were immensely rejoiced, and carrying them away one by one, laid them out on well prepared couches as if they had been dead men....' While the Teutons lay thus and 'snored terribly,' the prisoner slipped quietly off to the river Po hard by, where he found a ship, sent by the Abbess, in readiness for him. Into this he entered, and soon reached Milan in safety, while his guards, awaking, half stupid from their drunken slumbers, went seeking for him everywhere with hideous clamour.

The fugitive was soon followed by the irate Emperor, with a great army, and Milan was closely besieged. Mighty deeds of valour were performed on either side, according to the Milanese chroniclers. But all the efforts of the great Emperor and his hosts were unavailing against the city, defended by its ancient Roman walls and by an enormous population. After a few months he raised the siege, and endeavoured with equal futility to overthrow Ariberto by deposing him and setting up another archbishop. His persecution of Milan provoked, the chroniclers tell us, a signal manifestation of the Divine wrath, in the person of St. Ambrose himself, who appeared one day in the midst of terrible thunder and lightning as the Emperor was listening to the Mass, and caused such consternation among those present that many fell down dead. Thus, worsted by supernatural as well as earthly means, Conrad retired to Suabia in 1038, leaving the Archbishop master of the situation, and to all intents and purposes potentate of Lombardy.

The one sacrifice offered upon the altar of this new covenant between the classes was the leader Lanzone himself, who, at the first opportunity, was arrested and put to death by the aristocratic party. But his work was done, and the foundation of the future Republic had been laid. Archbishop Ariberto, now ill and aged, had taken refuge during the troubles at Monza, and returned to his own city, only to die . His career fitly closes with the first signs of the collapse of the social order which he embodied.

"Dicetur in posterum subjectum Romae Mediolanum."--ARNULPHUS.

Such a revolution, in the heaving and unstable eleventh century, was, however, easily excited. The discontent of the lower orders with the aristocracy increased as their lately-won privileges generated the desire for a further share of power, and their particular animus against the ecclesiastical nobles was strengthened by a deep and widespread aspiration for religious purity and truth among many of the humblest people. The agitation against the real and supposed scandals in the lives of the clergy was taken up with fury in the poorest parts of the city.

The confusion of the Catharists, or Catari, with the Patarini probably arose from the similarity of the names, and the natural tendency of the orthodox to confuse the different forms of thought outside their own dogmatic boundaries. The Patarini sympathised with the Catharists only in their practice of purity and evangelic simplicity of life. There is little doubt, however, that the Catharists mingled with the poorer classes of the city whence the Patarini were recruited, and must have taken advantage of the confusion of ideas resulting from the revolt against the old customs and authority to spread their doctrines.

The cruel scenes witnessed before were now renewed in Milan. Blood was spilt in the streets, churches were invaded and sacked, priests dragged bodily from the altars, their houses burnt, their wives misused. But when Arialdo and his lieutenant began to condemn the ceremonial usages peculiar to the Ambrosian Church, the citizens turned against them, and finding the opposition too strong, the two missionaries appealed to Rome and procured the excommunication of the Archbishop. This only aggravated the wrath of the Milanese. The Patarine leaders were abandoned by all but a few of their most devoted followers, and when Archbishop Guido appeared before the altar of the Cathedral Church with the Bull of excommunication in his hands, the fury of the immense assembly knew no bounds. The reformers were set upon in the sanctuary itself, and Arialdo was so badly beaten that he was left for dead. Guido, taking advantage of the momentary turn of the tide in his favour, laid an interdict upon the city until it should rid itself of Arialdo. The zealot was forced to fly, and a little later he fell into a snare which had been laid for him, and was betrayed into the hands of the Archbishop's niece, lady of a castle on Lake Maggiore, by whose command he was carried in a boat to a lonely island and there cruelly done to death.

The cause of reform was thenceforth glorified by the memory and example of a martyr. Arialdo was shortly afterwards canonised by Pope Alexander. His loss inflamed his party to new zeal and drew to it a great access of adherents. Erlembaldo and a priest called Liprando di San Paolo now led the crusade, carrying it on with such fury of sword and fire that they became virtual masters of the city. The Archbishop, wearied out by the endless strife and the insidious attempts of Rome to depose him, renounced his See, and the nobles, outnumbered by the rioters, abandoned the disorderly city and sought peace and safety in their castles and country palaces.

