It is the story of a tribune who was forgotten for five centuries. Nothing foreshadowed Nicolas, son of Lorenzo, to become the one who for a very short time united Rome under his seven-starred aegis (1). The man of the people is however not a simple agitator in love with the temporary intoxication of power or even less a simple despot in the snatch. To get rid of the literary approaches that his figure inspired after his rediscovery (2), we will analyze the historical sources and gradually remove the veil that separates us from this historical event. If we wanted, awkwardly, to make a comparison with any personality of our time, his case deserves all the more attention. But above all it is essential to place contextual markers in this Roman fourteenth century as chaotic as it is unfortunate.
Rectores, raptors
Rome in the 14th century is no more than a shadow behind the ruins of the Colosseum. Rushed with the fallen angels into a dump where robbery, violence and constant insecurity reign, the Eternal City was then under the thumb of the barons. Colonna, Orsini, di Vico, etc.; all these families availed themselves of privileges around a massive clientelism grouped by zone of influence. They encroached with their caparisoned horses on the neighborhoods for their profit, terrorizing the population if necessary to impose a real gang war, in its most modern acceptance. Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg, crowned specifically in Rome to seek a high-sounding title, and whose magistrate (prefect) without power represented him, only came to stay there for a maximum of one day (3-4).
Far from preserving the monuments of past glory, the barons of that time hastened to extract materials from them to build their castles or the towers with which they dotted the city. Surprisingly enough to be noticed, the senate even wanted to pierce a street through the Colosseum (5)! However, the enormity of the task dissuaded them. As for the other important vestiges, the state of dilapidation was all the more terrifying:the Capitol, damaged in past centuries, was roughly restored; Trajan's column had just been painfully straightened; the mausoleum of Augustus contained more debris than buried treasures; and ultimate sacrilege, the temple of Concorde served as a lime quarry. The statues, meanwhile, had been broken or sold. And when the monuments were not left to waste, they were used to be skinned here and there. Even in the troubled times of Emperor Majorian in the 5th century AD, a sentence of severed hands was still proclaimed against those who would destroy public buildings in Rome to recover the stones (6).
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What could Rome have looked like in the time of Rienzo? If the observation previously drawn up is gloomy, it should be noted that the conversion of the emperors did not modify the urban landscape of ancient Rome at least until the end of the 4th century. The Barbarians did not irretrievably devastate the city after they seized it in 410, then in 455. In 510, Cassiodorus, minister of the Ostrogothic king Theodoric, admired the beauty of the city, in particular the theater of Pompey.
Thirty years later, the historian Procope describes a city “peopled with statues”. In the 7th century, the Byzantine emperor Constant II visited a city that remained almost intact. In reality, it was in the 17th-18th century that the city was the object of intensive degradation by its own inhabitants. Rienzo therefore gazed with renewed fascination at the rubble of the former capital of a wealthy empire where the supposed happiness of the citizens could only contrast with its time. Rome was once feared and virtuous; become miserable and dispossessed of his rank, he felt a growing shame and anger against the nobles of his time.
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Uses and customs
Nicola is not, however, a Roman like the others. Like Petrarch, Cola – a very common diminutive for the time – was instinctively drawn to the ruins that dot the devastated streets and piazzas. From a gutted embankment to the overturned plaque of the Emperor Vespasian (4) serving as a decorative element on an altar, his curiosity will lead him to question himself, to understand, then to study a Rome which was once at the top of the world.
If Rienzo is fascinated by ancient ruins, he also shares this common trait with the poet of his century:Petrarch. The latter will say fatalistically in one of his travelogues “Nowhere in Rome is less known than in Rome itself”. Far from being a fabulist, he will be able - in the long term -, by his intelligence and his memory, to decipher the annotations that dot the dilapidated monuments. Livy, Seneca, Cicero or even Symmachus became familiar to him. But how could a simple peasant of low extraction become in such a short time the master of Rome, to the point of wanting to restore the prerogatives of ancient Rome over the Mediterranean basin and beyond? We know it now, however:his dream was chimerical, as well as the duration of his mandate. What were the stages of his rise to power? To find out, we must start with his origins and the fable he will build around his birth. Because, at that time, inventing a mythical genealogy was not a luxury.
It is said that the Emperor Henry VII had come to Rome to be crowned Emperor. Prevented by the men of the Orsini, he had to take refuge – in disguise – in an inn for a fortnight. An absent husband, the wife of the innkeeper available, it did not take less to give a bastard of royal blood, the future Cola di Rienzo. In this story of odds and ends, everything is false. And the variations around a royal birth never cease to contradict each other:it is thus reported that Rienzo's mother would, in fact, be the illegitimate daughter of the said emperor. If all this seems absurd to contemporary eyes, the time in which Rienzo lived did not hesitate to create a myth through a predestined genealogy. See article:Chimeras and men.
