his ashes, his sect was dispersed; his memory still lived in the minds of the Romans. From his school they had probably derived a new article of faith, that the metropolis of the Catholic church is exempt from the penalties of excommunication and interdict. Their bishops might argue, that the supreme jurisdiction, which they exercised over kings and nations, more especially embraced the city and diocese of the prince of the apostles. But they preached to the winds, and the same principle that weakened the effect, must temper the abuse, of the thunders of the Vatican. The love of ancient freedom has encouraged a belief, that as early as the tenth century, in their first struggles against the Saxon Othos, the commonwealth was vindicated and restored by the senate and people of Rome; that two consuls were annually elected among the nobles, and that ten or twelve plebeian magistrates revived the name and office of the tribunes of the commons,* But this venerable structure disappears before the light of criticism. In the darkness of the middle ages, the appellations of senators, of consuls, of the sons of consuls, may sometimes be discovered.† They were bestowed by the emperors, or assumed by the most powerful citizens, to denote their rank, their honours,+ prison and bound to the stake at a very early hour, while they yet slept. When they were awakened by the intelligence, they rushed to rescue him, but were repulsed by an overwhelming military force. -ED.] * Ducange (Gloss. Latinitatis mediæ et infimæ Etatis, DECARCHONES, tom. ii. p. 726) gives me a quotation from Blondus (decad. 2, 1. 2); Duo consules ex nobilitate quotannis fiebant, qui ad vetustum consulum exemplar summæ rerum præessent. And in Sigonius (de Regno Italiæ, 1.6, opp. tom. ii. p. 400) I read of the consuls and tribunes of the tenth century. Both Blondus, and even Sigonius, too freely copied the classic method of supplying, from reason or fancy, the deficiency of records. In the panegyric of Berengarius (Muratori, Script. Rer. Ital. tom. ii. p. 1, p. 408) a Roman is mentioned as consulis natus in the beginning of the tenth century. Muratori (dissert. 5) discovers in the year 952 and 956, Gratianus in Dei nomine consul et dux, Georgius consul et dux; and in 1015, Romanus, brother of Gregory_VIIL proudly, but vaguely, styles himself consul et dux, et omnium Romanorum senator. [Gibbon is here in error: Gregory VIII. was not pope till 1187, and Romanus was not his brother, but brother of Benedict VIII., and afterwards pope John XIX., so notorious for simony, that Baronius wished to exclude him from his list of popes. Muratori, Annal. xiii. 407; xiv. 3. The revival of these titles by Alberic in 932, has been already noticed by Gibbon, vol. v. p. 423.-ED.] As late as the tenth century, the Greek emperors conferred on the dukes of Venice, Naples, Amalphi, and perhaps the claim of a pure and patrician descent; but they float on the surface, without a series or a substance; the titles of men, not the orders of government ;* and it is only from the year of Christ 1144, that the establishment of the senate is dated, as a glorious era, in the acts of the city. A new constitution was hastily framed by private ambition, or popular enthusiasm; nor could Rome, in the twelfth century, produce an antiquary to explain, or a legislator to restore, the harmony and proportions of the ancient model. The assembly of a free, of an armed, people will ever speak in loud and weighty acclamations. But the regular distribution of the thirty-five tribes, the nice balance of the wealth and numbers of the centuries, the debates of the adverse orators, and the slow operation of votes and ballots, could not easily be adapted by a blind multitude, ignorant of the arts, and insensible of the benefits, of legal government. It was proposed by Arnold to revive and discriminate the equestrian order; but what could be the motive or measure of such distinction? The pecuniary qualification of the knights must have been reduced to the poverty of the times; those times no longer required their civil functions of judges and farmers of the revenue; and their primitive duty, their military service on horseback, was more nobly supplied by feudal tenures and the spirit of chivalry. The jurisprudence of the republic was useless and &c. the title of varоç, or corsul (see Chron. Sagornini, passim); and the successors of Charlemagne would not abdicate any of their prerogative. But, in general, the names of consul and senator, which may be found among the French and Germans, signify no more than count and lord. (Signeur, Ducange, Glossar.) The monkish writers are often ambitious of fine classic words. [The mayors, aldermen, and councillors of our ancient municipalities, were styled "Prætor et Senatores " by Latin orators. Those institutions, in their best days, were nurseries of a freedom better than Rome ever possessed. It is remarkable that priest, signor, and alderman, are all derived originally from the same idea expressed in different languages.