Council of Pisa

“ The Council of Pisa had put itself above the Popes, and grave doctors at many universities argued that a council must effect that reform of the Church which Popes refused to effect. Probably John XXIII. did not appreciate the full significance of this Conciliar movement, but he did see that there was grave danger that a Council would depose him, as well as Benedict and Gregory, unless he controlled it. He, therefore, in 1412, announced that a General Council would be held at Rome, and he reminded prelates that the Council of Pisa had enjoined this. ”

“ In 1254, Florence and Lucca met and defeated her. The Guelphs had won. In Pisa we find the government reformed, elders appointed, a senate, a great council, and Podestà, a Captain of the People. It seemed as though Pisa herself was about to become Guelph, or at any rate to fling out her nobles. But in many a distant colony the nobles ruled, undisturbed by the disaster at home. And then, almost before she had set her house in order, the splendid victory of Monteaperto threw the Guelphs into confusion, and the banners of Pisa once more flew wide and far. ”

“ Louis demanded that a General Council should be convoked, not so much out of zeal for reform as from a desire to embarrass the Pope, and when Julius II. refused to comply with his request the king induced some of the rebellious cardinals to issue invitations for a council to meet at Pisa (Sept. 1511) . Most of the bishops who met at Pisa at the appointed time were from France. The Emperor Maximilian held aloof, and the people of Pisa regarded the conventicle with no friendly feelings. The sessions were transferred from Pisa to Milan, and finally to Lyons. ”

“ After some hesitation the republic agreed to the demand, and the council was opened at Pisa, whereupon the pope immediately placed Florence under an interdict. At the request of the Florentines the council removed to Milan, but this did not save them from the pope’s wrath. A Spanish army under Raymundo de Cardona and accompanied by Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici and his brother Giuliano entered the republic’s territory and demanded 100,000 florins, the dismissal of Soderini, and the readmission of the Medici. ”

“ France and Germany, with five revolting cardinals, convoked an œcumenical council at Pisa, in A.D. 1511. Half in sport, half in earnest, Maximilian spoke of placing on his own head the tiara, as well as the imperial crown. The pope put Pisa, where only a few French prelates ventured, under an interdict, and anathematized the king of France, who then had medals cast, with the inscription, Perdam Babylonis nomen. ”

“ The city itself, has a sickly, dying or dead appearance. It is in fact, merely the corpse of the formerly powerful Pisa, the head of an independent republic of that name. For there was a time—from the 10th to the 14th century—when the State of Pisa was mighty in war and peace, on sea and on land. But contentions with the growing republics of Genoa and Florence crushed its power, and since the year 1406, Pisa, with her territory, has belonged to Tuscany. Art and science have, however, upheld the life of the city until a later period. ”

“ The republic of Pisa was one of the first to make known to the world the riches and power which a small state might acquire by the aid of commerce and liberty. Pisa had astonished the shores of the Mediterranean by the number of vessels and galleys that sailed under her flag, by the succour she had given the crusaders, by the fear she had inspired at Constantinople, and by the conquest of Sardinia and the Balearic Isles. Pisa was the first to introduce into Tuscany the arts that ennoble wealth ”

“ The great schism of the west had already lasted thirty years, and the efforts which had been made to restore unity within the Church by the simultaneous resignation of the two rival pontiffs had been in vain, when in the spring of 1408, the state of affairs being desperate, the idea arose of assembling a council to effect a union without the co-operation of the popes. ”

“ No shrewdly-worded history could have brought the myths and shadows of that old dreamy age before us clothed with human flesh and warmed with human sympathies so vividly as did this poor little unsentient vessel of pottery.
Pisa was a republic in the middle ages, with a government of her own, armies and navies of her own and a great commerce. She was a warlike power, and inscribed upon her banners many a brilliant fight with Genoese and Turks. It is said that the city once numbered a population of four hundred thousand ”

