XLV. to her nurse the indiscreet familiarity of the stranger, and CHAP. was comforted by the assurance, that such boldness could proceed only from the king her husband, who, by his beauty and courage, appeared worthy of her love. The ambassadors were dismissed: no sooner did they reach the con of Italy, than Autharis, raising himself on his horse, darted his battle-axe against a tree with incomparable strength and dexterity: "Such," said he to the astonished Bavarians, "such are the strokes of the king of the Lom"bards." On the approach of a French army, Garibald and his daughter took refuge in the dominions of their ally; and the marriage was consummated in the palace of Verona. At the end of one year, it was dissolved by the death of Autharis: but the virtues of Theudelinda1 had endeared her to the nation, and she was permitted to bestow, with her hand, the sceptre of the Italian kingdom. From this fact, as well as from similar events,52 it is certain that the Lombards possessed freedom to elect their sovereign, and sense to decline the frequent use of that dangerous privilege. The public revenue arose from the produce of land, and the profits of justice. When the independent dukes agreed that Autharis should ascend the throne of his father, they endowed the regal office with a fair moiety of their respective domains. The proudest nobles aspired to the honours of servitude near the person of their prince: he rewarded the fidelity of his vassals by the precarious gift of pensions and benefices; and atoned for the injuries of war, by the rich foundation of monasteries and churches. In peace a judge, a leader in war, he never usurped the powers of a sole and absolute legislator. The king of Italy convened the national assemblies in the palace, or more probably in the fields, of Pavia: his great council was composed of the persons most eminent by their birth and dignities; but the validity, as well as the 51 Giannone (Istoria Civile de Napoli, tom. i. p. 263.) has justly censured the impertinence of Boccaccio (Geo. iii. Novel. 2), who, without right, or truth, or pretence, has given the pious queen Theudelinda to the arms of a muleteer. 52 Paul, l. iii.c. 16. The first dissertations of Muratori, and the first volume of Giannone's history, may be consulted for the state of the kingdom of Italy. Govern ment. CHAP. &c. Laws, execution of their decrees, depended on the approbation of the faithful people, the fortunate army of the Lombards. About fourscore years after the conquest of Italy, their traditional customs were transcribed in Teutonic Latin," A. D. 643, and ratified by the consent of the prince and people; some new regulations were introduced, more suitable to their present condition; the example of Rotharis was imitated. by the wisest of his successors, and the laws of the Lombards have been esteemed the least imperfect of the Barbaric codes. Secure by their courage in the possession of liberty, these rude and hasty legislators were incapable of balancing the powers of the constitution, or of discussing the nice theory of political government. Such crimes as threatened the life of the sovereign, or the safety of the state, were adjudged worthy of death; but their attention was principally confined to the defence of the person and property of the subject. According to the strange jurisprudence of the times, the guilt of blood might be redeemed by a fine; yet the high price of nine hundred pieces of gold declares a just sense of the value of a simple citizen. Less atrocious injuries, a wound,a fracture, a blow, an opprobrious word, were measured with scrupulous and almost ridiculous diligence; and the prudence of the legislator encouraged the ignoble practice of bartering honour and revenge for a pecuniary compensation. The ignorance of the Lombards, in the state of Paganism or Christianity, gave implicit credit to the malice and mischief of witchcraft; but the judges of the seventeenth century might have been instructed and confounded by the wisdom of Rotharis, who derides the absurd superstition, and protects the wretched victims of popular or judicial cruelty." The same spirit of a legislator, superior to his 53 The most accurate edition of the laws of the Lombards is to be found in the Scriptores Rerum Italicarum, tom. i. part ii. p. 1...181. collated from the most ancient MSS. and illustrated by the critical notes of Muratori. 54 Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, 1. xxviii. c. 1. Les loix des Bourguignons sont assez judicieuses: celles de Rotharis et des autres princes Lombards le sont encore plus. 55 See Leges Rotharis, No. 379. p. 47. Striga is used as the name of a witch. It is of the purest classic origin (Horat. epod. v. 20. Petron. c. 134); and, from the words of Petronius, (quæ striges comederunt nervos tuos?) it may be inferred that the prejudice was of Italian rather than Barbaric extraction. age and country, may be ascribed to Luitprand, who condemns, while he tolerates, the impious and inveterate abuse of duels,56 observing from his own experience, that the juster cause had often been oppressed by successful violence. Whatever merit may be discovered in the laws of the Lombards, they are the genuine fruit of the reason of the Barbarians, who never admitted the bishops of Italy to a seat in their legislative councils. But the succession of their kings is marked with virtue and ability; the troubled series of their annals is adorned with fair intervals of peace, order, and domestic happiness; and the Italians enjoyed a milder and more equitable government, than any of the other kingdoms which had been founded on the ruins of the Western empire.57 CHAP. XLV. Rome. Amidst the arms of the Lombards, and under the des- Misery of potism of the Greeks, we again inquire into the fate of Rome,58 which had reached, about the close of the sixth century, the lowest period of her depression. By the removal of the seat of empire, and the successive loss of the provinces, the sources of public and private opulence were exhausted; the lofty tree, under whose shade the nations of the earth had reposed, was deprived of its leaves and branches, and the sapless trunk was left to wither on the ground. The ministers of command, and the messengers of victory, no longer met on the Appian or Flaminian way: and the hostile approach of the Lombards was often felt and continually feared. The inhabitants of a potent and peaceful capital, who visit without an anxious thought the garden of the adjacent country, will faintly picture in their fancy the distress of the Romans: they shut or opened their gates with a trembling hand, beheld from the walls the 56 Quia incerte sumus de judicio Dei, et multos audivimus per pugnam sine justâ causâ suam causam perdere. Sed propter consuetudinem gentem nostram Langobardorum legem impiam vetare non possumus. See p. 74. No. 65. of the Laws of Luitprand, promulgated A. D. 724. 