Chapter LXII: Greek Emperors Of Nice And Constantinople.—Part II

The danger and scandal of this excommunication subsisted above
three years, till the popular clamor was assuaged by time and
repentance; till the brethren of Arsenius condemned his
inflexible spirit, so repugnant to the unbounded forgiveness of
the gospel. The emperor had artfully insinuated, that, if he were
still rejected at home, he might seek, in the Roman pontiff, a
more indulgent judge; but it was far more easy and effectual to
find or to place that judge at the head of the Byzantine church.
Arsenius was involved in a vague rumor of conspiracy and
disaffection; 248 some irregular steps in his ordination and
government were liable to censure; a synod deposed him from the
episcopal office; and he was transported under a guard of
soldiers to a small island of the Propontis. Before his exile, he
sullenly requested that a strict account might be taken of the
treasures of the church; boasted, that his sole riches, three
pieces of gold, had been earned by transcribing the psalms;
continued to assert the freedom of his mind; and denied, with his
last breath, the pardon which was implored by the royal sinner.
25 After some delay, Gregory, 259 bishop of Adrianople, was
translated to the Byzantine throne; but his authority was found
insufficient to support the absolution of the emperor; and
Joseph, a reverend monk, was substituted to that important
function. This edifying scene was represented in the presence of
the senate and the people; at the end of six years the humble
penitent was restored to the communion of the faithful; and
humanity will rejoice, that a milder treatment of the captive
Lascaris was stipulated as a proof of his remorse. But the spirit
of Arsenius still survived in a powerful faction of the monks and
clergy, who persevered about forty-eight years in an obstinate
schism. Their scruples were treated with tenderness and respect
by Michael and his son; and the reconciliation of the Arsenites
was the serious labor of the church and state. In the confidence
of fanaticism, they had proposed to try their cause by a miracle;
and when the two papers, that contained their own and the adverse
cause, were cast into a fiery brazier, they expected that the
Catholic verity would be respected by the flames. Alas! the two
papers were indiscriminately consumed, and this unforeseen
accident produced the union of a day, and renewed the quarrel of
an age. 26 The final treaty displayed the victory of the
Arsenites: the clergy abstained during forty days from all
ecclesiastical functions; a slight penance was imposed on the
laity; the body of Arsenius was deposited in the sanctuary; and,
in the name of the departed saint, the prince and people were
released from the sins of their fathers. 27

248 (return) [ Except the omission of a prayer for the emperor,
the charges against Arsenius were of different nature: he was
accused of having allowed the sultan of Iconium to bathe in
vessels signed with the cross, and to have admitted him to the
church, though unbaptized, during the service. It was pleaded, in
favor of Arsenius, among other proofs of the sultan’s
Christianity, that he had offered to eat ham. Pachymer, l. iv. c.
4, p. 265. It was after his exile that he was involved in a
charge of conspiracy.—M.]

25 (return) [ Pachymer relates the exile of Arsenius, (l. iv. c.
1—16:) he was one of the commissaries who visited him in the
desert island. The last testament of the unforgiving patriarch is
still extant, (Dupin, Bibliothèque Ecclésiastique, tom. x. p.
95.)]

259 (return) [ Pachymer calls him Germanus.—M.]

26 (return) [ Pachymer (l. vii. c. 22) relates this miraculous
trial like a philosopher, and treats with similar contempt a plot
of the Arsenites, to hide a revelation in the coffin of some old
saint, (l. vii. c. 13.) He compensates this incredulity by an
image that weeps, another that bleeds, (l. vii. c. 30,) and the
miraculous cures of a deaf and a mute patient, (l. xi. c. 32.)]

27 (return) [ The story of the Arsenites is spread through the
thirteen books of Pachymer. Their union and triumph are reserved
for Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. vii. c. 9,) who neither loves nor
esteems these sectaries.]