“ When they fought, it was with effeminacy; and they hastened the termination of every war to plunge again into the voluptuous ease from which it had roused them. The citizens of the republics had the advantage over them of walls and defiles; and without being braver than the Lombards, maintained their independence against them for six centuries.
[936-1195 A.D.]
The republic of Pisa, which vainly sought to save from ruin these first Italian republics of the Middle Ages, was a city which navigation and commerce had enriched. ”

“ It is asserted by some writers, especially by Tronci, that in the 12th century Pisa adopted a more democratic form of government. But in fact the chief authority was still vested in the nobles, who, both in Pisa and in Sardinia, exercised almost sovereign power. They formed the real strength of the republic, and kept it faithful to the empire and the Ghibelline party. The Guelph and popnlar element which constituted the force and prosperity of Florence was hostile to Pisa, and led to its downfall. ”

“ Material prosperity freed social life from many hampering conventions. Economic independence proved the first step towards the consciousness of intellectual liberty which was so striking a characteristic of the Renaissance. Pisa was only nominally a republic. Its aristocrats wielded power, and they realized, as Pisistratus had done in ancient Athens, that their tenure of authority was held at the price of magnificent schemes of public utility. The Cathedral was consecrated in 1118, and forty years later the Baptistery was finished. ”

“ For about a hundred years, the Pisans kept possession of it, or at least parts of it, never wholly subduing the warlike and determined inhabitants; and, during this time they governed wisely and well, building towns and making roads, and encouraging, as far as they were able in the disturbed condition of the island, industry and agriculture. But the moderate government of Pisa was not long to remain unmolested. The Genoese were beginning to cast covetous eyes upon Corsica ”

“ Pisa is more of a sanitarium than it is a gay{126} watering place however. The city is, in fact, like its celebrated leaning tower, half tottering on the brink of its grave. Commerce and industry are far from active and its streets are half deserted; many of them are literally grass-grown and all the others are paved with great flat clean-swept flags, a delight for the automobilist, whose chief experience of pavements has been in France and Belgium.
The entrance to Pisa by road from the north is one of the most pleasing of that of any Italian city. ”

“ Pisa, in losing its maritime power and its possessions in Sardinia, had not lost its warlike character; it was still the state in Italy where the citizens were best exercised in the use of arms, and evinced the most bravery. It had given proofs of it in conquering, under the eye of the Florentines, the city of Lucca, which it still retained. Nevertheless, since the peace made by the duke of Athens on the 14th of October, 1342, commercial interests had reconciled the two republics. The Florentines had obtained a complete enfranchisement from all imposts in the port of Pisa ”

“ But in the next century these Arabs of Tuscany proved themselves formidable rivals to their neighbours; though for another hundred years Pisa, with diminishing resources, retained a superior prestige. That superiority of hers became the occasion of her final ruin; for in 1197 when Volterra, Lucca, Florence, San Miniato, Arezzo, and Siena united in the Great Guelf League of Independence, Pisa alone stood out resolutely Ghibelline, isolated in the dignity of her Imperialism. ”

“ The chief citizens of Pisa and all the wealthier families left the country, preferring to live in Lombardy, France, or even in Sicily under the Aragonese, where at least they enjoyed civil equality, rather than remain in their own city subject to the harsh and tyrannous rule of Florentine shopkeepers. The commerce and industry of Pisa, her navy, her merchant-fleet, all vanished when freedom fell; while her Studio, or university, one of the old glories of Italy, and afterwards reconstituted by the Medici, was done away with, and the city soon reduced to a state of squalid desolation. ”

“ The aristocrats were the dominant party, and filled the highest offices of the republic, which, in the 12th century, rose to great power, both on sea and land, by its wars with the Lucchese, Genoese and Moslems. In 1110 Pisa made peace with Lucca after six years of continuous hostilities. ”

“ But the same Corsican face is so plentiful in some parts of Italy at this day, that a more commonplace solution of the coincidence is unavoidable.
If Pisa be the seventh wonder of the world in right of its Tower, it may claim to be, at least, the second or third in right of its beggars. They waylay the unhappy visiter at every turn, escort him to every door he enters at, and lie in wait for him, with strong reinforcements, at every door by which they know he must come out. ”

