wing. Moreover, that development and
that faith had one head, chosen by election, and the headship itself
became an object of the highest ambition, whereby the strength and
genius of individuals and families were constantly called into activity,
and both families and isolated individuals of foreign race were
attracted to Rome. It was no small thing to hold the kings of the earth
in spiritual subjection, to be the arbiter of the new Empire founded by
Charlemagne, the director of the kingdoms built up in France and
England, and, almost literally, the feudal lord over all other temporal
powers. The force of a predominant idea gave Rome new life, vivifying
new elements with the vitality of new ambitions. The theatre was the
same. The actors and the play had changed. The world was no longer
governed by one man as monarch; it was directed by one man, who was the
chief personage in the vast and intricate feudal system by which strong
men agreed to live, and to which they forced the weak to submit.

The Barons came into existence, and Rome was a city of fortresses and
towers, as well as churches. Orsini and Colonna, Caetani and
Vitelleschi, Savelli and Frangipani, fought with each other for
centuries among ruins, built strongholds of the stones of temples, and
burned the marble treasures of the world to make lime. And fiercely they
held their own. Nicholas Rienzi wanders amid the deserted places,
deciphers the broken inscriptions, gathers a little crowd of plebeians
about him and tells them of ancient Rome, and of the rights of the
people in old times. All at once he rises, a grand shadow of a Roman, a
true tribune, brave, impulsive, eloquent. A little while longer and he
is half mad with vanity and ambition, a public fool in a high place,
decking himself in silks and satins, and ornaments of gold, and the
angry nobles slay him on the steps of the Aracoeli, as other nobles
long ago slew Tiberius Gracchus, a greater and a better man, almost on
the same spot.

Meanwhile the great schism of the Church rages, before and after Rienzi.
The Empire and its Kingdoms join issue with each other and with the
Barons for the lordship of Christendom; there are two Popes, waging war
with nations on both sides, and Rome is reduced to a town of barely
twenty thousand souls. Then comes Hildebrand, Pope Gregory the Seventh,
friend of the Great Countess, humbler of the Emperor, a restorer of
things, the Julius Caesar of the Church, and from his da