57 Read the history of Paul Warnefrid; particularly l. iii. c. 16. Paronius rejects the praise, which appears to contradict the invectives, of pepe Gregory the Great; but Muratori (Annali d'Italia, tom. v. p. 217.) presumes to insinuate that the saint may have magnified the faults of Arkans and enemies. 58 The passages of the homilies of Gregory, which represent the miserable state of the city and country, are transcribed in the Annals of Baronius, A. D. 590, No. 16. A. D. 595, No. 2, &c. &c. CHAP. flames of their houses, and heard the lamentations of their brethren, who were coupled together like dogs and dragged away into distant slavery beyond the sea and mountains. Such incessant alarms must annihilate the pleasures and interrupt the labours of a rural life; and the Campagna of Rome was speedily reduced to the state of a dreary wilderness, in which the land is barren, the waters are impure, and the air is infectious. Curiosity and ambition no longer attracted the nations to the capital of the world: but if chance or necessity directed the steps of a wandering stranger, he contemplated with horror the vacancy and solitude of the city, and might be tempted to ask, where is the senate, and where are the people? In a season of excessive rains, the Tyber swelled above its banks, and rushed with irresistible violence into the vallies of the seven hills. A pestilential disease arose from the stagnation of the deluge, and so rapid was the contagion, that fourscore persons expired in an hour in the midst of a solemn processsion, which implored the mercy of heaven.59 A society in which marriage is encouraged and industry prevails, soon repairs the accidental losses of pestilence and war: but as the far greater part of the Romans was condemned to hopeless indigence and celibacy, the depopulation was constant and visible, and the gloomy enthusiasts might expect the approaching failure of the human race.6o Yet the number of citizens still exceeded the measure of subsistence: their precarious food was supplied from the harvests of Sicily or Egypt; and the frequent repetition of famine betrays the inattention of the emperor to a distant province. The edifices of Rome were exposed to the same ruin and decay: the mouldering fabrics were easily overthrown by inundations, tempests, and earthquakes, and the monks who had occupied the most advantageous 59 The inundation and plague were reported by a deacon, whom his bishop, Gregory of Tours, had dispatched to Rome for some relics. The ingenious messenger embellished his tale and the river with a great dragon and a train of little serpents (Greg. Turon. 1. x. c. 1). 60 Gregory of Rome (Dialog. l. ii. c. 15.) relates a memorable prediction of St. Benedict. Roma a Gentilibus non exterminabitur sed tempesta. tibus, corascis turbinibus ac terræ motû in semetipsa marcescet. Such a prophecy melts into true history, and becomes the evidence of the fact after which it was invented. 61 stations exulted in their base triumph over the ruins of antiquity. It is commonly believed, that pope Gregory the first, attacked the temples and mutilated the statues of the city; that, by the command of the Barbarian, the Palatine library was reduced to ashes, and that the history of Livy was the peculiar mark of his absurd and mischievous fanaticism. The writings of Gregory himself reveal his implacable aversion to the monuments of classic genius; and he points his severest censure against the profane learning of a bishop, who taught the art of grammar, studied the Latin poets, and pronounced with the same voice the praises of Jupiter and those of Christ. But the evidence of his destructive rage is doubtful and recent: the Temple of Peace, or the theatre of Marcellus, have been demolished by the slow operation of ages, and a formal proscription would have multiplied the copies of Virgil and Livy in the countries which were not subject to the ecclesiastical dictator.62 CHAP. XLV. and relics Like Thebes, or Babylon, or Carthage, the name of The tombs Rome might have been erazed from the earth; if the city andre had not been animated by a vital principle, which again apostles. restored her to honour and dominion. A vague tradition was embraced, that two Jewish teachers, a tent-maker, and a fisherman, had formerly been executed in the circus of Nero, and at the end of five hundred years their genuine or fictitious relics were adored as the Palladium of Christian Rome. The pilgrims of the East and West resorted to the holy threshold; but the shrines of the apostles were guarded by miracles and invisible terrors; and it was not without fear that the pious Catholic approached the object of his worship. It was fatal to touch, it was dangerous to behold, the bodies of the saints; and those who from the purest motives presumed to disturb the re 61 Quia in uno se ore cum Jovis laudibus, Christi laudes non capiunt, et quam grave nefandumque sit episcopis canere quod nec laico religioso conveniat, ipse considera (1. ix. ep. 4). The writings of Gregory himself attest his innocence of any classic taste or literature. 62 Bayle (Dictionaire Critique, tom. ii. p. 598, 599), in a very good article of Gregoire I. has quoted, for the build ngs and statues, Platina in Gregorio I; for the Pala ine library, John of Salisbury (de Nug s Curialium, l. ii. c. 26); and for Livy, Antoninus of Florence: the oldest of the three lived in the xiith century. |