Part I. £402,216,795_Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Italy" to "Jacobite Church" Volume 15, Slice 1

------------

Grand Total £521,568,629

The debt per head of population was, in 1905, £14, 16s. 3d., and the

interest 13s. 5d.

In July 1906 the 5% gross (4% net), and 4% net rente were successfully

converted into 3¾% stock (to be reduced to 3½% after five years), to a

total amount of £324,017,393. The demands for reimbursement at par

represented a sum of only £187,588 and the market value of the stock

was hardly affected; while the saving to the Treasury was to be

£800,000 per annum for the first five years and about double the

amount afterwards.

_Currency._--The _lira_ (plural _lire_) of 100 _centesimi_ (centimes)

is equal in value to the French franc. The total coinage (exclusive of

Eritrean currency) from the 1st of January 1862 to the end of 1907 was

1,104,667,116 lire (exclusive of recoinage), divided as follows: gold,

427,516,970 lire; silver, 570,097,025 lire; nickel, 23,417,000 lire;

bronze, 83,636,121 lire. The forced paper currency, instituted in

1866, was abolished in 1881, in which year were dissolved the Union of

Banks of Issue created in 1874 to furnish to the state treasury a

milliard of lire in notes, guaranteed collectively by the banks. Part

of the Union notes were redeemed, part replaced by 10 lire and 5 lire

state notes, payable at sight in metallic legal tender by certain

state banks. Nevertheless the law of 1881 did not succeed in

maintaining the value of the state notes at a par with the metallic

currency, and from 1885 onwards there reappeared a gold premium, which

during 1899 and 1900 remained at about 7%, but subsequently fell to

about 3% and has since 1902 practically disappeared. The paper

circulation to the debit of the state and the paper currency issued by

the authorized state banks is shown below:--

+-------------------+----------------------------+---------------+---------------+

| Date. +-------------+--------------+ by State | Paper |

+-------------------+-------------+--------------+---------------+---------------+

|31st December 1881 | 940,000,000 | .. | 735,579,197 | 1,675,579,197 |

| " 1886 | 446,665,535 | .. | 1,031,869,712 | 1,478,535,247 |

| " 1891 | 341,949,237 | .. | 1,121,601,079 | 1,463,550,316 |

| " 1896 | 400,000,000 | 110,000,000 | 1,069,233,376 | 1,579,233,376 |

| " 1899 | 451,431,780 | 42,138,152 | 1,180,110,330 | 1,673,680,262 |

| " 1905 | 441,304,780 | 1,874,184 | 1,406,474,800 | 1,848,657,764 |

+-------------------+-------------+--------------+---------------+---------------+

* These ceased to have legal currency at the end of 1901; they were

notes of 1 and 2 lire.

_Banks._--Until 1893 the juridical status of the Banks of Issue was

regulated by the laws of the 30th of April 1874 on paper currency and

of the 7th of April 1881 on the abolition of forced currency. At that

time four limited companies were authorized to issue bank notes,

namely, the National Bank, the National Bank of Tuscany, the Roman

Bank and the Tuscan Credit Bank; and two banking corporations, the

Bank of Naples and the Bank of Sicily. In 1893 the Roman Bank was put

into liquidation, and the other three limited companies were fused, so

as to create the Bank of Italy, the privilege of issuing bank notes

being thenceforward confined to the Bank of Italy, the Bank of Naples

and the Bank of Sicily. The gold reserve in the possession of the

Banca d'Italia on September 30th 1907 amounted to £32,240,984, and the

silver reserve to £4,767,861; the foreign treasury bonds, &c. amounted

to £3,324,074, making the total reserve £40,332,919; while the

circulation amounted to £54,612,234. The figures were on the 31st of

December 1906:

+------------------+--------------+--------------+

| | Paper | Reserve. |

| | Circulation. | |

+------------------+--------------+--------------+

| Banca d'Italia | £47,504,352 | £36,979,235 |

| Banca di Napoli | 13,893,152 | 9,756,284 |

| Banca di Sicilia | 2,813,692 | 2,060,481 |

+------------------+--------------+--------------+

| Total | £64,211,196 | £48,796,000 |

+------------------+--------------+--------------+

This is considerably in excess of the circulation, £40,404,000, fixed

by royal decree of 1900; but the issue of additional notes was

allowed, provided they were entirely covered by a metallic reserve,

whereas up to the fixed limit a 40% reserve only was necessary. These

notes are of 50, 100, 500 and 1000 lire; while the state issues notes

for 5, 10 and 25 lire, the currency of these at the end of October

1906 being £17,546,967; with a total guarantee of £15,636,000 held

against them. They were in January 1908 equal in value to the metallic

currency of gold and silver.