The establishment of his family was the motive, or at least the
pretence, of the crime of Palæologus; and he was impatient to
confirm the succession, by sharing with his eldest son the honors
of the purple. Andronicus, afterwards surnamed the Elder, was
proclaimed and crowned emperor of the Romans, in the fifteenth
year of his age; and, from the first æra of a prolix and
inglorious reign, he held that august title nine years as the
colleague, and fifty as the successor, of his father. Michael
himself, had he died in a private station, would have been
thought more worthy of the empire; and the assaults of his
temporal and spiritual enemies left him few moments to labor for
his own fame or the happiness of his subjects. He wrested from
the Franks several of the noblest islands of the Archipelago,
Lesbos, Chios, and Rhodes: his brother Constantine was sent to
command in Malvasia and Sparta; and the eastern side of the
Morea, from Argos and Napoli to Cape Thinners, was repossessed by
the Greeks. This effusion of Christian blood was loudly condemned
by the patriarch; and the insolent priest presumed to interpose
his fears and scruples between the arms of princes. But in the
prosecution of these western conquests, the countries beyond the
Hellespont were left naked to the Turks; and their depredations
verified the prophecy of a dying senator, that the recovery of
Constantinople would be the ruin of Asia. The victories of
Michael were achieved by his lieutenants; his sword rusted in the
palace; and, in the transactions of the emperor with the popes
and the king of Naples, his political acts were stained with
cruelty and fraud. 28

28 (return) [ Of the xiii books of Pachymer, the first six (as
the ivth and vth of Nicephorus Gregoras) contain the reign of
Michael, at the time of whose death he was forty years of age.
Instead of breaking, like his editor the Père Poussin, his
history into two parts, I follow Ducange and Cousin, who number
the xiii. books in one series.]

I. The Vatican was the most natural refuge of a Latin emperor,
who had been driven from his throne; and Pope Urban the Fourth
appeared to pity the misfortunes, and vindicate the cause, of the
fugitive Baldwin. A crusade, with plenary indulgence, was
preached by his command against the schismatic Greeks: he
excommunicated their allies and adherents; solicited Louis the
Ninth in favor of his kinsman; and demanded a tenth of the
ecclesiastical revenues of France and England for the service of
the holy war. 29 The subtle Greek, who watched the rising tempest
of the West, attempted to suspend or soothe the hostility of the
pope, by suppliant embassies and respectful letters; but he
insinuated that the establishment of peace must prepare the
reconciliation and obedience of the Eastern church. The Roman
court could not be deceived by so gross an artifice; and Michael
was admonished, that the repentance of the son should precede the
forgiveness of the father; and that _faith_ (an ambiguous word)
was the only basis of friendship and alliance. After a long and
affected delay, the approach of danger, and the importunity of
Gregory the Tenth, compelled him to enter on a more serious
negotiation: he alleged the example of the great Vataces; and the
