Cola di Rienzo

Italian ruler

• Born: 1313
• Birthplace: Rome (now in Italy)
• Died: October 8, 1354
• Place of death: Rome (now in Italy)

Though his reign as tribune of Rome was short-lived, Rienzo put in place genuine reforms that effectively broke the power of nobles and barons who had been plundering the city in the manner of warlords.

Early Life

Little is known about the early life of Cola di Rienzo (RYEHNT-soh). The anonymous fourteenth century biography to which modern sources are much indebted concentrates mostly on Rienzo’s meteoric rise to power and his rule as tribune of Rome. Though scant, evidence suggests that he was born the son of a poor innkeeper and his wife in a Roman slum in 1313. Because his mother was dying while he was still a small boy, Rienzo was brought by his father to relatives in the town of Anagni, where he was reared.

Like so many great men and women, Rienzo exhibited a love of learning early in his life. He was a zealous youth who read avidly Livy’s history of Rome, acquainted himself with the classical poets Vergil and Horace, and patterned his own rhetorical style on the works of Cicero. Exactly how Rienzo gained access to these writings and exactly who these relatives in Anagni were to have afforded the boy the opportunity for such study are matters that remain unresolved. It is clear, however, that by the time he was twenty years old, Rienzo had returned to Rome a master of classical literature.

At this time, the dawn of the Renaissance, Rome was a virtual armed camp. The Papacy a unifying force of medieval society had abandoned the city in 1305, when the new pope, Clement V , a Frenchman, determined to make the town of Avignon his seat of government. For more than seventy years, this small village in the Rhone River valley was the center of Western Christendom. Meanwhile, Rome itself was left as political carrion. Two great families, the Colonna and the Orsini, ruled as medieval barons. Living in their fortified estates, they plundered at will like gangsters. The city was dangerous, falling into decay. Marble from the ancient public buildings was taken as booty. The air was rank from the surrounding Campagna di Roma, a morass that in summer bred the plague. Cattle and pigs grazed in the streets, and beggars were everywhere.

Into this setting of urban rot and political chaos, Rienzo returned sometime in the early 1330’. Rienzo married the beautiful daughter of a notary, and he became a public notary himself, soon gaining the reputation for being a clever, efficient, and honest public servant.

For the next decade, Rienzo pursued the modest duties of his office. He also spent time studying the ancient Roman inscriptions, talking to the peasants, perfecting his knowledge of Latin and the classics, and above all becoming deeply imbued with the glories of the past, when Rome was the center of Western civilization.

Life’s Work

This deep love for the Roman past had become a guiding principle for Rienzo. He dreamed of making Rome the supreme city it had once been. Inspired by a brief popular uprising in 1339 that had failed for lack of papal support, Rienzo was convinced that the first step in bringing Rome out of its desperate condition was to gain the support of the pope, whose influence was indispensable. The pope could raise an army in those days, and the Church’s territorial and political claims rivaled those of the Holy Roman Empire. Although he resided in Avignon, the new pope, Clement VI, would claim Rome as part of his traditional see. Rienzo aligned himself with those men in Rome who saw that the pope should be coaxed into declaring a jubilee for 1350, thus making Rome a commercial and cultural locus for travelers, pilgrims, and all other Christians. In 1342, having persuaded the Romans that only he could sell Clement on the idea, Rienzo left Rome, alone, for Avignon.

There, in 1343, Rienzo secured a papal audience. He denounced the noble oppressors of Rome and sought the pontiff’s favor with such stunning rhetoric that Clement himself a scholar and orator was deeply impressed by the young notary. In Avignon, Rienzo also became acquainted with the famous poet and Humanist Petrarch, whose work was ushering in a new literary movement. Having been appointed to the papal staff, Petrarch, like Clement, was struck by Rienzo’s eloquence. He was to become an enduring supporter of Rienzo and at this time took him into the papal court, introducing him to influential and powerful men. Rienzo stayed at the court for more than a year, but in 1344, he returned to Rome, having been given the office of papal notary, a steady income, and an entrée into the political fabric of his city.