The price of Italian consolidated 5% (gross, 4% net, allowing for the

20% income tax) stock, which is the security most largely negotiated

abroad, and used in settling differences between large financial

institutions, has steadily risen during recent years. After being

depressed between 1885 and 1894, the prices in Italy and abroad

reached, in 1899, on the Rome Stock Exchange, the average of 100.83

and of 94.8 on the Paris Bourse. By the end of 1901 the price of

Italian stock on the Paris Bourse had, however, risen to par or

thereabouts. The average price of Italian 4% in 1905 was 105.29; since

the conversion to 3¾% net (to be further reduced to 3½ in five more

years), the price has been about 103.5. Rates of exchange, or, in

other words the gold premium, favoured Italy during the years

immediately following the abolition of the forced currency in 1881. In

1885, however, rates tended to rise, and though they fell in 1886 they

subsequently increased to such an extent as to reach 110% at the end

of August 1894. For the next four years they continued low, but rose

again in 1898 and 1899. In 1900 the maximum rate was 107.32, and the

minimum 105.40, but in 1901 rates fell considerably, and were at par

in 1902-1909.

There are in Italy six clearing houses, namely, the ancient one at

Leghorn, and those of Genoa, Milan, Rome, Florence and Turin, founded

since 1882.

The number of ordinary banks, which diminished between 1889 and 1894,

increased in the following years, and was 158 in 1898. At the same

time the capital employed in banking decreased by nearly one-half,

namely, from about £12,360,000 in 1880 to about £6,520,000 in 1898.

This decrease was due to the liquidation of a number of large and

small banks, amongst others the Bank of Genoa, the General Bank, and

the Società di Credito Mobiliare Italiano of Rome, and the Genoa

Discount Bank--establishments which alone represented £4,840,000 of

paid-up capital. Ordinary credit operations are also carried on by the

co-operative credit societies, of which there are some 700.

Agrarian Credit Banks.

Certain banks make a special business of lending money to owners of

land or buildings (_credito fondiario_). Loans are repayable by

instalments, and are guaranteed by first mortgages not greater in

amount than half the value of the hypothecated property. The banks may

buy up mortgages and advance money on current account on the security

of land or buildings. The development of the large cities has induced

these banks to turn their attention rather to building enterprise than

to mortgages on rural property. The value of their land certificates

or _cartelle fondiarie_ (representing capital in circulation) rose

from £10,420,000 in 1881 to £15,560,000 in 1886, and to £30,720,000 in

1891, but fell to £29,320,000 in 1896, to £27,360,000 in 1898, and to

£24,360,000 in 1907; the amount of money lent increased from

£10,440,000 in 1881 to £15,600,000 in 1886, and £30,800,000 in 1891,

but fell to £29,320,000 in 1896, to £27,360,000 in 1899, and to

£21,720,000 in 1907. The diminution was due to the law of the 10th of

April 1893 upon the banks of issue, by which they were obliged to

liquidate the loan and mortgage business they had previously carried

on.

Various laws have been passed to facilitate agrarian credit. The law

of the 23rd of January 1887 (still in force) extended the dispositions

of the Civil Code with regard to "privileges,"[9] and established

special "privileges" in regard to harvested produce, produce stored in

barns and farm buildings, and in regard to agricultural implements.

Loans on mortgage may also be granted to landowners and agricultural

unions, with a view to the introduction of agricultural improvements.

These loans are regulated by special disposition, and are guaranteed

by a share of the increased value of the land after the improvements

have been carried out. Agrarian credit banks may, with the permission

of the government, issue _cartelle agrarie_, or agrarian bonds,

repayable by instalments and bearing interest.

_Internal Administration._--It was not till 1865 that the

administrative unity of Italy was realized. Up to that year some of

the regions of the kingdom, such as Tuscany, continued to have a kind

of autonomy; but by the laws of the 20th of March the whole country

was divided into 69 provinces and 8545 communes. The extent to which

communal independence had been maintained in Italy through all the

centuries of its political disintegration was strongly in its favour.

The syndic (_sindaco_) or chief magistrate of the commune was

appointed by the king for three years, and he was assisted by a

"municipal junta."