Recognition is also granted by the need to be seen and recognized. Appearing and Parading merged. To better understand the mental universe of medieval Rome, we need cultural codes. One of them is clothing. It simply and effectively illustrates the function, status and social rank of a person. Cola di Rienzo will then be recognized, appreciated and even feared under these trappings. When he came to power, Rienzo rode with a scarlet red coat; he did it because only knights and those belonging to the major arts had the right to do so. In his red cloak bordered with squirrels, the golden spurs and the sword reflected an image that commanded respect and reverence. The pomp and munificence impress with the common. However, and ironically, if we refer to the biography written several years after the death of Cola di Rienzo; too precious trappings – including a golden bracelet hidden under togs – were his downfall, as he tried to sneak away from his lair in the grip of the flames...
If Rome was then seized with amnesia and confusion, to the point where in popular imagery only Constantine and Caesar were remembered as emperor (which was never the case with the imperator (8) Caesar), could she nevertheless get out of his torpor? The answer is more complicated than it seems. Rienzo was perhaps not a fanatic and even less a revolutionary, his naivety in the political lair would quickly confuse him in the middle of the basket of crabs of the time. But under the astonishing journey of Rienzo, Petrarch still had these words out of another age:“As Italy has suddenly woken up, and as the terror of the Roman name has spread in the countries the farthest! I was in Gaul, I know what I saw and heard, what was read in the eyes of the most powerful. They may deny it today, but then the terror of the Roman name was everywhere.”
The primer
If we know very little about Rienzo's own youth, we can deduce certain traits of his character:his stay in Agnani with other peasants before his return to Rome, his knowledge acquired over the years and his ability to being a “man of the people” allowed him to stand out. Nothing less than a complaint to the new Pope Clement VI was needed to assert himself in the eyes of a disillusioned general public. Succeeding in convincing the council of thirteen buonuomini (who precariously represented the people), he embarked alone and without official title in Avignon, residence of the popes. From a sustained harangue against the barons using chiseled rhetoric, Rienzo knew how to impress the papal court. Where could such a man of such tall stature and subtle intelligence come from among the common people? everyone had to ask themselves. After a few adventures, Clement VI almost gave satisfaction to the man of the people. However, in Rome everything changed precipitously. The council of buonuomini had fallen and the barons were in fine warned that an intruder had dared to criticize them.
The progression was then dazzling:from nothing, he became a notary of the Urban Chamber (7). The magistracy but also the brilliant costume gave him the necessary keys to progress in the social hierarchy. From the title acquired, he was able to raise the injustices perpetrated in the daily newspapers by the barons. The nobility could not bear his zeal even less and, from then on, after a final bravado (9) perpetrated by a senate scribe named Tommaso Fiortifiocca, he understood that the people and the bourgeoisie would know his only help.
How to bring down a whole system? With the good old cartoons. Allegorical paintings were then used for political purposes, as we could see in Florence in 1344 when this means was used to arouse the people and ridicule the Duke of Athens.
The accumulated collective imagination was to be used all at once:Babylon, Carthage, Jerusalem and even Troy served as the backdrop for the fresco with the subject of a shipwreck and a distraught woman representing Rome. Everyone knew how great Rome was without ever grasping the ins and outs of it, and so they all regretted it without rationally explaining it to themselves. Sheep, dragons, foxes (10) were also painted there, supposed to embody the clutches of that time.
All that was missing was a stroke of brilliance to reverse the situation and take the people with him:the bronze table of the investiture of Emperor Vespasian (Lex de imperio Vespasiani) which vilely served as decoration was going to be his instrument of reconquest. In antiquity, it affirmed the powers extended by the senate and the Roman people. His conquest would come to life in the Church of Saint John Lateran to end there in the Capitol. [Part 2]
Sources and references:
Emmanuel Rodocanachi, Cola di Rienzo, history of Rome from 1342 to 1354 (1888).
Cassiodorus, Procopius of Caesarea, Petrarch.
1) The coat of arms of Rienzo represented a golden sun with seven rays each ending in a silver star, standing out against an azure background. In reference, according to Rienzo, to the philosopher Boethius.
2) Cf. Rienzi, der letzte der Tribunen (Rienzi, the last of the Tribunes), opera created on October 20, 1842 by Richard Wagner.
3) Rectores, raptores is a popular saying. Lit. “Rulers, devourers”.
4) “If God grant me the grace that I be named King of the Romans, I will not enter Rome before the day fixed for my coronation, I will leave the same day with all my people, I will retire as soon as possible from the lands of the Church, where I will return only with the permission of the Pope.” (April 22, 1346).
5) A fourteenth-century record tells us that two rival factions colluded to take stones from the Colosseum, which was considered more than a quarry.
6) Theodosian Code, Nov Maj 4 (July 11, 458).
7) In the Middle Ages, the term “notary” referred to that of secretary.
8) Imperator then meant “victorious general”.
9) A hand gesture while hitting the arm, particularly insulting.
10) The sheep represented the judges, the dragons the notaries and the foxes the magistrates.