* the desert. Their first historical appearance in the year 1104, attests the power and antiquity, while it explains the simple meaning, of the name. By the usurpation of Cave, the Colonna provoked the arms of Paschal the Second; but they lawfully held, in the Campagna of Rome, the hereditary fiefs of Zagarola and Colonna; and the latter of these towns was probably adorned with some lofty pillar, the relic of a villa or temple. They likewise possessed one moiety of the neighbouring city of Tusculum; a strong presumption of their descent from the counts of Tusculum, who in the tenth century were the tyrants of the apostolic see. Accord ing to their own and the public opinion, the primitive and remote source was derived from the banks of the Rhine;t and the sovereigns of Germany were not ashamed of a real or fabulous affinity with a noble race, which in the revolutions of seven hundred years has been often illustrated by merit, and always by fortune. About the end of the thirteenth century, the most powerful branch was composed of an uncle and six brothers, all conspicuous in arms, or in the honours of the church. Of these, Peter was elected senator of Rome, introduced to the Capitol in a triumphant ca; and hailed in some vain acclamations with the title of Cæsar; while John and Stephen were declared marquis of Ancona and count of Romagna by Nicholas the Fourth, a patron so partial to their family, that he has been delineated, in satirical portraits, imprisoned as it were in a hollow pillar.§ After Pandulph. Pisan. in Vit. Paschal II. in Muratori, Script. Ital. tom. iii. p. 1, p. 335. The family has still great possessions in the Campagna of Rome; but they have alienated to the Rospigliosi their original fief of Colonna. (Eschinard, pp. 258, 259.) Te longinqua dedit tellus et pascua Rheni, says Petrarch; and, in 1417, a duke of Guelders and Juliers acknow. ledges (Lenfant, Hist. du Concile de Constance, tom. ii. p. 539) his descent from the ancestors of Martin V. (Otho Colonna; but the royal author of the Memoirs of Brandenburg observes, that the sceptre in his arms has been confounded with the column. To maintain the Roman origin of the Colonna, it was ingeniously supposed (Diario di Monaldeschi, in the Script. Ital. tom. xii. p. 533), that a cousin of the emperor Nero escaped from the city, and founded Mentz in Germany. I cannot overlook the Roman triumph or ovation of Marco Antonio Colonna, who had commanded the pope's galleys at the naval victory of Lepanto. (Thuan. Hist. 1. 7, tom. iii. p. 55, 56. Muret Oratio 10; Opp. tom. i. p. 180-190.) Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. x. p. 216. 220. his decease, their haughty behaviour provoked the displeasure of the most implacable of mankind. The two cardinals, the uncle and the nephew, denied the election of Boniface the Eighth; and the Colonna were oppressed for a moment by his temporal and spiritual arms.* He proclaimed a crusade against his personal enemies; their estates were confiscated; their fortresses on either side of the Tiber were besieged by the troops of St. Peter and those of the rival nobles; and after the ruin of Palestrina or Præneste, their principal seat, the ground was marked with a ploughshare, the emblem of perpetual desolation. Degraded, banished, proscribed, the six brothers, in disguise and danger, wandered over Europe without renouncing the hope of deliverance and revenge. In this double hope, the French court was their surest asylum; they prompted and directed the enterprise of Philip; and I should praise their magnanimity, had they respected the misfortune and courage of the captive tyrant. His civil acts were annulled by the Roman people, who restored the honours and possessions of the Colonna; and some estimate may be formed of their wealth by their losses, of their losses by the damages of one hundred thousand gold florins which were granted them against the accomplices and heirs of the deceased pope. All the spiritual censures and disqualifications were abolished+ by his prudent successors; and the fortune of the house was more firmly established by this transient hurricane. The boldness of Sciarra Colonna was signalized in the captivity of Boniface, and long afterwards in the coronation of Lewis of Bavaria; and by the gratitude of the emperor, the pillar in their arms was encircled with a royal crown. But the * Petrarch's attachment to the Colonna has authorized the Abbé de Sade to expatiate on the state of the family in the fourteenth century, the persecution of Boniface VIII. the character of Stephen and his sons, their quarrels with the Ursini, &c. (Mémoires sur Petrarque, tom. i. p. 98-110. 146-148. 174-176. 222-230. 275-280). His criticism often rectifies the hearsay stories of Villani, and the errors of the less diligent moderns. I understand the branch of Stephen to be now extinct. Alexander III. had declared the Colonna who adhered to the emperor Frederic I. incapable of holding any ecclesiastical benefice (Villani, l. 5, c. 1); and the last stains of annual excommunication were purified by Sixtus V. (Vita di Sisto V. tom. iii. p. 416). Treason, sacrilege, and proscription, are often the best titles of ancient nobility. first of the family in fame and merit was the elder Stephen whom Petrarch loved and esteemed as a hero superior to his own times, and not unworthy of ancient Rome. Persecution and exile displayed to the nations his abilities in peace and war; in his distress, he was an object, not of pity, but of reverence; the aspect of danger provoked him to avow his name and country: and when he was asked, "Where is now your fortress ?" he laid his hand on his heart, and answered,"Here." He supported, with the same virtue, the return of prosperity: and till the ruin of his declining age, the ancestors, the character, and the children of Stephen Colonna, exalted his dignity in the Roman republic and at the court of Avignon. II. The Ursini migrated from Spoleto:* the sons of Ursus, as they are styled in the twelfth century, from some eminent person, who is only known as the father of their race. But they were soon distinguished among the nobles of Rome, by the number and bravery of their kinsmen, the strength of their towers, the honours of the senate and sacred college, and the elevation of two popes, Celestin the Third and Nicholas the Third, of their name and lineage. Their riches may be accused as an early abuse of nepotism; the estates of St. Peter were alienated in their favour by the liberal Celestin; and Nicholas was Vallis te proxima misit, Spoletana metunt armenta gregesque protervi. Monaldeschi (tom. xii. Script. Ital. p. 533) gives the Ursini a French origin, which may be remotely true. In the metrical life of Celestin V. by the cardinal of St. George (Muratori, tom. iii. p. 1, p. 613, &c.), we find a luminous, and not inelegant, passage (1. 