Local government was modified by the law of the 10th of February 1889

and by posterior enactments. The syndics (or mayors) are now elected

by a secret ballot of the communal council, though they are still

government officials. In the provincial administrations the functions

of the prefects have been curtailed. Each province has a prefect,

responsible to and appointed by the Ministry of the Interior, while

each of the regions (called variously _circondarii_ and _distretti_)

has its sub-prefect. Whereas the prefect was formerly _ex-officio_

president of the provincial deputation or executive committee of the

provincial council, his duties under the present law are reduced to

mere participation in the management of provincial affairs, the

president of the provincial deputation being chosen among and elected

by the members of the deputation. The most important change introduced

by the new law has been the creation in every province of a provincial

administrative junta entrusted with the supervision of communal

administrations, a function previously discharged by the provincial

deputation. Each provincial administrative junta is composed, in part,

of government nominees, and in larger part of elective elements,

elected by the provincial council for four years, half of whom require

to be elected every two years. The acts of communal administration

requiring the sanction of the provincial administrative junta are

chiefly financial. Both communal councils and prefects may appeal to

the government against the decision of the provincial administrative

juntas, the government being guided by the opinion of the Council of

State. Besides possessing competence in regard to local government

elections, which previously came within the jurisdiction of the

provincial deputations, the provincial administrative juntas discharge

magisterial functions in administrative affairs, and deal with appeals

presented by private persons against acts of the communal and

provincial administrations. The juntas are in this respect organs of

the administrative jurisprudence created in Italy by the law of the

1st of May 1890, in order to provide juridical protection for those

rights and interests outside the competence of the ordinary tribunals.

The provincial council only meets once a year in ordinary session.

The former qualifications for electorship in local government

elections have been modified, and it is now sufficient to pay five

lire annually in direct taxes, five lire of certain communal taxes, or

a certain rental (which varies according to the population of a

commune), instead of being obliged to pay, as previously, at least

five lire annually of direct taxes to the state. In consequence of

this change the number of local electors increased by more than

one-third between 1887-1889; it decreased, however, as a result of an

extraordinary revision of the registers in 1894. The period for which

both communal and provincial councils are elected is six years,

one-half being renewed every three years.

The ratio of local electors to population is in Piedmont 79%, but in

Sicily less than 45%. The ratio of voters to qualified electors tends

to increase; it is highest in Campania, Basilicata and in the south

generally; the lowest percentages are given by Emilia and Liguria.

Local finance.

Local finance is regulated by the communal and provincial law of May

1898, which instituted provincial administrative juntas, empowered to

examine and sanction the acts of the communal financial

administrations. The sanction of the provincial administrative junta

is necessary for sales or purchases of property, alterations of rates

(although in case of increase the junta can only act upon request of

ratepayers paying an aggregate of one-twentieth of the local direct

taxation), and expenditure affecting the communal budget for more than

five years. The provincial administrative junta is, moreover,

empowered to order "obligatory" expenditure, such as the upkeep of

roads, sanitary works, lighting, police (i.e. the so-called "guardie

di pubblica sicurezza," the "carabinieri" being really a military

force; only the largest towns maintain a municipal police force),

charities, education, &c., in case such expenditure is neglected by

the communal authorities. The cost of fire brigades, infant asylums,

evening and holiday schools, is classed as "optional" expenditure.

Communal revenues are drawn from the proceeds of communal property,

interest upon capital, taxes and local dues. The most important of the

local dues is the gate tax, or _dazio di consumo_, which may be either

a surtax upon commodities (such as alcoholic drinks or meat), having

already paid customs duty at the frontier, in which case the local

surtax may not exceed 50% of the frontier duty, or an exclusively

communal duty limited to 10% on flour, bread and farinaceous

products,[10] and to 20% upon other commodities. The taxes thus vary

considerably in different towns.

In addition, the communes have a right to levy a surtax not exceeding

50% of the quota levied by the state upon lands and buildings; a

family tax, or _fuocatico_, upon the total incomes of families, which,

for fiscal purposes, are divided into various categories; a tax based

upon the rent-value of houses, and other taxes upon cattle, horses,

dogs, carriages and servants; also on licences for shopkeepers, hotel

and restaurant keepers, &c.; on the slaughter of animals, stamp

duties, one-half of the tax on bicycles, &c. Occasional sources of

interest are found in the sale of communal property, the realization

of communal credits, and the contraction of debt.

The provincial administrations are entrusted with the management of

the affairs of the provinces in general, as distinguished from those

of the communes. Their expenditure is likewise classed as "obligatory"

and "optional." The former category comprises the maintenance of

provincial roads, bridges and watercourse embankments; secondary

education, whenever this is not provided for by private institutions

or by the state (elementary education being maintained by the

communes), and the maintenance of foundlings and pauper lunatics.

