324

THE DECLINE AND FALL

CHAP

LXX.

Birth oh a.racter, andpatrioticdesigns ofRienzi.

Petrarch, Italy, and Europe , were astonished bya revolution which realized for a moment hismost splendid visious. The rise and fall of thetribune Rienzi will occupy the following pages :' 1the subject is interesting, the materials are rich,and the glance of a patriot-bard' will sometimesvivify the copious, but simple narrative of theFlorentine , 1 and more especially of the Roman 1historian.

In a quarter of the city which was inhabitedonly by mechanics and Jews , the marriage of aninnkeeper and a washerwoman produced the fu-ture deliverer of Rome ." From such parents

* It has been treated by the pen of a Jesuit , the P. du Cergean,whose posthumous work (Conjuration de Nicolas Gabrini, dit deRienzi Tyran de Rome, en 1347) was published at Paris 1748, in12mo. I am indebted to him for some facts and documents in JohnHocsemius, canon of Liege , a contemporary historian (Fabricius, BLbliot. Lat . med, iEvi, tom. ill, p. 273, tom. iv, p. 85).

r The abb£ de Sade, who so freely expatiates on the history of thefourteenth century, might treat as his proper subject a revolution inwhich the heart of Petrarch was so deeply engaged (Memoires, tom.ii, p. 60, 61, 320-417, notes, p. 70-76, tom. iii, p. 221-243, 366-375). Not an idea or a fact in the writings of Petrarch has proba*bly escaped him.

* Giovani Villani, 1. xii, c. 89, 104, in Muratori, Rerum ItalicarumSeriptores, tom. xiii, r p. 969, 970, 981-983.

e In his third volume of Italian antiquities (p. 249-648), Muratorihas inserted the Fragmenta Historiae Roman® ab apno 1327 usque adannum 1364, in the original dialect of Rome or Naples in the four-teenth century, and a Latin version for the benefit of strangers. Itcontains the most particular and authentic life of Cola (Nicholas) diRienzi; which had been printed at Bracciano 1627, in 4to. under thename of Tomaso Fortifiocca, who is only mentioned in this work ashaving been punished by the tribune for forgery. Human nature isscarcely capable of such sublime or stupid impartiality; but whosoeveris the author of these fragments, he wrote on the spot and at the time,and paints, without design or ai t, the manners of Rome and the cha*racter of the tribune.

* The first and splendid period of Rienzi, his tribunitian govern-ment, is contained in the eighteenth chapter of the Fragments (p. 399-

4»»),