136 MONUMENTS OF THE CAVALLI FAMILY

of peace: under a canopy of silk, borne by the first gentlemen of Milan, the Pope received the hosannas of a people who had driven into shameful flight their Cæsar-king; and it is not uninteresting for the English traveller to remember, as he walks through the vast arcades of shops, in the form of a cross,¹ by which the Milanese of to-day express their triumph in liberation from Teutonic rule, that the “Baldacchino” of all mediæval religious ceremony owed its origin to the taste of the milliners of Milan, as the safety of the best knights in European battle rested on the faithful craftsmanship of her armourers.²

13. But at the date when the Cavalli entered the service of the great Milanese family, the state of parties within the walls had singularly changed. Three years previously (1271) Charles of Anjou had drawn together the remnants of the army of his dead brother, had confiscated to his own use the goods of the crusading knights whose vessels had been wrecked on the coast of Sicily, and called the pontifical court to Viterbo, to elect a pope who might confirm his dominion over the kingdoms of Sicily and Jerusalem.

On the deliberations of the Cardinals at Viterbo depended the fates of Italy and the Northern Empire. They chose Tebaldo Visconti, then a monk in pilgrimage at Jerusalem. But, before that election was accomplished, one of the candidates for the Northern Empire had involuntarily withdrawn his claim; Guy de Montfort had murdered, at the altar foot, the English Count of Cornwall, to avenge his father, Simon de Montfort, killed at Evesham.³ The death of the English king of the Romans left the throne of Germany vacant. Tebaldo had returned from Jerusalem with no personal ambition, but having at heart only the

¹ [The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele.]

² [For references to the steel of Milan, see Vol. XX.p.111, and Vol. XXIII. p.45.]

³ [Simon de Montfort, Count of Leicester, killed at Evesham, 1265; Guy de Montfort in 1271 murdered, at Viterbo, Henry, son of Richard, Count of Cornwall and King of the Romans. For these and the other events referred to in § 13, see Sismondi, ch. xxii. (vol. iii. pp. 408 seq.); and for Guy de Montfort, compare Vol. XXIII. p. 142.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]