OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
581
decent retinue of servants and horses; his wife, chap.his son, his brother, who might bias the affec- LXIX 'tions of the judge, were left behind; during theexercise of his office, he was not permitted topurchase land, to contract an alliance, or evento accept an invitation in the house of a citizen;nor could he honourably depart till he had sa-tisfied the complaints that might be urgedagainst his government.
It was thus, about the middle of the thirteenth Branca '
leone,
century, that the Romans called from Bologna n-1252.the senator Brancaleone, 1 ’ whose fame and merithave been rescued from oblivion by the pen of anEnglish historian. A just anxiety for his repu-tation, a clear foresight of the difficulties of thetask, had engaged him to refuse the honour oftheir choice; the statutes of Rome were sus-pended, and his office prolonged to the term ofthree years. By the guilty and licentious he wasaccused as cruel; by the clergy he was suspect-ed as partial; but the friends of peace and orderapplauded the firm and upright magistrate bywhom those blessings were restored; no crimi-nals were so powerful as to brave, so obscure asto elude, the justice of the senator. By his sen-tence, two nobles of the Annibaldi family wereexecuted on a gibbet; and he inexorably demo-lished, in the city and neighbourhood, one hun-
Hnjus qui trahitnr praetextam sumere mavis;
Au tidenarum Gabiorumque esse potestas-
4 See the life and death of Brancaleone, in the Historia Major ofMatthew Paris , p. 741, 757, 792, 797, 799. 810, 823, 833, 83G, 840.
The multitude of pilgrims and suitors connected Rome and St. Alban’s;and the resentment of the Fnglish clergy prompted them to rejoicewhenever the popes were humbled and oppressed.