With his death the war ended. There was none to take his place. The city, exhausted by the long strife, was glad to rest. The nobles returned to their homes and their old place in the city, and in spite of the persecution which they had suffered for twenty years, the Ambrosian clergy resumed their old practices to a large extent.

And though the Milanese clergy still clung for a while to their wives, and benefices continued to be bought and sold, these doubtful practices fell more and more into disrepute. Simoniac ecclesiastics gradually disappeared. The accusation of this sin was, however, long used by Rome as a means of gaining further advantages over the See of Milan, or driving out a prelate approved perhaps by the Emperor and obnoxious to the papal interests. It was equally useful to the people in making new encroachments on the privileges of the aristocratic clergy.

The gradual concentration of authority in Rome was greatly assisted by the influence of the monastic orders, who belonged as bodies to no particular diocese, but looked to the Pope as their supreme head, and were little disposed to be submissive to the prelates in whose jurisdiction a monastery might chance to be. In 1130, Bernard of Clairvaux and his white-robed monks--who seemed to the people, we are told, wonderful as angels from heaven--appeared in Milan, and gave an immense impulse to the monastic movement there. The rise of the mendicant orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic a century later brought a vast increase of strength to the Papacy. In Milan, as everywhere, the friars gained immense influence among the masses of the people. The See of Milan was by this time completely subjugated. It was greatly diminished in wealth and importance. The Pope exercised supreme jurisdiction in the archdiocese, and his legates constantly interfered in the government, assuming the highest place and authority with the acquiescence of the Archbishop. Deeply indeed had the See of St. Ambrose sunk since the days of the great Ariberto!

This order is said to have been founded early in the eleventh century by some Milanese nobles who had been captives in Germany, and who, converted to serious thoughts by the weariness of confinement, vowed that on their return they would live a holy and Christian life. It was a society of men and women, living in their own homes with their families, but distinguished from their neighbours by humility, industry and devoutness. A century later, under the influence of St. Bernard, they formed themselves into a regular order, with a rule obliging them to strict moral virtue and to the observance of all religious duties. They devoted themselves especially to the manufacture of woollen stuffs, one of Milan's chief industries. Very soon out of the first order a second was formed, which adopted a monastic life of greater austerity, the men and women, including many married couples, living side by side in separate cloisters, and in course of time a third order arose, composed of men only, who took sacerdotal orders, and were called Canons. Thus the association, from a kind of religious guild, tended to develop into a regular order. But its rule had never been fixed or confirmed by any papal sanction, and it remained for two hundred years practically independent of Rome. Nor were its doctrines during this time free from unorthodox thought; we find the Umiliati included in the condemnation of heretical sects uttered by successive Popes from time to time in the intervals of their political cares. They shared the virtue of simplicity, at least, with the various bodies of Poveri who hovered half in and half out of the pale of Holy Church.

Thus the death-blow was dealt to the original spirit of the institution. After a short period of increased fervour and activity, in which they became the terror of their old spiritual kinsfolk, the heretics, the order followed the course of most other monastic bodies. Humility and poverty were exchanged for papal favours and honours, and for rich possessions, and before long corruption and laxity crept in among the brethren. The sacerdotal order became the first and most important, while those who followed the original rule of simplicity, humility and purity, living in their own homes, were called the Third Order. The brethren acquired in time great wealth from the woollen industry, which they continued to pursue, and later on they were largely employed in the public offices of the city, and especially in its financial concerns. Thus they gradually became very powerful, and under the tyrannies of the Visconti and Sforza, provided Milan with many great statesmen. In the sixteenth century the vast possessions of the order, in the form of commendas and prebends, etc., were practically owned by a few great families, and the actual number of the brethren had fallen to less than a hundred. Cardinal Carlo Borromeo procured the suppression of the ancient brotherhood in 1570, on the ground of the vices and luxury of its members. He risked his life by this step, since the degenerate brethren were not ashamed to employ assassins to attempt the murder of their spoliator. The possessions of the order were distributed among other convents, and their principal House, the Brera, which had belonged to them since the twelfth century, was handed over to the Jesuits.

