The friend of Petrarch, hope of Italy,
Rienzi; last of Romans.

("Childe Harold," iv. 114.)

His story is told with almost more than his usual power by Gibbon (c.
70). Born in the lowest class, "he could inherit neither dignity nor
fortune; and the gift of a liberal education, which they painfully
bestowed, was the cause of his glory and his untimely end." He, while
still little more than a youth, had established such a reputation for
eloquence, that he was one of the deputies sent by the Commons to
Avignon to plead with the Pope (Clement VI.). The state of Rome,
aggravated by the absence of the Pope, was miserable in the extreme. The
citizens "were equally oppressed by the arrogance of the nobles and the
corruption of the magistrates." Rienzi recalled to their recollection
"the ancient glories of the Senate and people from whom all legal
authority was derived. He raised the enthusiasm of the populace;
collected a band of conspirators, at whose head, clad in complete
armour, he marched to the Capitol, and assumed the government of the
city, declining "the names of Senator or Consul, of King or Emperor, and
preferring the ancient and modern appellation of Tribune.... Never
perhaps has the energy and effect of a single mind been more remarkably
felt than in the sudden, though transient, reformation of Rome by the
Tribune Rienzi. A den of robbers was converted to the discipline of a
camp or convent. Patient to hear, swift to redress, inexorable to
punish, his tribunal was always accessible to the poor and the stranger;
nor could birth, nor dignity, nor the immunities of the Church protect
the offender or his accomplices." But his head was turned by his
success. He even caused himself to be crowned, while "his wife, his son,
and his uncle, a barber, exposed the contrast of vulgar manners and