Nearly fifty years before the time we enter upon, in order both to replenish the papal coffers and pacify the starving Romans, Boniface VIII. had instituted the Festival of the Jubilee, or Holy Year; in fact, a revival of a Pagan ceremonial.  A plenary indulgence was promised to every Catholic who, in that year, and in the first year of every succeeding century, should visit the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul.  An immense concourse of pilgrims, from every part of Christendom, had attested the wisdom of the invention; “and two priests stood night and day, with rakes in their hands, to collect without counting the heaps of gold and silver that were poured on the altar of St. Paul.” (Gibbon, vol. xii. c. 59.)

It is not to be wondered at that this most lucrative festival should, ere the next century was half expired, appear to a discreet pontiff to be too long postponed.  And both pope and city agreed in thinking it might well bear a less distant renewal.  Accordingly, Clement vi. had proclaimed, under the name of the Mosaic Jubilee, a second Holy Year for 1350—­viz., three years distant from that date at which, in the next chapter, my narrative will commence.  This circumstance had a great effect in whetting the popular indignation against the barons, and preparing the events I shall relate; for the roads were, as I before said, infested by the banditti, the creatures and allies of the barons.  And if the roads were not cleared, the pilgrims might not attend.  It was the object of the pope’s vicar, Raimond, bishop of Orvietto (bad politician and good canonist), to seek, by every means, to remove all impediment between the offerings of devotion and the treasury of St. Peter.

Such, in brief, was the state of Rome at the period we are about to examine.  Her ancient mantle of renown still, in the eyes of Italy and of Europe, cloaked her ruins.  In name, at least, she was still the queen of the earth; and from her hands came the crown of the emperor of the north, and the keys of the father of the church.  Her situation was precisely that which presented a vase and glittering triumph to bold ambition,—­an inspiring, if mournful, spectacle to determined patriotism,—­and a fitting stage for that more august tragedy which seeks its incidents, selects its actors, and shapes its moral, amidst the vicissitudes and crimes of nations.

Chapter 1.III.  The Brawl.

On an evening in April, 1347, and in one of those wide spaces in which Modern and Ancient Rome seemed blent together—­equally desolate and equally in ruins—­a miscellaneous and indignant populace were assembled.  That morning the house of a Roman jeweller had been forcibly entered and pillaged by the soldiers of Martino di Porto, with a daring effrontery which surpassed even the ordinary licence of the barons.  The sympathy and sensation throughout the city were deep and ominous.

“Never will I submit to this tyranny!”