For the next three years, Rienzo, now financially secure, continued to engage in scholarship. Though genuine, his studies were only a temporary resort; he was waiting for an opportunity to fulfill his dream of bringing Rome to greatness. Meanwhile, he gathered about him loyal supporters, men who were impressed with his learning and shared his dream.

Rienzo’s opportunity arose in 1347, with one of those events in which chance and natural ability conjoin, shaping a turning point in the career of a great man. In pursuit of his studies, Rienzo happened on a bronze plate virtually buried among the debris of a rebuilt church. As he began to decipher the timeworn inscription, he discovered that he had unearthed the original text of the Lex Regia, the ancient law by which the rights of the Roman people were transferred to Vespasian, who ruled the Roman Empire from 69 to 79 c.e. Though the law was well known and had been the subject of academic discussions throughout the Middle Ages, Rienzo saw his discovery of the plate as an opportunity to give his own interpretation on the law. In his best rhetorical style, he called a public meeting and read the law, indicting the barons, the members of the aristocratic families who were in control of city government, as subversives.

When the leaders of these families, the Orsini and the Colonna, left Rome on business, taking with them their militia, Rienzo saw the time as ripe. Gathering his own forces, he organized an uprising in May, 1347, and quickly took power. Speaking before the assembled populace, he denounced the nobles and proclaimed Rome free of their tyranny. Showing the lack of tact for which he was famous, Rienzo declared himself tribune of Rome a title redolent of ancient honor and installed as his partner in government the pope’s vicar, the bishop of Orvieto, thus preempting any military intervention by the pope by showing deference to papal authority.

For the next seven months, Rienzo was the master of Rome. He had broken the power of the barons and now put forth a new constitution that contained several notable reforms, among them the dismissal and punishment of all corrupt judges and the establishment of civil programs protecting the poor and the weak. Rienzo also initiated a program of taxation and trade that gave Rome a fiscal stability it did not have under the barons.

Rienzo’s next move was to make Rome the acknowledged capital of the Italian peninsula, as it had once been the center of the Western world. To this end, he arranged to give himself a triumph, a magnificent procession through the city to the steps of the capitol, where he would be crowned. Designed to evoke the ancient Roman custom in which a great leader would be carried through the streets in glory, Rienzo’s triumph was more than a sop to his vanity: It was a dramatic rite, a political symbol of Roman sovereignty. Rome’s preeminence was promoted by scores of letters that Rienzo, as tribune, addressed to major Italian cities, urging them to forge informal alliances with Rome; such letters always showed tact and diplomacy so as not to incite either the emperor or the pope.

Yet Rienzo’s effective rule was to be short-lived. The opulence and pomp with which he played the role of tribune his triumph culminating in a lavish feast reminiscent of the decadent caesars scandalized many of his loyal followers. In addition, Rienzo’s complete humiliation of the barons, his cruelty and severity in dealing with them, made him enemies among those relatives of the barons who held powerful positions in the papal court including Cardinal Orsini.

By September, 1347, the pope’s vicar arrived in Rome with orders to plumb Rienzo’s true fealty to the Holy See. Distrustful of Rienzo’s pledges of obedience, the cardinal legate called for the popular leader’s immediate resignation. The pope, meanwhile, had already issued an edict of excommunication against him. Bereft of any appeal and facing pressure from the barons, Rienzo resigned his tribunate on December 15, 1347.

Abandoned, Rienzo fled to Naples, where he sought aid from King Louis. Yet the Black Death , which was then ravaging the city, forced Louis to leave, and Rienzo saw the last of his allies withdraw from Italy. Fearing death either from the papal forces or from the plague Rienzo fled once again, this time to the mountains of central Italy, where he joined an order of Franciscan monks. The Franciscans accepted Rienzo as a kindred spirit, for they had called for a purging of the impurities of the Church (as Rienzo had sought to cleanse the civil government of its abuses). He stayed in this mountain retreat for about a year, returning briefly to Rome in his Franciscan robes before fleeing to Prague, where he hoped to persuade the emperor, Charles IV, to support his cause.