Greek clergy, who understood the intentions of their prince, were
not alarmed by the first steps of reconciliation and respect. But
when he pressed the conclusion of the treaty, they strenuously
declared, that the Latins, though not in name, were heretics in
fact, and that they despised those strangers as the vilest and
most despicable portion of the human race. 30 It was the task of
the emperor to persuade, to corrupt, to intimidate the most
popular ecclesiastics, to gain the vote of each individual, and
alternately to urge the arguments of Christian charity and the
public welfare. The texts of the fathers and the arms of the
Franks were balanced in the theological and political scale; and
without approving the addition to the Nicene creed, the most
moderate were taught to confess, that the two hostile
propositions of proceeding from the Father by the Son, and of
proceeding from the Father and the Son, might be reduced to a
safe and Catholic sense. 31 The supremacy of the pope was a
doctrine more easy to conceive, but more painful to acknowledge:
yet Michael represented to his monks and prelates, that they
might submit to name the Roman bishop as the first of the
patriarchs; and that their distance and discretion would guard
the liberties of the Eastern church from the mischievous
consequences of the right of appeal. He protested that he would
sacrifice his life and empire rather than yield the smallest
point of orthodox faith or national independence; and this
declaration was sealed and ratified by a golden bull. The
patriarch Joseph withdrew to a monastery, to resign or resume his
throne, according to the event of the treaty: the letters of
union and obedience were subscribed by the emperor, his son
Andronicus, and thirty-five archbishops and metropolitans, with
their respective synods; and the episcopal list was multiplied by
many dioceses which were annihilated under the yoke of the
infidels. An embassy was composed of some trusty ministers and
prelates: they embarked for Italy, with rich ornaments and rare
perfumes for the altar of St. Peter; and their secret orders
authorized and recommended a boundless compliance. They were
received in the general council of Lyons, by Pope Gregory the
Tenth, at the head of five hundred bishops. 32 He embraced with
tears his long-lost and repentant children; accepted the oath of
the ambassadors, who abjured the schism in the name of the two
emperors; adorned the prelates with the ring and mitre; chanted
in Greek and Latin the Nicene creed with the addition of
_filioque_; and rejoiced in the union of the East and West, which
had been reserved for his reign. To consummate this pious work,
the Byzantine deputies were speedily followed by the pope’s
nuncios; and their instruction discloses the policy of the
Vatican, which could not be satisfied with the vain title of
supremacy. After viewing the temper of the prince and people,
they were enjoined to absolve the schismatic clergy, who should
subscribe and swear their abjuration and obedience; to establish
in all the churches the use of the perfect creed; to prepare the
entrance of a cardinal legate, with the full powers and dignity
of his office; and to instruct the emperor in the advantages
which he might derive from the temporal protection of the Roman
pontiff. 33

