ROBERT THE WISE OF NAPLES, I 'l09-4:lof the Patrimony of St Peter is simply wrong. In the same
way that a beekeeper keeps his bees in a hive, and lets them
go when -he chooses, the emperor has charge of all people
and places. The emperor even has authority over the Church.
These arguments chime well with the anachronistic and often
unsubtle protests of Dante in his vigorous tract De Monarchia,
arguing that the restoration of a universal empire was neces-
sary for perfect world order.Y Such pamphleteers were not
writing good law, but they were writing what the emperor
wanted and needed to hear. Against these arguments the
famous jurist Oldradus da Ponte was soon to argue: 'one
bee who is king is not king of all bees'. He concluded that
the emperor was not in fact 'lord of the world', an explicit
recognition, grounded in law, of a reality that theorists of
imperial authority had long sought to avoid. Pope Clement
V in the decree Pastoralis cura, issued in Provence in March
1314 after Henry VII had in fact died, attempted to clear
up some of these issues, arguing that Robert could not be
summoned from beyond the imperial frontiers, that he was
not an imperial but a papal vassal, and that due regard had
not been paid to his fundamental right to defend himself
against the charges. Importantly, the pope insisted that as
papal authority in any case exceeded imperial, it was within
his rights to review the case.^10
Henry planned an invasion of Naples; and Clement, now
fully roused, riposted with a threat to excommunicate any-
one who attacked his vassal Robert. Italy was saved from a
papal crusade against Henry and from new havoc in south-
ern Italy only by Henry's death from fever in August 1313.
He was buried at Pisa, the city which had served as his base
in Tuscany. During his four-year reign, Henry's optimism and
idealism had given way quickly to a righteous sense of deter-
mination; he had learned how difficult it was to practise
pacification without drawing blood. The will to compromise
he had expected had not been there. And this was partly the
result of the successes of the Guelfs in the decade before his
election; indeed, his visit to Italy had done more to revive
old rivalries than to settle them.
- Dante, Monarchy, p. 26.
- Pennington, Prince and the Law, pp. 171, 187-201.