m; wherein he fared far better than he
purposed, and beginning with Rome, after undoing the Orsini, Colonnesi,
Savelli, and those barons who were wont to be held in fear by former
Popes, he was more full master of Rome than ever had been any Pope
before. With greatest ease he got the lordships of Romagna, the March,
and the Duchy; and having made a most fair and powerful state, the
Florentines held him in much fear, the Venetians in jealousy, and the
King of France in esteem. Then having got together a fine army, he
showed how great was the might of a Pontiff when he hath a valiant
general and one in whom he can place faith. At last he grew to that
point that he was counted the balance in the war of France and Spain. In
one word he was more evil and more lucky than ever for many ages
peradventure had been any pope before.

APPENDIX IV.

_Religious Revivals in Mediaeval Italy._ See Chap. viii. p. 491 above.

It would be unscientific to confound events of such European importance
as the foundation of the orders of S. Francis and S. Dominic with the
phenomena in question. Still it may be remarked, that the sudden rise
and the extraordinary ascendency of the mendicants and preachers were
due in a great measure to the sensitive and lively imagination of the
Italians. The Popes of the first half of the thirteenth century were
shrewd enough to discern the political and ecclesiastical importance of
movements which seemed at first to owe their force to mere fanatical
revivalism. They calculated on the intensely excitable temperament of
the Italian nation, and employed the Franciscans and Dominicans as their
militia in the crusade against the Empire and the heretics. Again, it is
necessary to distinguish what was essentially national from what was
common to all Europeans in the Middle Ages. Every country had its
wandering hordes of flagellants and penitents, its crusaders and its
pilgrims. The vast unsettled populations of mediaeval Europe, haunted
with the recurrent instinct of migration, and nightmare-ridden by
imperious religious yearnings, poured flood after flood of fanatics upon
the shores of Palestine. Half-naked savages roamed, dancing and groaning
and scourging their flesh, from city to city, under the stress of
semi-bestial impulses. Then came the period of organized pilgrimages.
The celebrated shrines of Europe--Rome, Compostella, Monte Gargano,
Canterbury--acted like lightning-conductors to the tempestuous d