29 (return) [ Ducange, Hist. de C. P. l. v. c. 33, &c., from the
Epistles of Urban IV.]

30 (return) [ From their mercantile intercourse with the
Venetians and Genoese, they branded the Latins as kaphloi and
banausoi, (Pachymer, l. v. c. 10.) “Some are heretics in name;
others, like the Latins, in fact,” said the learned Veccus, (l.
v. c. 12,) who soon afterwards became a convert (c. 15, 16) and a
patriarch, (c. 24.)]

31 (return) [ In this class we may place Pachymer himself, whose
copious and candid narrative occupies the vth and vith books of
his history. Yet the Greek is silent on the council of Lyons, and
seems to believe that the popes always resided in Rome and Italy,
(l. v. c. 17, 21.)]

32 (return) [ See the acts of the council of Lyons in the year
1274. Fleury, Hist. Ecclésiastique, tom. xviii. p. 181—199.
Dupin, Bibliot. Ecclés. tom. x. p. 135.]

33 (return) [ This curious instruction, which has been drawn with
more or less honesty by Wading and Leo Allatius from the archives
of the Vatican, is given in an abstract or version by Fleury,
(tom. xviii. p. 252—258.)]

But they found a country without a friend, a nation in which the
names of Rome and Union were pronounced with abhorrence. The
patriarch Joseph was indeed removed: his place was filled by
Veccus, an ecclesiastic of learning and moderation; and the
emperor was still urged by the same motives, to persevere in the
same professions. But in his private language Palæologus affected
to deplore the pride, and to blame the innovations, of the
Latins; and while he debased his character by this double
hypocrisy, he justified and punished the opposition of his
subjects. By the joint suffrage of the new and the ancient Rome,
a sentence of excommunication was pronounced against the
obstinate schismatics; the censures of the church were executed
by the sword of Michael; on the failure of persuasion, he tried
the arguments of prison and exile, of whipping and mutilation;
those touchstones, says an historian, of cowards and the brave.
Two Greeks still reigned in Ætolia, Epirus, and Thessaly, with
the appellation of despots: they had yielded to the sovereign of
Constantinople, but they rejected the chains of the Roman
pontiff, and supported their refusal by successful arms. Under
their protection, the fugitive monks and bishops assembled in
hostile synods; and retorted the name of heretic with the galling
addition of apostate: the prince of Trebizond was tempted to
assume the forfeit title of emperor; 339 and even the Latins of
Negropont, Thebes, Athens, and the Morea, forgot the merits of
the convert, to join, with open or clandestine aid, the enemies
of Palæologus. His favorite generals, of his own blood, and
family, successively deserted, or betrayed, the sacrilegious
trust. His sister Eulogia, a niece, and two female cousins,
conspired against him; another niece, Mary queen of Bulgaria,
negotiated his ruin with the sultan of Egypt; and, in the public
eye, their treason was consecrated as the most sublime virtue. 34
To the pope’s nuncios, who urged the consummation of the work,
Palæologus exposed a naked recital of all that he had done and
suffered for their sake. They were assured that the guilty
sectaries, of both sexes and every rank, had been deprived of
their honors, their fortunes, and their liberty; a spreading list
of confiscation and punishment, which involved many persons, the
dearest to the emperor, or the best deserving of his favor. They
were conducted to the prison, to behold four princes of the royal
blood chained in the four corners, and shaking their fetters in
an agony of grief and rage. Two of these captives were afterwards
released; the one by submission, the other by death: but the
obstinacy of their two companions was chastised by the loss of
their eyes; and the Greeks, the least adverse to the union,
deplored that cruel and inauspicious tragedy. 35 Persecutors must
expect the hatred of those whom they oppress; but they commonly
find some consolation in the testimony of their conscience, the
applause of their party, and, perhaps, the success of their
undertaking. But the hypocrisy of Michael, which was prompted
only by political motives, must have forced him to hate himself,
to despise his followers, and to esteem and envy the rebel
champions by whom he was detested and despised. While his
violence was abhorred at Constantinople, at Rome his slowness was
arraigned, and his sincerity suspected; till at length Pope
Martin the Fourth excluded the Greek emperor from the pale of a
church, into which he was striving to reduce a schismatic people.
No sooner had the tyrant expired, than the union was dissolved,
and abjured by unanimous consent; the churches were purified; the
penitents were reconciled; and his son Andronicus, after weeping
the sins and errors of his youth most piously denied his father
the burial of a prince and a Christian. 36

339 (return) [ According to Fallmarayer he had always maintained
this title.—M.]

34 (return) [ This frank and authentic confession of Michael’s
distress is exhibited in barbarous Latin by Ogerius, who signs
himself Protonotarius Interpretum, and transcribed by Wading from
the MSS. of the Vatican, (A.D. 1278, No. 3.) His annals of the
Franciscan order, the Fratres Minores, in xvii. volumes in folio,
(Rome, 1741,) I have now accidentally seen among the waste paper
of a bookseller.]

35 (return) [ See the vith book of Pachymer, particularly the
chapters 1, 11, 16, 18, 24—27. He is the more credible, as he
speaks of this persecution with less anger than sorrow.]

36 (return) [ Pachymer, l. vii. c. 1—ii. 17. The speech of
Andronicus the Elder (lib. xii. c. 2) is a curious record, which
proves that if the Greeks were the slaves of the emperor, the
emperor was not less the slave of superstition and the clergy.]