1, c. 3, p. 203, &c.): genuit quem nobilis Ursa (Ursi?) Progenies, Romana domus, veterataque magnis Muratori (dissert. 42, tom. iii.) observes, that the first Ursini ponti. ambitious for their sake to solicit the alliance of monarchs; to found new kingdoms in Lombardy and Tuscany; and to invest them with the perpetual office of senators of Rome. All that has been observed of the greatness of the Colonna, will likewise redound to the glory of the Ursini, their constant and equal antagonists in the long hereditary feud, which distracted above two hundred and fifty years the ecclesiastical state. The jealousy of pre-eminence and power was the true ground of their quarrel; but as a specious badge of distinction, the Colonna embraced the name of Ghibel lines and the party of the empire; the Ursini espoused the title of Guelphs and the cause of the Church. The eagle and the keys were displayed in their adverse banners; and the two factions of Italy most furiously raged when the origin and nature of the dispute were long since forgotten.* After the retreat of the popes to Avignon, they disputed in arms the vacant republic; and the mischiefs of discord were perpetuated by the wretched compromise of electing each year two rival senators. By their private hostilities, the city and country were desolated, and the fluctuating balance inclined with their alternate success. But none of either family had fallen by the sword, till the most renowned champion of the Ursini was surprised and slain by the younger Stephen Colonna.† His triumph is stained with. the reproach of violating the truce; their defeat was basely avenged by the assassination, before the church-door, of an innocent boy and his two servants. Yet the victorious Colonna, with an annual colleague, was declared senator of Rome during the term of five years. And the muse of In his fifty-first Dissertation on the Italian Antiquities, Muratori explains the factions of the Guelphs and Ghibelines. [For the origin of the house of Guelph, see Notes, vol. v. p. 428, and vol. vi. p. 475 The contest for the crown of Germany and duchy of Bavaria in 1138, between this family and Conrad of Hohenstaufen, was the origin of long wars. The party of the latter, from his paternal castle of Wiblingen (in the present Neckar circle of Wirtemburg) took the name of Ghibelines, which they retained in their subsequent Italian struggles. The papal faction and the free cities of Northern Italy, from their alliance with the Guelphs, were designated after them. See also Muratori, Annali d'Italia, anno 1138, tom. xv. p. 308, Venezia, 1790. -ED.] + Petrarch (tom. i. p. 222-230) has celebrated this victory according to the Colonna; but two contem. poraries, a Florentine (Giovanni Villani, 1. 10, c. 220), and a Romau (Ludovico Monaldeschi, p. 533, 534), are less favourable to their arms Petrarch inspired a wish, a hope, a prediction, that the generous youth, the son of his venerable hero, would restore Rome and Italy to their pristine glory; that his justice would extirpate the wolves and lions, the serpents and bears, who laboured to subvert the eternal basis of the marble COLUMN.✶ CHAPTER LXX.-CHARACTER AND CORONATION OF PETRARCH.RESTORATION OF THE FREEDOM AND GOVERNMENT OF ROME BY THE TRIBUNE RIENZI. -HIS VIRTUES AND VICES, HIS EXPULSION AND DEATH.-RETURN OF THE POPES FROM AVIGNON.-GREAT SCHISM OF THE WEST.-REUNION OF THE LATIN CHURCH.-LAST STRUGGLES OF ROMAN LIBERTY.-STATUTES OF Rome.-FINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL STATE, IN the apprehension of modern times, Petrarcht is the Italian songster of Laura and love. In the harmony of his Tuscan rhymes, Italy applauds, or rather adores, the father * The Abbé de Sade (tom. 1. notes, p. 61-66) has applied the sixth canzone of Petrarch, Spirto Gentil, &c. to Stephen Colonna the younger : Orsi, lupi, leoni, aquile e serpi Ad una gran marmorea Colonna + The Mémoires sur la Vie de François Petrarque (Amsterdam, 1764, 1767, three vols. in 4to.) form a copious, original, and entertain. ing work, a labour of love, composed from the accurate study of Petrarch and his contemporaries; but the hero is too often lost in the general history of the age, and the author too often languishes in the affectation of politeness and gallantry. In the preface to his first volume, he enumerates and weighs twenty Italian biographers, who have professedly treated of the same subject. [Lord Byron in a note to Childe Harold (canto iv. stanza 30) says that this "labour of love" was followed by Gibbon with too much confidence and delight, for "thanks to the critical acumen of a Scotchman, we now know as little of Laura as ever." This Scotchman was Lord Woodhouselee, now known to have been the author of two publications, which appeared anonymously in 1810, one entitled An Historical and Critical Essay on the Life and Character of Petrarch, and the other A Dissertation on an Historical Hypothesis of the Abbé de Sade. In these it is maintained that Laura "was born, lived, died, and was buried, not in Avignon, but in the country; that she was never married, and was a haughty virgin." Yet neither these heresies, nor the bolder scepticism of Byron, could shake the faith of Ugo Foscolo, who, when he published at London in 1823 his Essays on Petrarch, still adhered to the Abbé de Sade's story, but without adducing any new arguments of |