The murder of Peter Martyr was not inspired by heretical revenge alone. Motives of worldly policy had a share in the deed. The division of orthodoxy and heresy virtually followed that between the two great parties in the State, the aristocracy and the people, and the conflict between them repeated to some extent the great Patarine struggle two centuries earlier, though now, in the reversal of issues the Patarini were associated with the aristocrats against Rome. The murder of Peter was committed at the instigation of some of the nobles. The Archbishop himself, Fra Leone da Perego, a Franciscan, a man of notable character and ambition, who hated Peter, both as the agent of papal arrogance and usurpation in Milan, and as the exalter of the rival order of the Dominicans, was possibly not unaware of the plot. But the political aspect of the doctrinal warfare belongs to an epoch which we have not yet reached in our story of the city. It is enough to say here that the murder of Peter of Verona was of the greatest service to the cause of orthodoxy and the Church. It excited universal execration of the heretics, and the Dominican, elevated to the ranks of the Martyrs, was far more powerful with his cloven brow than even when alive. From this time forward heresy rapidly lost ground, and with the gradual quieting of party passion, under the domination of a single family in the city, it lost all political force, and died away in insignificance and oblivion, till the great reawakening of religious controversy in the sixteenth century.

But Milan, having recovered calmness and begun to contemplate her rash act with some trepidation, spared them for the time, and awaited the development of events. This was not slow. Frederick, deeply offended, descended upon Lombardy in the following year, with an enormous host, fully resolved to humble the arrogant Milanese. He held a great Diet at Roncaglia. Hither with the rest of the princes and magnates of Italy came the Consuls of Milan, and offered all the ceremonial tokens of submission and reverence. But the impossibility of reconciling the differences between the monarch and the Republic quickly became evident. Milan utterly refused to release Lodi and Como from her rule. The Emperor soon proceeded to open hostility against the city. But he found his task no light one. Milan's sister communities were still withheld by fear from lending aid to her foe, whose glittering show of authority they held for transitory and insubstantial. Even Lodi was only persuaded with difficulty to forswear her forced oath of fealty to her oppressor and give credence to Frederick's promises of protection. Her diffidence was well justified. Frederick contented himself with besieging and destroying Milan's faithful ally, Tortona, capturing a few outlying castles and laying waste her territory, and then, intent on compelling Pope Hadrian to confirm his election by crowning him in Rome, he passed on southwards . The defiant Milanese immediately proceeded to rebuild Tortona and to wage fierce war with the Pavesi, who, true to their traditions, had given enthusiastic obedience to the new representative of the Empire. Meanwhile Frederick, having received the imperial diadem, made his way back through the eastern parts of Italy, translating his heroic aspirations into a reality of fire and blood and spoliation, and finally, having exhausted his treasury, returned into Germany. His unlucky prot?g?s of Lodi were abandoned to the mercy of their enemies. Their villages were surprised and captured by the Milanese, and the people compelled to flee in the darkness of night. 'Who, seeing the women stumbling along the way, with their little ones, some in their arms, some clinging to their garments, some falling behind wailing--who seeing them fall into the ditches in the darkness and the rain, would not have been sad and moved to compassion? Who would not have been melted into tears?' cries the chronicler Morena. Many died from the hardships which they suffered, and the rest took refuge in hamlets and in friendly Cremona. For the second time the Milanese destroyed their homes and razed their city to the ground.

Frederick's victory was, however, little more than a mockery. Milan's vitality and spirit of independence were too strong to be so easily subdued. As soon as the Emperor had passed on to another part of Italy, she boldly broke the newly-established peace and assaulted the German garrisons left behind in Lombardy. Her example fired many of the other cities to violate the obedience which they had sworn to the Emperor, and the whole of North Italy was soon in arms again. Too rashly, however, had the Milanese disregarded the nature of him whom they were defying. Vowing to accomplish his purpose without mercy this time, Frederick hastened back. Before attacking Milan again, he encamped before her devoted ally, the small city of Crema, which, after a siege conducted with barbarous ferocity, he captured and burnt. Still delaying his vengeance on the chief offender, he spent two years in laying waste the Milanese territory and capturing her castles, and having effectually destroyed her sources of supply, he sat down once more before the city marked by his implacable will for destruction.