II. In the distress of the Latins, the walls and towers of
Constantinople had fallen to decay: they were restored and
fortified by the policy of Michael, who deposited a plenteous
store of corn and salt provisions, to sustain the siege which he
might hourly expect from the resentment of the Western powers. Of
these, the sovereign of the Two Sicilies was the most formidable
neighbor: but as long as they were possessed by Mainfroy, the
bastard of Frederic the Second, his monarchy was the bulwark,
rather than the annoyance, of the Eastern empire. The usurper,
though a brave and active prince, was sufficiently employed in
the defence of his throne: his proscription by successive popes
had separated Mainfroy from the common cause of the Latins; and
the forces that might have besieged Constantinople were detained
in a crusade against the domestic enemy of Rome. The prize of her
avenger, the crown of the Two Sicilies, was won and worn by the
brother of St Louis, by Charles count of Anjou and Provence, who
led the chivalry of France on this holy expedition. 37 The
disaffection of his Christian subjects compelled Mainfroy to
enlist a colony of Saracens whom his father had planted in
Apulia; and this odious succor will explain the defiance of the
Catholic hero, who rejected all terms of accommodation. “Bear
this message,” said Charles, “to the sultan of Nocera, that God
and the sword are umpire between us; and that he shall either
send me to paradise, or I will send him to the pit of hell.” The
armies met: and though I am ignorant of Mainfroy’s doom in the
other world, in this he lost his friends, his kingdom, and his
life, in the bloody battle of Benevento. Naples and Sicily were
immediately peopled with a warlike race of French nobles; and
their aspiring leader embraced the future conquest of Africa,
Greece, and Palestine. The most specious reasons might point his
first arms against the Byzantine empire; and Palæologus,
diffident of his own strength, repeatedly appealed from the
ambition of Charles to the humanity of St. Louis, who still
preserved a just ascendant over the mind of his ferocious
brother. For a while the attention of that brother was confined
at home by the invasion of Conradin, the last heir to the
imperial house of Swabia; but the hapless boy sunk in the unequal
conflict; and his execution on a public scaffold taught the
rivals of Charles to tremble for their heads as well as their
dominions. A second respite was obtained by the last crusade of
St. Louis to the African coast; and the double motive of interest
and duty urged the king of Naples to assist, with his powers and
his presence, the holy enterprise. The death of St. Louis
released him from the importunity of a virtuous censor: the king
of Tunis confessed himself the tributary and vassal of the crown
of Sicily; and the boldest of the French knights were free to
enlist under his banner against the Greek empire. A treaty and a
marriage united his interest with the house of Courtenay; his
daughter Beatrice was promised to Philip, son and heir of the
emperor Baldwin; a pension of six hundred ounces of gold was
allowed for his maintenance; and his generous father distributed
among his aliens the kingdoms and provinces of the East,
reserving only Constantinople, and one day’s journey round the
city for the imperial domain. 38 In this perilous moment,
Palæologus was the most eager to subscribe the creed, and implore
the protection, of the Roman pontiff, who assumed, with propriety
and weight, the character of an angel of peace, the common father
of the Christians. By his voice, the sword of Charles was chained
in the scabbard; and the Greek ambassadors beheld him, in the
pope’s antechamber, biting his ivory sceptre in a transport of
fury, and deeply resenting the refusal to enfranchise and
consecrate his arms. He appears to have respected the
disinterested mediation of Gregory the Tenth; but Charles was
insensibly disgusted by the pride and partiality of Nicholas the
Third; and his attachment to his kindred, the Ursini family,
alienated the most strenuous champion from the service of the
church. The hostile league against the Greeks, of Philip the
Latin emperor, the king of the Two Sicilies, and the republic of
Venice, was ripened into execution; and the election of Martin
the Fourth, a French pope, gave a sanction to the cause. Of the
allies, Philip supplied his name; Martin, a bull of
excommunication; the Venetians, a squadron of forty galleys; and
the formidable powers of Charles consisted of forty counts, ten
thousand men at arms, a numerous body of infantry, and a fleet of
more than three hundred ships and transports. A distant day was
appointed for assembling this mighty force in the harbor of
Brindisi; and a previous attempt was risked with a detachment of
three hundred knights, who invaded Albania, and besieged the
fortress of Belgrade. Their defeat might amuse with a triumph the
vanity of Constantinople; but the more sagacious Michael,
despairing of his arms, depended on the effects of a conspiracy;
on the secret workings of a rat, who gnawed the bowstring 39 of
the Sicilian tyrant.