"Optional" expenditure includes the cost of services of general public

interest, though not strictly indispensable. Provincial revenues are

drawn from provincial property, school taxes, tolls and surtaxes on

land and buildings. The provincial surtaxes may not exceed 50% of the

quotas levied by the state. In 1897 the total provincial revenue was

£3,732,253, of which £3,460,000 was obtained from the surtax upon

lands and buildings. Expenditure amounted to £3,768,888, of which the

principal items were £760,000 for roads and bridges, £520,000 for

lunatic asylums, £240,000 for foundling hospitals, £320,000 for

interest on debt and £200,000 for police. Like communal revenue,

provincial revenue has considerably increased since 1880, principally

on account of the increase in the land and building surtax.

The Italian local authorities, communes and provinces alike, have

considerably increased their indebtedness since 1882. The ratio of

communal and provincial debt per inhabitant has grown from 30.79 lire

(£1, 4s. 7½d.) to 43.70 lire (£1, 14s. 11d.), an increase due in great

part to the need for improved buildings, hygienic reforms and

education, but also attributable in part to the manner in which the

finances of many communes are administered. The total was in 1900,

£49,496,193 for the communes and £6,908,022 for the provinces. The

former total is more than double and the latter more than treble the

sum in 1873, while there is an increase of 62% in the former and 26%

in the latter over the totals for 1882.

See _Annuario statistico italiano_ (not, however, issued regularly

each year) for general statistics; and other official publications; W.

Deecke, _Italy; a Popular Account of the Country, its People and its

Institutions_ (translated by H. A. Nesbitt, London, 1904); B. King and

T. Okey, _Italy to-day_ (London, 1901); E. Nathan, _Vent' Anni di vita

italiana attraverso all' Annuario_ (Rome, 1906); G. Strafforello,

_Geografia dell' Italia_ (Turin, 1890-1902). (T. As.)

HISTORY

The difficulty of Italian history lies in the fact that until modern

times the Italians have had no political unity, no independence, no

organized existence as a nation. Split up into numerous and mutually

hostile communities, they never, through the fourteen centuries which

have elapsed since the end of the old Western empire, shook off the yoke

of foreigners completely; they never until lately learned to merge their

local and conflicting interests in the common good of undivided Italy.

Their history is therefore not the history of a single people,

centralizing and absorbing its constituent elements by a process of

continued evolution, but of a group of cognate populations, exemplifying

divers types of constitutional developments.

The early history of Italy will be found under ROME and allied headings.

The following account is therefore mainly concerned with the periods

succeeding A.D. 476, when Romulus Augustulus was deposed by Odoacer.

Prefixed to this are two sections dealing respectively with (A) the

ethnographical and philological divisions of ancient Italy, and (B) the

unification of the country under Augustus, the growth of the road system

and so forth. The subsequent history is divided into five periods: (C)

From 476 to 1796; (D) From 1796 to 1814; (E) From 1815 to 1870; (F) From

1870 to 1902; (G) From 1902 to 1910.

A. ANCIENT LANGUAGES AND PEOPLES

The ethnography of ancient Italy is a very complicated and difficult

subject, and notwithstanding the researches of modern scholars is still

involved in some obscurity. The great beauty and fertility of the

country, as well as the charm of its climate, undoubtedly attracted,

even in early ages, successive swarms of invaders from the north, who

sometimes drove out the previous occupants of the most favoured

districts, at others reduced them to a state of serfdom, or settled down

in the midst of them, until the two races gradually coalesced. Ancient

writers are agreed as to the composite character of the population of

Italy, and the diversity of races that were found within the limits of

the peninsula. But unfortunately the traditions they have transmitted to

us are often various and conflicting, while the only safe test of the

affinities of nations, derived from the comparison of their languages,

is to a great extent inapplicable, from the fact that the idioms that

prevailed in Italy in and before the 5th century B.C. are preserved, if

at all, only in a few scanty and fragmentary inscriptions, though from

that date onwards we have now a very fair record of many of them (see,

e.g. LATIN LANGUAGE, OSCA LINGUA, IGUVIUM, VOLSCI, ETRURIA: section

_Language_, and below). These materials, imperfect as they are, when

combined with the notices derived from ancient writers and the evidence

of archaeological excavations, may be considered as having furnished

some results of reasonable certainty.

It must be observed that the name "Italians" was at one time confined to

the Oenotrians; indeed, according to Antiochus of Syracuse (_apud_ Dion.