Charles, however, was not disposed to help Rienzo when such aid might antagonize the pope. The emperor wished to maintain a balance between the papal jurisdiction and his own attempts to consolidate his power. Rienzo was a threat to that balance, and Charles thus kept him imprisoned for several years, forestalling any commitments to the pope. In 1351, the pope’s envoys officially ordered the extradition of Rienzo, and Charles released him to the papal authorities. In Avignon once again, this time as prisoner, Rienzo was to be tried for heresy when Clement VI died in 1352. The new pope was Innocent VI , whose administration, seeking reforms, believed that it could use Rienzo as a stabilizing force in the chaos of Roman politics. Through Rienzo, the Papacy hoped to regain jurisdiction over Rome.

Reinstated, Rienzo again rode into Italy, this time as a senator in support of the pope. After months of rebuilding friendships and raising money, Rienzo took control of the city in September, 1354. His time, however, had clearly passed. Those years of absence had irrevocably lost for him any hold on the civil government. The irascible barons had regrouped, and the economy of the city had once again fallen prey to mismanagement. Unable to raise enough money to pay his mercenaries, who had formed the largest portion of his army, Rienzo imposed taxes on food, wine, and salt. Prompted by the Colonna family, a mob stormed Rienzo’s palace. On October 8, 1354, they dragged him to the steps of the capitol and murdered him, hanging him from his feet for two days while children threw stones at his corpse. The following year, Innocent VI absolved all persons involved in the assassination of Rienzo.

Significance

Rienzo’s career can be evaluated from several points of view. To some historians, he was a dictator, a proto-Fascist whose self-glorification helped to bring him down. To others, such as Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) and the composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883), each of whom treated Rienzo as the subject of a major work, the popular leader was a hero, a patriot sacrificed on the altar of freedom. Yet Rienzo’s career is more clearly understood in the broader context of fourteenth century European history a period of economic stagnation and political divisiveness, when the Church was struggling to remain whole in spite of an “expatriated” Papacy and an enervating secularism.

Rienzo viewed himself as a dreamer, and his apologists, such as Petrarch, commended his patriotism in support of his dreams. Yet his ambition for Rome, and for himself, was of necessity thwarted by the political and social turbulence that signaled the end of the Middle Ages and the dawn of the Renaissance. Last, his devotion to classical studies certainly puts him in the position of harbinger of the new age.

Bibliography

Collins, Amanda. Greater than Emperor: Cola di Rienzo and the World of Fourteenth Century Rome. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002. This biography of Rienzo focuses on his power and the environment in which he governed. Bibliography and index.

Cosenza, Mario Emilio. Francesco Petrarca and the Revolution of Cola di Rienzo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1913. A seminal source, discussing Rienzo’s concept of a united Italy and the political thought of Petrarch. Drawn largely from the letters of Rienzo and Petrarch, the study concludes that both men were centuries ahead of their time.

The Life of Cola di Rienzo. Translated by John Wright. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1975. The anonymous fourteenth century biography that is the primary source of information on Rienzo. Contains an excellent introduction by the translator, who provides a concise historical background of the period and the various critical views of Rienzo’s character.

Musto, Ronald G. Apocalypse in Rome: Cola di Rienzo and the Politics of the New Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. A biography of Cola di Rienzo that describes his role as tribune. Bibliography and index.

Petrarca, Francesco. The Revolution of Cola di Rienzo. 3d ed. New York: Italica Press, 1996. A translation of Petrarch’s letters and the letters of Cola di Rienzo as well as from the Church’s archives. The introduction by Ronald G. Musto provides valuable information on the letters and Rienzo. Bibliography and index.