37 (return) [ The best accounts, the nearest the time, the most
full and entertaining, of the conquest of Naples by Charles of
Anjou, may be found in the Florentine Chronicles of Ricordano
Malespina, (c. 175—193,) and Giovanni Villani, (l. vii. c. 1—10,
25—30,) which are published by Muratori in the viiith and xiiith
volumes of the Historians of Italy. In his Annals (tom. xi. p.
56—72) he has abridged these great events which are likewise
described in the Istoria Civile of Giannone. tom. l. xix. tom.
iii. l. xx.]

38 (return) [ Ducange, Hist. de C. P. l. v. c. 49—56, l. vi. c.
1—13. See Pachymer, l. iv. c. 29, l. v. c. 7—10, 25 l. vi. c. 30,
32, 33, and Nicephorus Gregoras, l. iv. 5, l. v. 1, 6.]

39 (return) [ The reader of Herodotus will recollect how
miraculously the Assyrian host of Sennacherib was disarmed and
destroyed, (l. ii. c. 141.)]

Among the proscribed adherents of the house of Swabia, John of
Procida forfeited a small island of that name in the Bay of
Naples. His birth was noble, but his education was learned; and
in the poverty of exile, he was relieved by the practice of
physic, which he had studied in the school of Salerno. Fortune
had left him nothing to lose, except life; and to despise life is
the first qualification of a rebel. Procida was endowed with the
art of negotiation, to enforce his reasons and disguise his
motives; and in his various transactions with nations and men, he
could persuade each party that he labored solely for _their_
interest. The new kingdoms of Charles were afflicted by every
species of fiscal and military oppression; 40 and the lives and
fortunes of his Italian subjects were sacrificed to the greatness
of their master and the licentiousness of his followers. The
hatred of Naples was repressed by his presence; but the looser
government of his vicegerents excited the contempt, as well as
the aversion, of the Sicilians: the island was roused to a sense
of freedom by the eloquence of Procida; and he displayed to every
baron his private interest in the common cause. In the confidence
of foreign aid, he successively visited the courts of the Greek
emperor, and of Peter king of Arragon, 41 who possessed the
maritime countries of Valentia and Catalonia. To the ambitious
Peter a crown was presented, which he might justly claim by his
marriage with the sister 419 of Mainfroy, and by the dying voice
of Conradin, who from the scaffold had cast a ring to his heir
and avenger. Palæologus was easily persuaded to divert his enemy
from a foreign war by a rebellion at home; and a Greek subsidy of
twenty-five thousand ounces of gold was most profitably applied
to arm a Catalan fleet, which sailed under a holy banner to the
specious attack of the Saracens of Africa. In the disguise of a
monk or beggar, the indefatigable missionary of revolt flew from
Constantinople to Rome, and from Sicily to Saragossa: the treaty
was sealed with the signet of Pope Nicholas himself, the enemy of
Charles; and his deed of gift transferred the fiefs of St. Peter
from the house of Anjou to that of Arragon. So widely diffused
and so freely circulated, the secret was preserved above two
years with impenetrable discretion; and each of the conspirators
imbibed the maxim of Peter, who declared that he would cut off
his left hand if it were conscious of the intentions of his
right. The mine was prepared with deep and dangerous artifice;
but it may be questioned, whether the instant explosion of
Palermo were the effect of accident or design.

40 (return) [ According to Sabas Malaspina, (Hist. Sicula, l.
iii. c. 16, in Muratori, tom. viii. p. 832,) a zealous Guelph,
the subjects of Charles, who had reviled Mainfroy as a wolf,
began to regret him as a lamb; and he justifies their discontent
by the oppressions of the French government, (l. vi. c. 2, 7.)
See the Sicilian manifesto in Nicholas Specialis, (l. i. c. 11,
in Muratori, tom. x. p. 930.)]

41 (return) [ See the character and counsels of Peter, king of
Arragon, in Mariana, (Hist. Hispan. l. xiv. c. 6, tom. ii. p.
133.) The reader for gives the Jesuit’s defects, in favor, always
of his style, and often of his sense.]

419 (return) [ Daughter. See Hallam’s Middle Ages, vol. i. p.
517.—M.]