The siege lasted for seven months. No noble deeds of valour and chivalry distinguished the German Paladin's emprise; he accomplished his work by the slow and cruel hand of famine. Every gate was closely blockaded, and all compassionate bearers of food from outside to the starving people were almost without exception captured, and either ruthlessly scourged or maimed of the right hand. Frederick showed the besieged none of the respect due to gallant foes. He strung up his prisoners on gallows, nobles and plebeians alike, in the view of their kinsfolk and friends within, or sent them back sightless into the city. Within the walls, hunger reached such a pitch that in their madness husbands and wives, fathers and sons, turned upon one another. The hideous selfishness of bodily need disfigured the gaunt faces in the streets, while the spectacle of the mutilated wretches who had passed through the Emperor's hands, breathed into all hearts dreadful apprehensions of their future fate. In their despair the people cried out for surrender, and at last the Consuls, aware of the inflexibility of the foe, and fearing that to resist longer was to sacrifice the entire people to the extremity of his vengeance, threw themselves upon the mercy of the Emperor, and surrendered the city at discretion .

The scenes which follow paint vividly for us the tragedy of the great city's downfall. The magnitude of the punishment which Frederick meted out to Milan invests him with a kind of sublimity. This was his opportunity to deliver a blow which should resound to the four corners of the earth, and accomplish, once for all, by the horror of its mere narration, the subjugation of the rest of rebellious Lombardy. None knew better than this mediaeval monarch how to surround his revenge with all those awful aspects and illusions of terror that impress the minds of men. Day after day, processions of citizens, with bowed heads, and ropes round their necks, presented themselves before him at his command, as he sat enthroned in state in rebuilt Lodi, the Empress Beatrice at his side, his vassal kings and princes on either hand, and still the doom of the city remained unspoken. The eight Consuls--some of the noblest patricians of Milan--came, holding their naked swords in their right hands, and swore to do the will of the Conqueror. Next appeared three hundred cavaliers, and kissing the Emperor's foot, delivered up to him the Milanese standards; while to Mastro Guitelmo, a man much revered by his fellow-citizens, was committed the bitter charge of laying the keys at his feet. Still another mark of humiliation was demanded of them, and a day or two later came the Sacred Car itself, with the banner of the Cross, and all the most venerable insignia of the Republic, to be surrendered for the completion of Milan's shame.

Then at last the voice from the throne spoke, commanding that beside every gate of the city the fosse should be filled up and the walls destroyed, so that he might march in in triumph. Milan--who for centuries had proudly claimed the right of keeping all sovereigns excluded from the enclosure of her walls--was now herself to lay low her defences to admit a victorious monarch. A few days later Frederick made his entrance with his army over the ruined walls, and the dreadful fiat went forth, dooming the great city to complete destruction. The inhabitants were ordered to quit their homes, taking with them what they could carry. No entreaty, no tears, even of his own followers, could move Frederick's resolve. The piteous spectacle of the outcast people, huddled in masses outside the walls in the bitter cold of March, homeless, not knowing where to go, and uttering loud lamentations, could not change his inexorable purpose. With an extremity of cruelty he committed the work of ruin to Milan's neighbours and bitterest foes--the men of Lodi, Pavia, Novara, Como, Cremona--all burning to retaliate a thousand wrongs. They threw themselves with fury upon the doomed buildings, each community satiating its vengeance on the quarter facing towards its own city. In a very few days an incredible amount of destruction was wrought. But it was the work of months to raze to the ground the towers, the fine palaces and public buildings, many of them surviving from the days of the Roman Empire, and the crowded habitations of a vast population. The churches and religious houses alone were spared, and for a while the campanile of the Cathedral, a tower of admirable beauty and height, which had not its like, they say, in all Italy, still rose untouched above the ruins, a beacon of consolation to the despairing people. But at last, the implacable decree of the conqueror pronounced its sentence, and that, too, fell. Finally not more than a fifth part of the fair city, which men called the flower of Italy--the May City--was left standing.

From the spectacle of burning Milan, which he watched with his own eyes, the magnanimous Avenger passed on with his Empress to celebrate the Feast of Olives at Pavia! Frederick was now the dread of all Italy. The trembling cities of Lombardy crept to his feet and kissed them. The crown of Italy, hitherto withheld from him and now conceded by fear, was set upon his head. As for the Milanese, crowded in the poor villages and suburbs around their ruined city, and barely able to exist, they were fain to accept any conditions which he imposed.

