_Il Gran Matteo_, as posterity named the founder of the dynasty, was the prototype in character of all the great sovereigns who were to follow him. He ruled from the cabinet rather than from the saddle. Statecraft was his victorious weapon, and his calculating and passionless nature had its complement in a humanity remarkable for his time. But it needed not only his incomparable prudence and foresight, but also the strong arms of his three elder sons, Galeazzo, Marco, and Luchino, to assure his dominion and restore it to its old extent. The remaining years of the chief, as head of the Ghibelline party in North Italy, were spent in a constant warfare with the Guelfs and their allies, King Robert of Naples, and the Church. The awful papal ban fell again and again upon the Visconte and his subjects. Nevertheless Piacenza, Bergamo, Lodi, Como, Cremona, Alexandria, Tortona, Pavia, Vercelli, and Novara were brought one by one beneath his sway by the victory of diplomacy or arms. His success was embittered, however, by estrangement from his beloved first-born, Galeazzo, who coveted his father’s supremacy, and jealously resented the rivalry of his brother Marco. But Galeazzo’s hot temper had been chastened by exile and time, and in spite of their mutual anger, he supported his father’s policy with a wise loyalty. The fortunes of the Guelf party sank low before the rapid growth of the Viscontean power. Its hereditary leaders in North Italy, the Marquises of Este, were entangled in an unnatural struggle with the Papacy, which was itself enfeebled by the exile of Avignon, and by the operations of its own selfish greed. But in 1319 the party gathered itself together once more for a mighty effort to overthrow the Ghibelline domination in Milan. The Cardinal Legate, Beltrando del Poggetto, in the name of Pope John XXII., formed a great league of the Guelfs against the Visconti, and hurled at them afresh the spiritual weapons of the Church. Matteo was summoned repeatedly to answer for his sins at the feet of the Pope. In 1322 he was cited finally before a tribunal of the Inquisition at Alexandria. Instead of him, his son Marco appeared there at the head of an army with banners spread. The Inquisitors hastily retreated to Valenza, where in security they solemnly cursed Matteo for twenty and five different crimes and heresies, and invoked every conceivable penalty upon him and his House, even to the fourth generation. Full remission of sins was offered to all who took arms against them. The old Ghibelline chief, weakened by age and bodily infirmity, quailed before this onslaught. Many of his own adherents and kinsmen were deserting him. Milan, trembling under the ban of the Church and excited by the papal agents, was verging on revolt. Matteo summoned the offending Galeazzo, forgave him, and resigned to him the chieftainship. Retiring to a village at a little distance from the city, he died shortly after, full of years and sorrow.