On the vigil of Easter, a procession of the disarmed citizens
visited a church without the walls; and a noble damsel was rudely
insulted by a French soldier. 42 The ravisher was instantly
punished with death; and if the people was at first scattered by
a military force, their numbers and fury prevailed: the
conspirators seized the opportunity; the flame spread over the
island; and eight thousand French were exterminated in a
promiscuous massacre, which has obtained the name of the Sicilian
Vespers. 43 From every city the banners of freedom and the church
were displayed: the revolt was inspired by the presence or the
soul of Procida and Peter of Arragon, who sailed from the African
coast to Palermo, was saluted as the king and savior of the isle.
By the rebellion of a people on whom he had so long trampled with
impunity, Charles was astonished and confounded; and in the first
agony of grief and devotion, he was heard to exclaim, “O God! if
thou hast decreed to humble me, grant me at least a gentle and
gradual descent from the pinnacle of greatness!” His fleet and
army, which already filled the seaports of Italy, were hastily
recalled from the service of the Grecian war; and the situation
of Messina exposed that town to the first storm of his revenge.
Feeble in themselves, and yet hopeless of foreign succor, the
citizens would have repented, and submitted on the assurance of
full pardon and their ancient privileges. But the pride of the
monarch was already rekindled; and the most fervent entreaties of
the legate could extort no more than a promise, that he would
forgive the remainder, after a chosen list of eight hundred
rebels had been yielded to his discretion. The despair of the
Messinese renewed their courage: Peter of Arragon approached to
their relief; 44 and his rival was driven back by the failure of
provision and the terrors of the equinox to the Calabrian shore.
At the same moment, the Catalan admiral, the famous Roger de
Loria, swept the channel with an invincible squadron: the French
fleet, more numerous in transports than in galleys, was either
burnt or destroyed; and the same blow assured the independence of
Sicily and the safety of the Greek empire. A few days before his
death, the emperor Michael rejoiced in the fall of an enemy whom
he hated and esteemed; and perhaps he might be content with the
popular judgment, that had they not been matched with each other,
Constantinople and Italy must speedily have obeyed the same
master. 45 From this disastrous moment, the life of Charles was a
series of misfortunes: his capital was insulted, his son was made
prisoner, and he sunk into the grave without recovering the Isle
of Sicily, which, after a war of twenty years, was finally
severed from the throne of Naples, and transferred, as an
independent kingdom, to a younger branch of the house of Arragon.
46

42 (return) [ After enumerating the sufferings of his country,
Nicholas Specialis adds, in the true spirit of Italian jealousy,
Quæ omnia et graviora quidem, ut arbitror, patienti animo Siculi
tolerassent, nisi (quod primum cunctis dominantibus cavendum est)
alienas fminas invasissent, (l. i. c. 2, p. 924.)]

43 (return) [ The French were long taught to remember this bloody
lesson: “If I am provoked, (said Henry the Fourth,) I will
breakfast at Milan, and dine at Naples.” “Your majesty (replied
the Spanish ambassador) may perhaps arrive in Sicily for
vespers.”]

44 (return) [ This revolt, with the subsequent victory, are
related by two national writers, Bartholemy à Neocastro (in
Muratori, tom. xiii.,) and Nicholas Specialis (in Muratori, tom.
x.,) the one a contemporary, the other of the next century. The
patriot Specialis disclaims the name of rebellion, and all
previous correspondence with Peter of Arragon, (nullo communicato
consilio,) who _happened_ to be with a fleet and army on the
African coast, (l. i. c. 4, 9.)]

45 (return) [ Nicephorus Gregoras (l. v. c. 6) admires the wisdom
of Providence in this equal balance of states and princes. For
the honor of Palæologus, I had rather this balance had been
observed by an Italian writer.]

46 (return) [ See the Chronicle of Villani, the xith volume of
the Annali d’Italia of Muratori, and the xxth and xxist books of
the Istoria Civile of Giannone.]