Frederick, returning hastily from a campaign against the Pope, found his castles captured, Milan re-risen defiant from her ashes, and all North Italy armed against him. The Emperor was not equal to this new situation. His former triumph had, in fact, only been achieved by the aid of a part of the cities themselves, and his German levies, diminished by fighting and pestilence, were powerless to contend with a vast hostile combination of all together. His army and his very person were in utmost peril. There was one way only of salvation for him--retreat. In a manner very different to the majesty of his coming, with furtive haste, unknown even to his allies, he stole back to Germany early in 1168.

Six years passed before the Emperor felt himself strong enough to confront his rebellious vassals again. In his prolonged absence the Lombard League had acquired mighty strength. Milan had arisen from her chastening of shame and sorrow stronger and more honourable than before. Renouncing her old vexatious claims upon her smaller neighbours, she now contented herself with the dignity of leadership among the Communes. The League gathered itself together to meet the new onslaught of Barbarossa, and though he spread terror and desolation throughout the land, his effort to subdue the steady resistance of the cities was fruitless. His purpose was contrary to the laws of nature, and the stars in their courses fought against him. Pavia, Como and the Marquis of Montferrat supported him alone of all North Italy. In May 1176, impatient to strike a crushing blow against the rebels, Frederick was marching with new reinforcements from Germany to join his Lombard allies when, a few miles from Milan, between Busto Arsizio and Legnano, he encountered the Milanese army, which had come forth with the Sacred Car in its midst to stay his progress. A great battle took place. Driven back at first by the Teuton cavalry, the Republican soldiers, who had taken a desperate vow to conquer or to die, rallied around the Caroccio, and fought with such obstinate courage that they beat back every assault of the foe, and at last, with a sudden rush, utterly routed them and drove them into flight. The slain, the captives, and the fugitives drowned in the Ticino could not be numbered. The monarch's treasure-chest fell into the hands of the victors, and a more precious booty still, his shield, his banner and his lance. His very person was missing after the battle, and the Empress, waiting in the Castle of Baradello, clothed herself in black and mourned him for dead. He had, however, escaped in safety, and a few days later made his way to Pavia.

The splendid victory of Legnano decided once and for all the fate of Lombardy. Frederick realised at last the strength of the despised citizen forces, and condescended to seek for peace. In the following year at Venice was held that famous meeting of Pope, Emperor and the Consuls of the Lombard Communes, at which legend and art express the humiliation of the invader and the triumph of Italy, by picturing the monarch prostrate beneath the foot of the Pope. A truce of six years was agreed upon at this Congress, and at the end of that period the famous Peace of Constance finally confirmed to the cities all the privileges for which they had so nobly fought. The right of self-government, of war and peace, the possession of the regalia, with other minor prerogatives, were secured to them in perpetuity, and the only dues to be paid by them to the Emperor were a ceremonial fealty, an annual tribute, certain supplies when he visited the country in person, and the acceptance of his legate as the ultimate judge in the courts of judicature.

During the reign of Otho, while the political field was divided between him and the young Suabian prince, the disputed imperial authority had no power to harm, and Milan was free to resume the interrupted process of development and expansion. As before, this process was not a peaceful one. The subsidence of the Teutonic flood had left behind bitter dregs in Lombardy in the shape of new causes of feud and animosity between individual Communes. Relieved from the pressure of Frederick's tyranny, the cities readjusted themselves on the lines of their former divisions. The Lombard League broke up into warring elements, and the restless land fermented with a cruel internecine strife.

With the defeat of Cortenuova the cause of the Communes seemed lost. All trembled beneath the heel of the conqueror, save Milan and the 'lioness' Brescia, and one or two others. To the Emperor's summons to surrender at discretion the Milanese returned messages of defiance. They had the support of the Pope, whose emissaries, the mendicant friars, mingled everywhere with the masses of the people, exhorting them to resistance. In 1239, Gregory proclaimed a crusade against the oppressor, whose destruction thus became a sacred obligation upon the faithful. The Cross and the Sceptre, irreconcilable emblems, now confronted each other with a clear and definite issue.