Hal. _Ant. Rom._ ii. 1), the name of Italy was first still more limited,

being applied only to the southern portion of the Bruttium peninsula

(now known as Calabria). But in the time of that historian, as well as

of Thucydides, the names of Oenotria and Italia, which appear to have

been at that period regarded as synonymous, had been extended to include

the shore of the Tarentine Gulf as far as Metapontum and from thence

across to the gulfs of Laus and Posidonia on the Tyrrhenian Sea. It

thus still comprised only the two provinces subsequently known as

Lucania and Bruttium (see references s.v. "Italia" in R. S. Conway's

_Italic Dialects_, p. 5). The name seems to be a Graecized form of an

Italic _Vitelia_, from the stem _vitlo_-, "calf" (Lat. _vitulus_, Gr.

[Greek: italos]), and perhaps to have meant "calf-land," "grazing-land";

but the origin is more certain than the meaning; the calf may be one of

the many animals connected with Italian tribes (see HIRPINI, SAMNITES).

Taking the term Italy to comprise the whole peninsula with the northern

region as far as the Alps, we must first distinguish the tribe or tribes

which spoke Indo-European languages from those who did not. To the

latter category it is now possible to refer with certainty only the

Etruscans (for the chronology and limits of their occupation of Italian

soil see ETRURIA: section _Language_). Of all the other tribes that

inhabited Italy down to the classical period, of whose speech there is

any record (whether explicit or in the form of names and glosses), it is

impossible to maintain that any one does not belong to the Indo-European

group. Putting aside the Etruscan, and also the different Greek dialects

of the Greek colonies, like Cumae, Neapolis, Tarentum, and proceeding

from the south to the north, the different languages or dialects, of

whose separate existence at some time between, say, 600 and 200 B.C., we

can be sure, may be enumerated as follows: (1) Sicel, (2) South Oscan

and Oscan, (3) Messapian, (4) North Oscan, (5) Volscian, (6) East Italic

or "Sabellic," (7) Latinian, (8) Sabine, (9) Iguvine or "Umbrian," (10)

Gallic, (11) Ligurian and (12) Venetic.

Between several of these dialects it is probable that closer affinities

exist. (1) It is probable, though not very clearly demonstrated, that

Venetic, East Italic and Messapian are connected together and with the

ancient dialects spoken in Illyria (q.v.), so that these might be

provisionally entitled the Adriatic group, to which the language spoken

by the Eteocretes of the city of Praesos in Crete down to the 4th

century B.C. was perhaps akin. (2) Too little is known of the Sicel

language to make clear more than its Indo-European character. But it

must be reckoned among the languages of Italy because of the

well-supported tradition of the early existence of the Sicels in Latium

(see SICULI). Their possible place in the earlier stratum of

Indo-European population is discussed under SABINI. How far also the

language or languages spoken in Bruttium and at certain points of

Lucania, such as Anxia, differed from the Oscan of Samnium and Campania

there is not enough evidence to show (see BRUTTII). (3) It is doubtful

whether there are any actual inscriptions which can be referred with

certainty to the language of the Ligures, but some other evidence seems

to link them with the -_CO_- peoples, whose early distribution is

discussed under VOLSCI and LIGURIA. (4) It is difficult to point to any

definite evidence by which we may determine the dates of the earliest

appearance of Gallic tribes in the north of Italy. No satisfactory

collection has been made of the Celtic inscriptions of Cisalpine Gaul,

though many are scattered about in different museums. For our present

purpose it is important to note that the archaeological stratification

in deposits like those of Bologna shows that the Gallic period

supervened upon the Etruscan. Until a scientific collection of the local

and personal names of this district has been made, and until the

archaeological evidence is clearly interpreted, it is impossible to go

beyond the region of conjecture as to the tribe or tribes occupying the

valley of the Po before the two invasions. It is clear, however, that

the Celtic and Etruscan elements together occupied the greater part of

the district between the Apennines and the Alps down to its

Romanization, which took place gradually in the course of the 2nd

century B.C. Their linguistic neighbours were Ligurian in the south and

south-west, and the Veneti on the east.

We know from the Roman historians that a large force of Gauls came as

far south as Rome in the year 390 B.C., and that some part of this horde

settled in what was henceforward known as the _Ager Gallicus_, the

easternmost strip of coast in what was later known as Umbria, including

the towns of Caesena, Ravenna and Ariminum. A bilingual inscription

(Gallic and Latin) of the 2nd century B.C. was found as far south as

Tuder, the modern Todi (_Italic Dialects_, ii. 528; Stokes,

_Bezzenberger's Beiträge_, 11, p. 113).