—ED.] *The most constitutional form is a diploma of Otho III. (A.D. 998) Consulibus senatûs populique Romani; but the act is probably spurious. At the coronation of Henry I. A.D. 1014, the historian Dithmar (apud Muratori, dissert. 23) describes him, a senatoribus duodecim vallatum, quorum sex rasi barbâ, alii prolixâ, mystice incedebant cum baculis. The senate is mentioned in the panegyric of Berengarius (p. 406). In ancient Rome, the equestrian order was not ranked with the senate and people as a third branch of the republic till the consulship of Cicero, who assuges the unknown; the nations and families of Italy, who lived under the Roman and Barbaric laws, were insensibly mingled in a common mass; and some faint tradition, some imperfect fragments, preserved the memory of the code and pandects of Justinian. With their liberty, the Romans might doubtless have restored the appellation and office of consuls; had they not disdained a title so promiscuously adopted in the Italian cities, that it has finally settled on the humble station of the agents of commerce in a foreign land.* But the rights of the tribunes, the formidable word that arrested the public counsels, suppose or must produce a legitimate democracy. The old patricians were the subjects, the modern barons the tyrants, of the state; nor would the enemies of peace and order, who insulted the vicar of Christ, have long respected the unarmed sanctity of a plebeian magistrate.† In the revolution of the twelfth century, which gave a new existence and era to Rome, we may observe the real and important events that marked or confirmed her political independence. I. The Capitoline hill, one of her seven eminences,‡ is about four hundred yards in length, and two * merit of the establishment. (Plin. Hist. Natur. 33. 3. Beaufort, République Romaine, tom. i. p. 144—155.) [The first commercial consuls were appointed by the great trading cities of Italy, to protect their interests at Constantinople and rule their countrymen who frequented the great market of the East. They were magistrates, armed with the full powers of the chiefs of their respective states, "exceptis tamen majoribus criminibus." (Ducange, 1. 1008.) They were elected annually, and were termed consuls after the magistrates whom they represented. The Venetians called them bajuli, or bailiffs. (Pachymer de Mich. Palæo!. 1. 2, c. 32.) As international law became more explicit and effective, their powers were restricted and their dignity lowered; but the name of consul still records what they once were.-ED.] + The republican plan of Arnold of Brescia is thus stated by Gunther: Quin etiam titulos urbis renovare vetustos; But of these reformations, some were no more than ideas, otherz no hundred in breadth. A flight of a hundred steps led to the summit of the Tarpeian rock; and far steeper was the ascent before the declivities had been smoothed, and the precipices filled by the ruins of fallen edifices. From the earliest ages, the Capitol had been used as a temple in peace, a fortress in war: after the loss of the city, it maintained a siege against the victorious Gauls; and the sanctuary of empire was occupied, assaulted and burnt, in the civil wars of Vitellius and Vespasian.