Six years later the Emperor again invaded the Milanese country, which in the meanwhile had been laid bare by a desolating war of several years with his ally, Pavia. But fortune was still against him. His son Enzo, newly created King of Sardinia, encountering a citizen force one day, ventured himself too boldly in single combat with a Republican knight, and was overthrown and made prisoner. Frederick, having obtained his release, withdrew his army, and made no further attempt to subdue the great Lombard city.

Thus was Milan's account with the House of Suabia closed for ever. With the failure of Frederick's fortunes and his death in 1250 was extinguished the last appearance of that great mediaeval idea--the Holy Roman Empire--as a dangerous element in Italian politics. The imperial tradition might linger on and cause a temporary disturbance from time to time in the peninsula, influencing the vicissitudes of its internal quarrels, but it had no longer power to revolutionise or molest the settled constitution of the free Lombard Communes. The mediaeval triumph of Italy over the foreigner was accomplished. In the course of the last two centuries, Milan, in whose development is mirrored that of all Lombardy, had completely asserted and defined her nationality. In her Church, in her constitution, law and sentiment, she was now one at last with the rest of Italy. It remained for her, leader in the long struggle now happily determined, to produce in the epoch of Strong Men which was about to succeed the epoch of the People, the man strong enough to overthrow all rivals and to weld the many independent cities and States of the peninsula into a united Italy under an Italian king. How she tried to do this and failed will be seen later.

"Factions alone are the cause of our great ills."--PRATO.

Already by the end of the twelfth century the struggle of the factions over the annual election of the Consuls occasioned so much tumult and bloodshed, that the citizens in despair agreed with one accord to submit themselves to the government of a Podest? chosen from outside. But this device for peace ended by aggravating the strife. The faction uppermost for the time appointed a fierce partisan from another city, perhaps the leader of an exiled faction, who embroiled Milan with his own Commune, and exalted his sympathisers within her walls at the expense of the other party. The general discontent and disorder was reflected in constant changes in the Constitution. In the absence of any stable principle of government the power tended to fall into the hands of individuals. This was the opportunity of the nobles, from whose order the leaders of men naturally sprang. Taking advantage of the forces ready to their hands, these put themselves at the head of aristocrats or plebs, without much regard for principle, and in so doing resumed their ancient pre-eminence in the community, and initiated the new Epoch of Great Men, which was to succeed the failing Epoch of the People.

This process, at work throughout Lombardy, is shown in the second half of the thirteenth century in Milan by the gradual narrowing of the general party issue into a struggle for predominance between two great Houses, who represent and sum up in their mutual quarrel the diverse aims of the factions, and divide the community into two sharply defined and bitterly hostile bands, which fall inevitably, though by no means very precisely, into the wide general division of Guelf and Ghibelline. These were the Houses of the Della Torre, or Torriani, and of the Visconti.

In the race for supremacy the first far outstripped the second. The Della Torre were country nobles, who had, however, long been subjects and citizens of Milan, and though living usually on their estates in the Valsassina, they often appeared in the city and took part in its government and politics. They are named among the Capitani--the great secular nobles of Milan--from early in the twelfth century. They had from the first aided and protected the cause of the people against their own order, and it was this sympathy which lifted them to greatness on the democratic wave of the thirteenth century.

The power of this House in Milan arose first out of the gratitude of the city for the compassionate succour which Pagano della Torre, head of the House in 1237, gave to the wounded and starving fugitives from the disastrous battle of Cortenuova, whom he sheltered and tended in the Valsassina, and afterwards helped to get back safely to Milan. The Commune rewarded him with offices and with gifts of houses, and from that time the Torriani became regular inhabitants of the city and the principal leaders of the people's faction.

The Visconti and the Torriani were already deadly foes. The House of the Snake, which in Archbishop Otto, was now about to begin its great ascent, to the overthrow and destruction of the Tower of its rivals, probably derived its origin and name from one of the Viscounts of the Carlovingian rule, who had succeeded in converting the territory entrusted to his administration into an hereditary appanage. It was, in any case, of great antiquity in the city. The famous cognizance which its later career invested with a peculiar terror, is said to have been won by a noble crusader of the House, also an Otto, in single combat with a Saracen, who carried a shield emblazoned with the device of a seven-coiled serpent devouring a child. Otto slew the Saracen and adopted the device, which he transmitted to his descendants, and with it who knows what mysterious and persistent curse of guile and cruelty?

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