(5) Turning now to the languages which constitute the Italic group in

the narrower sense, (a) Oscan; (b) the dialect of Velitrae, commonly

called Volscian; (c) Latinian (i.e. Latin and its nearest congeners,

like Faliscan); and (d) Umbrian (or, as it may more safely be called,

Iguvine), two principles of classification offer themselves, of which

the first is purely linguistic, the second linguistic and topographical.

Writers on the ethnology of Italy have been hitherto content with the

first, namely, the broad distinction between the dialects which

preserved the Indo-European velars (especially the breathed plosive _q_)

as velars or back-palatals (gutturals), with or without the addition of

a _w_-sound, and the dialects which converted the velars wholly into

labials, for example, Latinian _quis_ contrasted with Oscan, Volscian

and Umbrian _pis_ (see further LATIN LANGUAGE).

This distinction, however, takes us but a little way towards an

historical grouping of the tribes, since the only Latinian dialects of

which, besides Latin, we have inscriptions are Faliscan and Marsian (see

FALISCI, MARSI); although the place-names of the Aequi (q.v.) suggest

that they belong to the same group in this respect. Except, therefore,

for a very small and apparently isolated area in the north of Latium and

south of Etruria, all the tribes of Italy, though their idioms differed

in certain particulars, are left undiscriminated. This presents a strong

contrast to the evidence of tradition, which asserts very strongly (1)

the identity of the Sabines and Samnites; (2) the conquest of an earlier

population by this tribe; and which affords (3) clear evidence of the

identity of the Sabines with the ruling class, i.e. the patricians, at

Rome itself (see SABINI; and ROME: _Early History and Ethnology_).

Some clue to this enigma may perhaps be found in the second principle of

classification proposed by the present writer at the Congresso

Internationale di Scienze Storiche at Rome (_Atti del Congresso_, ii) in

1903. It was on that occasion pointed out that the ethnica or tribal and

oppidan names of communities belonging to the Sabine stock were marked

by the use of the suffix -_NO_- as in _Sabini_; and that there was some

linguistic evidence that this stratum of population overcame an earlier

population, which used, generally, ethnica in -_CO_- or -_TI_- (as in

_Marruci_, _Ardeates_, transformed later into _Marrucini_, _Ardeatini_).

The validity of this distinction and its results are discussed under

SABINI and VOLSCI, but it is well to state here its chief consequences.

1. Latin will be counted the language of the earlier plebeian stratum of

the population of Rome and Latium, probably once spread over a large

area of the peninsula, and akin in some degree to the language or

languages spoken in north Italy before either the Etruscan or the Gallic

invasions began.

2. It would follow, on the other hand, that what is called Oscan

represented the language of the invading Sabines (more correctly

Safines), whose racial affinities would seem to be of a distinctly more

northern cast, and to mark them, like the Dorians or Achaeans in Greece,

as an early wave of the invaders who more than once in later history

have vitally influenced the fortunes of the tempting southern land into

which they forced their way.

3. What is called Volscian, known only from the important inscription of

the town of Velitrae, and what is called Umbrian, known from the famous

Iguvine Tables with a few other records, would be regarded as Safine

dialects, spoken by Safine communities who had become more or less

isolated in the midst of the earlier and possibly partly Etruscanized

populations, the result being that as early as the 4th century B.C.

their language had suffered corruptions which it escaped both in the

Samnite mountains and in the independent and self-contained community of

Rome.

For fuller details the reader must be referred to the separate

articles already mentioned, and to IGUVIUM, PICENUM, OSCA LINGUA,

MARSI, AEQUI, SICULI and LIGURIA. Such archaeological evidence as can

be connected with the linguistic data will there be discussed.

(R. S. C.)

B. CONSOLIDATION OF ITALY

We have seen that the name of Italy was originally applied only to the

southernmost part of the peninsula, and was only gradually extended so

as to comprise the central regions, such as Latium and Campania, which

were designated by writers as late as Thucydides and Aristotle as in

Opicia. The progress of this change cannot be followed in detail, but

there can be little doubt that the extension of the Roman arms, and the

gradual union of the nations of the peninsula under one dominant power,

would contribute to the introduction, or rather would make the necessity

felt, for the use of one general appellation. At first, indeed, the term

was apparently confined to the regions of the central and southern

districts, exclusive of Cisalpine Gaul and the whole tract north of the

Apennines, and this continued to be the official or definite

signification of the name down to the end of the republic. But the

natural limits of Italy are so clearly marked that the name came to be

generally employed as a geographical term at a much earlier period. Thus

we already find Polybius repeatedly applying it in this wider

signification to the whole country, as far as the foot of the Alps; and

it is evident from many passages in the Latin writers that this was the

familiar use of the term in the days of Cicero and Caesar. The official

distinction was, however, still retained. Cisalpine Gaul, including the

whole of northern Italy, still constituted a "province," an appellation

never applied to Italy itself. As such it was assigned to Julius Caesar,

together with Transalpine Gaul, and it was not till he crossed the

Rubicon that he entered Italy in the strict sense of the term.