“ Pisa, Leghorn and Lucca are a triumvirate of Tuscan towns which should be viewed and considered collectively. One should not be in{125}cluded in an itinerary without the others, though indeed they have little in common, save the memories of the past.
Pisa is another of these dead cities of Europe, like Bruges, Leyden, and Rothenburg. Once ardent and lively in every activity of life, its population now has sunk into a state of lethargy. Industry and commerce, and the men who should busy themselves therewith, are in the background, hidden behind a barrier of bureaucracy. ”

“ Once Pisa was on the sea, possessed a fine harbor, and in rich commerce was a rival of Genoa and Venice. She was a proud, eager, assertive city; of such worth that she was deemed a rich prize, and was captured by the Romans a few centuries B.C. Now the sea has left her and, with that, her commerce and importance in the world of trade. She is to-day so poor that there is nothing to tempt travellers to come to her save a magnificent climate and this wonderful group of buildings. The inhabitants are few and humble, her streets are grass-grown. Everything has stopped in poor old Pisa. ”

“ This event destroyed the maritime power of Pisa, which could never again recover itself and assume the rank of her rivals. Many illustrious republics, as ancient and modern history demonstrate, have risen after the most heavy losses. Pisa, however, was no longer in this condition, and various causes combined to prevent her regaining it; the first of which was the loss of her bravest and wisest citizens taken prisoners, and whom the Genoese, actuated by a cruel and useless policy, refused to set at liberty ”

“ The Pisans cared little for Pope or Antipope; they were fanatic for liberty. They detested Agnese Mantegazza and her bastard with a Tuscan hatred for the Visconti, treacherous alike to God and man. One day in 1405, while Messer Gabriel’ Maria was absent in Genoa, some Florentine soldiers made a raid on Pisa. The citizens, not without reason, suspected their tyrant of selling them to the Florentines,—old neighbours and rivals yet more odious than the Milanese. They rose as one man fighting for death or liberty in 350the streets. ”

“ But the end was in most cases the establishment of the despotism of some leading family, such as the Visconti at Milan, the Gonzaga at Mantua, the della Scala in Verona and the Carrara in Padua.
In Tuscany, the historic rôle of the cities, with the exception of Pisa, begins at a later date, largely owing to the overlordship of the powerful margraves of the house of Canossa and their successors, who here represented the emperor. Pisa, however, together with Genoa, all through the 11th century distinguished itself by war waged in the western Mediterranean and its isles against the Saracens. ”

“ A few months later the Sienese, Lucchese, and Genoese, united in a secret league with Pisa against the Florentines. Milan and Venice wove a ceaseless web of intrigue around the place. And it is quite possible that by persisting in the citadel, Entragues may have been animated by a lofty and heroic disobedience, hoping by his presence to maintain Pisa in fidelity to France, and to prevent it from strengthening the hands of the deadly enemies of his country. ”

“ Any man who was stronger than Florence was a possible hero to the Pisans. The great motley army of Charles proved his force, and in the rugged amiable faces of master and of men the Pisans recognized the faculty of sympathy.
The Pisans had been to some extent prepared to find this virtue in the French by the correspondence of the Pisan exiles with Lodovico of Milan, whose trump-card was to secure if possible the liberation of Pisa by the French, and then, after their return to France, to offer himself as protector to the abandoned city. ”

“ The death of Henry was to them a bloodless victory; and they hoped that a speedy change in the politics of Italy would establish the universal ascendancy of the Guelphic party.
Pisa had always been constant to the Ghibelines, and friendly to the emperor; by his death they found themselves thrown almost without defence into the hands of the Florentines, their enemies; and they therefore gladly acceded to the moderate terms offered to them by the king of Naples and his ally, Florence, for the establishment of peace in Tuscany. ”