Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/330

 308 THE DECLINE AND FALL and barbarous in the estimation of the Germans themselves.^^^ After the excommunication of Lewis of Bavaria, he received the gift or promise of the vacant empire from the Roman pontiffs, who, in the exile and captivity of Avignon, affected the dominion of the earth. The death of his competitors united the electoral college, and Charles was unanimously saluted king of the Ro- mans, and future emperor : a title which, in the same age, was prostituted to the Caesars of Germany and Greece. The German emperor was no more than the elective and impotent magistrate of an aristocracy of princes, who had not left him a village that he might call his own. His best prerogative was the right of presiding and proposing in the national senate, which was con- vened at his summons ; and his native kingdom of Bohemia, less opulent than the adjacent city of Nuremberg, was the firmest seat of his power and the richest source of his revenue. The army with which he passed the Alps consisted of three hundred horse. In the cathedral of St. Ambrose, Charles was crowned with the iron crown, which tradition ascribed to the Lombard monarchy ; but he was admitted only with a peaceful train ; the gates of the city were shut upon him ; and the king of Italy was held a captive by the arms of the V'isconti, whom he confirmed in the sovereignty of Milan. In the Vatican he was again crowned with the golden crown of the empire ; but, in obedience to a secret treaty, the Roman emperor immediately withdrew, without reposing a single night within the walls of Rome. The eloquent Petrarch,^'* wliose fancy revived the visionary glories of the Capitol, deplores and upbraids the ignominious flight of the Bohemian ; and even his contempora- ries could observe that the sole exercise of his authority was in the lucrative sale of privileges and titles. The gold of Italy secured the election of his son ; but such was the shameful poverty of the Roman emperor that his person was arrested by a butcher in the streets of Worms, and was detained in the 1'" Yet, /tvw«a//)', Charles IV. must not be considered as a barbarian. After his education at Paris, he recovered the use of the Bohemian, his native, idiom ; and the emperor conversed and wrote with equal facility in French, Latin, Italian, and German (Struvius, p. 615, 616). Petrarch always represents him as a polite and learned prince. [He founded the University of Prague, which he modelled on the universities of -Salerno and Naples (founded by Frederick II.). In encouraging the national language he went so far as to decree that all German parents should have their children taught Bohemian.] i*' Besides the German and Italian historians, the expedition of Charles IV. is painted in lively and original colours in the curious M^moires sur la Vie de Petrarque, torn. iii. p. 376-430, by the Abb6 de Sade, whose prolixity has never been blamed by any reader of taste and curiosity.