Augustus was the first who gave a definite administrative organization

to Italy as a whole, and at the same time gave official sanction to that

wider acceptation of the name which had already established itself in

familiar usage, and which has continued to prevail ever since.

The division of Italy into eleven regions, instituted by Augustus for

administrative purposes, which continued in official use till the reign

of Constantine, was based mainly on the territorial divisions previously

existing, and preserved with few exceptions the ancient limits.

The first region comprised Latium (in the more extended sense of the

term, as including the land of the Volsci, Hernici and Aurunci),

together with Campania and the district of the Picentini. It thus

extended from the mouth of the Tiber to that of the Silarus (see

LATIUM).

The second region included Apulia and Calabria (the name by which the

Romans usually designated the district known to the Greeks as Messapia

or Iapygia), together with the land of the Hirpini, which had usually

been considered as a part of Samnium.

The third region contained Lucania and Bruttium; it was bounded on the

west coast by the Silarus, on the east by the Bradanus.

The fourth region comprised all the Samnites (except the Hirpini),

together with the Sabines and the cognate tribes of the Frentani,

Marrucini, Marsi, Peligni, Vestini and Aequiculi. It was separated from

Apulia on the south by the river Tifernus, and from Picenum on the north

by the Matrinus.

The fifth region was composed solely of Picenum, extending along the

coast of the Adriatic from the mouth of the Matrinus to that of the

Aesis, beyond Ancona.

The sixth region was formed by Umbria, in the more extended sense of the

term, as including the Ager Gallicus, along the coast of the Adriatic

from the Aesis to the Ariminus, and separated from Etruria on the west

by the Tiber.

The seventh region consisted of Etruria, which preserved its ancient

limits, extending from the Tiber to the Tyrrhenian Sea, and separated

from Liguria on the north by the river Macra.

The eighth region, termed Gallia Cispadana, comprised the southern

portion of Cisalpine Gaul, and was bounded on the north (as its name

implied) by the river Padus or Po, from above Placentia to its mouth. It

was separated from Etruria and Umbria by the main chain of the

Apennines; and the river Ariminus was substituted for the far-famed

Rubicon as its limit on the Adriatic.

[Illustration: Map of Italy (Ancient)]

The ninth region comprised Liguria, extending along the sea-coast from

the Varus to the Macra, and inland as far as the river Padus, which

constituted its northern boundary from its source in Mount Vesulus to

its confluence with the Trebia just above Placentia.

The tenth region included Venetia from the Padus and Adriatic to the

Alps, to which was annexed the neighbouring peninsula of Istria, and to

the west the territory of the Cenomani, a Gaulish tribe, extending from

the Athesis to the Addua, which had previously been regarded as a part

of Gallia Cisalpina.

The eleventh region, known as Gallia Transpadana, included all the rest

of Cisalpine Gaul from the Padus on the south and the Addua on the east

to the foot of the Alps.

The arrangements thus established by Augustus continued almost unchanged

till the time of Constantine, and formed the basis of all subsequent

administrative divisions until the fall of the Western empire.

Roads.

The mainstay of the Roman military control of Italy first, and of the

whole empire afterwards, was the splendid system of roads. As the

supremacy of Rome extended itself over Italy, the Roman road system grew

step by step, each fresh conquest being marked by the pushing forward of

roads through the heart of the newly-won territory, and the

establishment of fortresses in connexion with them. It was in Italy that

the military value of a network of roads was first appreciated by the

Romans, and the lesson stood them in good stead in the provinces. And it

was for military reasons that from mere cart-tracks they were developed

into permanent highways (T. Ashby, in _Papers of the British School at

Rome_, i. 129). From Rome itself roads radiated in all directions.

Communications with the south-east were mainly provided by the Via Appia

(the "queen of Roman roads," as Statius called it) and the Via Latina,

which met close to Casilinum, at the crossing of the Volturnus, 3 m.

