Mass in the Cathedral the great-hearted Archbishop unsheathed a flashing sword, which he had girded on his thigh, and with his left hand seized the cross, saying, “This is my spiritual scepter, and I will wield the sword as my temporal, in defense of all my empire."’ Afterwards he sent couriers to engage lodgings for his soldiers and his train for six months.  Visitors to Avignon found no room in the city, and the Pope was fain to decline so terrible a guest.  In 1353 Giovanni annexed Genoa to the Milanese principality, and died in 1354, having established the rule of the Visconti over the whole of the North of Italy, with the exception of Piedmont, Verona, Mantua, Ferrara and Venice.

[1] We may compare what Dante puts into the mouth of Manfred in the ‘Purgatory’ (canto iii.).  The great Ghibelline poet here protests against the use of excommunication as a political weapon.  His sense of justice will not allow him to believe that God can regard the sentence of priests and pontiffs, actuated by the spite of partisans; yet the examples of Frederick II. and of this Matteo Visconti prove how terrifying, even to the boldest, those sentences continued to be.  Few had the resolute will of Galeazzo Pico di Mirandola, who expired in 1499 under the ban of the Church, which he had borne for sixteen years.

[2] This was in 1328.  Azzo agreed to pay 25,000 florins.  The vast wealth of the Visconti amassed during their years of peaceful occupation always stood them in good stead when bad times came, and when the Emperor was short of cash.  Azzo deserves special commendation from the student of art for the exquisite octagonal tower of S. Gottardo, which he built of terra cotta with marble pilasters, in Milan.  It is quite one of the loveliest monuments of mediaeval Italian architecture.

    [3] Lucchino and Galeazzo Visconti were both afflicted with gout,
    the latter to such an extent as to be almost crippled.

[4] This would not have been by itself a bar to succession in an Italian tyranny.  But Lucchino’s bastards were not of the proper stuff to continue their father’s government, while their fiery uncle was precisely the man to sustain the honor and extend the power of the Visconti.

    [5] Storia di Milano, 1554, p. 223.

The reign of the archbishop Giovanni marks a new epoch in the despotism of the Visconti.  They are now no longer the successful rivals of the Della Torre family or dependents on imperial caprice, but self-made sovereigns, with a well-established power in Milan and a wide extent of subject territory.  Their dynasty, though based on force and maintained by violence, has come to be acknowledged; and we shall soon see them allying themselves with the royal houses of Europe.  After the death of Giovanni, Matteo’s sons were extinct.  But Stefano, the last of his family, had left three children, who now succeeded to the lands and cities of the house.  They were named Matteo,