The Man of Genius

392

Villari, p. 406.

393

Villari, ii. p. 408.

394

See Perrens, E. Marcel, 1880; Démocratie en France dans le Moyen Age, 1875.

395

Letter to Charles IV. Document 33 in Papencordt.

396

“Invidia e fuoco.” Thus the anonymous historian, and Zeffirino Re. Muratori reads juoco, “gaming,” but not even thus can the sentence be explained; for it was certainly other vices than envy and gambling that were consuming the nobility of those days.

397

Even after the first plébiscite, Stefano Colonna, in opposing him, said, “If this madman makes me angry, I will have him thrown from the Capitol” (p. 349).

398

See Papencordt, Cola di Rienzi, 1844; Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, vi. p. 267.

399

Papencordt.

400

Life, i. 32.

401

Ibid., i. 17.

402

Papencordt, doc. 83.

403

See letter to Fra Michele.

404

Hoxemio, De actis pontif., vols. ii. and iii.

405

Muratori, Cronaca Estense, xviii. p. 409.

406

Chronaca, p. 140.

407

Book x.

408

Gregorovius, vol. vi. p. 294.

409

“He said that they had bewitched him in prison” (Anonimo).

410

Even within a few months from his first assumption of the tribunate he became “addicted to rich food, and began to multiply suppers, banquets, and revels of divers meats and wines. About the end of December he began to grow stout and ruddy, and eat with a better appetite” (Anonimo, p. 92).

411

Gaye, Carteggio inedito d’artisti, Florence, 1839; Hoxemio, Qui Gesta Pontificum, &c., &c., Leodii, 1822, ii. pp. 272-514; Papencordt, Cola di Rienzi, Hamburg, 1847; Hobhouse, Historic Illustrations of Childe Harold, 1818; De Sade, Mémoires de Pétrarque, iii.

412

Even in the autograph MSS. we find cotidie for quotidie; Capitalo for Capitolis; patrabantur for perpetrabantur; speraverim for spreverim; michi for mihi. I have already noted the strange blunder of explaining the Pomærium– the district between the inner and outer walls of Rome – by “the garden of Italy.” All this indicates a scholarship which was neither very full nor very accurate. As to his caligraphy, there is nothing particular to remark.

413

Among his vagaries, we have already noted that of crowning himself with seven crowns. In his seals there were seven stars and seven rays, which, under the second Tribunate, became eight.

414

Monomaniacs while remaining constant to a fixed erroneous idea, vary, to a degree which amounts to contradiction, in the accessory details. It is thus that I explain the fact that, in his second tribunate he claimed to be the son, not of the emperor, but of a bastard of his. There has been found, near the Ponte Senatorio, in excavating the ruins of a building, restored apparently by Rienzi, this inscription dictated by him – according to Gabrini – in order to publish to the world his disgraceful delusion: “Nicolaus, Tribunus, Severus, Clemens, Laurentii, Teutonici filius, Gabrinius, Romae Senator,” with a timid allusion to a German, who was not Henry, but an illegitimate son of his (Gabrini, Osservazioni storico-critiche sulla Vita di Rienzi, 1706, p. 96).

415

Anonimo, p. 92.

416

See for other proofs my Tre Tribuni, 1887.