‘The absence of the Pope’, says Gregorovius, a modern German historian, ‘left the nobility more unbridled than ever; these hereditary Houses now regarded themselves as masters of Rome left without her master. Their mercenaries encamped on every road; travellers and pilgrims were robbed; places of worship remained empty. The entire circumstances of the city were reduced to a meaner level. No prince, nobleman, or envoy of a foreign power, any longer made his appearance.... Vicars replaced the cardinals absent from their titular churches, while the Pope himself was represented in the Vatican, as by a shadow, by some bishop of the neighbourhood, Nepi, Viterbo, or Orvieto.’ The wealth and pomp that had made the papal court a source of revenue to the Romans were transferred to Provence: the Orsini and Colonna battled in the streets with no High Pontiff to hold them in check. Only his agents remained, who were there mainly to collect his rents and revenues, so that the city seemed once again threatened with political extinction as when Constantine had removed his capital to the Bosporus. [Sidenote: Cola di Rienzi] One short period of glory there was in seventy years of gloom--the realized vision of a Roman, Cola di Rienzi, a youth of the people, who, steeped in the writings of classical times, hoped to bring back to the city the freedom and greatness of republican days. From contemporary accounts Rienzi had a wonderful personality, striking looks, and an eloquence that rarely failed to move those who heard him. At Avignon, as a Roman envoy, he gained papal consent to some measures earnestly desired at Rome, and this success won him a large and enthusiastic following amongst the citizens, who applauded all that he said, and offered to uphold his ambitions with their swords. The first step to the greatness of Rome was obviously to restore order to her streets, and Rienzi therefore determined to overthrow the nobles, who with their retainers were always brawling, and above all the proud family of Colonna, one of whom without any provocation had killed his younger brother in a fit of rage. The revolution took place in May 1347, when, with the Papal Vicar standing at his side, and banners representing liberty, justice, and peace floating above his head, Rienzi proclaimed a new constitution to the populace, and invested himself as chief magistrate with the title of ‘Tribune, Illustrious Redeemer of the Holy Roman Republic’.