* The temples of Jupiter and his kindred deities had crumbled into dust; their place was supplied by monasteries and houses; and the solid walls, the long and shelving porticoes, were decayed or ruined by the lapse of time. It was the first act of the Romans, an act of freedom, to restore the strength, though not the beauty, of the Capitol; to fortify the seat of their arms and counsels; and as often as they ascended the hill, the coldest minds must have glowed with the remembrance of their ancestors. II. The first Cæsars had been invested with the exclusive coinage of the gold and silver; to the senate they abandoned the baser metal of bronze or copper. The emblems and legends were inscribed on a more ample field by the genius of flattery; and the prince was relieved from the care of celebrating his own virtues. The successors of Diocletian despised even the flattery of the senate; their royal officers at Rome, and in the provinces, assumed the sole direction of the mint; and the same prerogative was inherited by the Gothic kings of Italy, and the long series of barefoot friars of St. Francis occupy the temple of Jupiter. (Nardini, This partition of the noble and baser metals between the emperor and senate must however be adopted, not as a positive fact, but as the probable opinion of the best antiquaries. (See the Science des Medailles of the Père Joubert, tom. ii. p. 208-211, in the improved and scarce edition of the Baron de la Bastie.) [The baser metal was here the most important. From the earliest ages of Rome, the copper coinage was the national standard of value; no transfer of property, except the most trifling, was valid, unless the agreed number of Ases were weighed and delivered in the presence of witnesses. (See Notes ch. 44. vol. v. p. 64 and 93.) This national coinage the emperors wisely left under the care of the Senate; it bore the letters s. c. to denota that it was issued and regulated ex Senatûs Consulto; and it was often ased as a public record of victories gained and countries conquered by the Roman arms. Humphreys,Coin Coll. Man. 250-312, and Addi Bon's Works, vol. i. p. 263. Bohn's editions.—ED.] the Greek, the French, and the German dynasties. After an abdication of eight hundred years, the Roman senate asserted this honourable and lucrative privilege; which was tacitly renounced by the popes, from Paschal the Second to the establishment of their residence beyond the Alps. Some of these republican coins of the twelfth and thirteenth cen turies are shewn in the cabinets of the curious. On one of these, a gold medal, Christ is depictured holding in his left hand a book with this inscription: "THE VOW OF THE ROMAN SENATE AND PEOPLE: ROME THE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD;" on the reverse, St. Peter delivering a banner to a kneeling senator in his cap and gown, with the name and arms of his family impressed on a shield.* III. With the empire, the prefect of the city had declined to a municipal officer; yet he still exercised in the last appeal the civil and criminal jurisdiction; and a drawn sword, which he received from the suc cessors of Otho, was the mode of his investiture and the emblem of his functions. The dignity was confined to the noble families of Rome; the choice of the people was ratified by the pope; but a triple oath of fidelity must have often em * In his twenty-seventh dissertation on the Antiquities of Italy (tom. ii. p. 559-569), Muratori exhibits a series of the senatorian coins, which bore the obscure names of Affortiati, Infortiati, Provisini, Paparini. During this period, all the popes, without excepting Boniface VIII. abstained from the right of coining, which was resumed by his successor Benedict XI. and regularly exercised in the court of Avignon. [The privilege granted by Charlemagne to Adrian I. (see note, p. 343) does not appear to have been revoked by any suc ceeding emperors. From 1199 to 1303 the popes had no authority in Rome; the coins of that period are inscribed Senat. Popul. Q. R., accompanied by the name of the Senator who was at the time governor of the city. Their names are generally obscure; but among them is seen, in 1253, that of Brancaleone; and after him, in the time of Charles of Anjou, the Roman coins have on one side a lion and fleur. de-lys, with the inscription CAROLUS REX. SENATOR URBIS; and on the other a crowned female figure holding a globe and palin-branch, surrounded by the legend, ROMA CAPUT MUNDI. S. P. Q. R. The series of papal coins recommences with Clement V. Humphreys, p. 514.-ED.] A German historian, Gerard of Reichersperg (in Baluz. Miscell. tom. v. p. 64, apud Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, tom. iii. p. 265), thus describes the constitution of Rome in the eleventh century: Grandiora urbis et orbis negotia spectant ad Romanum pontificem itemque ad Romanum imperatorem; sive illius vicarium urbis præfec. tum, qui de sua dignitate respicit utrumque, videlicet dominum papam cui facit hominium, et dominum imperatorem a quo accipit in potestatis insigne, scilicet gladi'm exertum, |