N.W. of Capua, the second city in Italy in the 3rd century B.C., and the

centre of the road system of Campania. Here the Via Appia turned

eastward towards Beneventum, while the Via Popilia continued in a

south-easterly direction through the Campanian plain and thence

southwards through the mountains of Lucania and Bruttii as far as

Rhegium. Coast roads of minor importance as means of through

communication also existed on both sides of the "toe" of the boot. Other

roads ran south from Capua to Cumae, Puteoli (the most important harbour

of Campania), and Neapolis, which could also be reached by a coast road

from Minturnae on the Via Appia. From Beneventum, another important road

centre, the Via Appia itself ran south-east through the mountains past

Venusia to Tarentum on the south-west coast of the "heel," and thence

across Calabria to Brundusium, while Trajan's correction of it,

following an older mule-track, ran north-east through the mountains and

then through the lower ground of Apulia, reaching the coast at Barium.

Both met at Brundusium, the principal port for the East. From Aequum

Tuticum, on the Via Traiana, the Via Herculia ran to the south-east,

crossing the older Via Appia, then south to Potentia and so on to join

the Via Popilia in the centre of Lucania.

The only highroad of importance which left Rome and ran eastwards, the

Via Valeria, was not completed as far as the Adriatic before the time of

Claudius; but on the north and north-west started the main highways

which communicated with central and northern Italy, and with all that

part of the Roman empire which was accessible by land. The Via Salaria,

a very ancient road, with its branch, the Via Caecilia, ran

north-eastwards to the Adriatic coast and so also did the Via Flaminia,

which reached the coast at Fanum Fortunae, and thence followed it to

Ariminum. The road along the east coast from Fanum Fortunae down to

Barium, which connected the terminations of the Via Salaria and Via

Valeria, and of other roads farther south crossing from Campania, had no

special name in ancient times, as far as we know. The Via Flaminia was

the earliest and most important road to the north; and it was soon

extended (in 187 B.C.) by the Via Aemilia running through Bononia as

far as Placentia, in an almost absolutely straight line between the

plain of the Po and the foot of the Apennines. In the same year a road

was constructed over the Apennines from Bononia to Arretium, but it is

difficult to suppose that it was not until later that the Via Cassia was

made, giving a direct communication between Arretium and Rome. The Via

Clodia was an alternative route to the Cassia for the first portion out

of Rome, a branch having been built at the same time from Florentia to

Lucca and Luna. Along the west coast the Via Aurelia ran up to Pisa and

was continued by another Via Aemilia to Genoa. Thence the Via Postumia

led to Dertona, Placentia and Cremona, while the Via Aemilia and the Via

Julia Augusta continued along the coast into Gallia Narbonensis.

The road system of Cisalpine Gaul was mainly conditioned by the rivers

which had to be crossed, and the Alpine passes which had to be

approached.

Cremona, on the north bank of the Po, was an important meeting point of

roads and Postilia (Ostiglia) another; so also was Patavium, farther

east, and Altinum and Aquileia farther east still. Roads, indeed, were

almost as plentiful as railways at the present day in the basin of the

Po.

As to the roads leading out of Italy, from Aquileia roads diverged

northward into Raetia, eastward to Noricum and Pannonia, and southwards

to the Istrian and Dalmatian coasts. Farther west came the roads over

the higher Alpine passes--the Brenner from Verona, the Septimer and the

Splügen from Clavenna (Chiavenna), the Great and the Little St Bernard

from Augusta Praetoria (Aosta), and the Mont Genèvre from Augusta

Taurinorum (Turin).

Westward two short but important roads led on each side of the Tiber to

the great harbour at its mouth; while the coast of Latium was supplied

with a coast road by Septimius Severus. To the south-west the roads were

short and of little importance.

On ancient Italian geography in general see articles in Pauly-Wissowa,

_Realencyclopädie_ (1899, sqq.); _Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum_

(Berlin, 1862 sqq.); G. Strafforello, _Geografia dell' Italia_ (Turin,

1890-1892); H. Nissen, _Italische Landeskunde_ (Berlin, 1883-1902);

also references in articles ROME, LATIUM, &c. (T. As.)

C. FROM 476 to 1796

The year 476 opened a new age for the Italian people. Odoacer, a chief

of the Herulians, deposed Romulus, the last Augustus of the West, and

placed the peninsula beneath the titular sway of the Byzantine emperors.

At Pavia the barbarian conquerors of Italy proclaimed him king, and he

received from Zeno the dignity of Roman patrician. Thus began that

system of mixed government, Teutonic and Roman, which, in the absence of

a national monarch, impressed the institutions of new Italy from the

earliest date with dualism. The same revolution vested supreme authority

in a non-resident and inefficient autocrat, whose title gave him the

right to interfere in Italian affairs, but who lacked the power and will

to rule the people for his own or their advantage. Odoacer inaugurated

that long series of foreign rulers--Greeks, Franks, Germans, Spaniards

and Austrians--who have successively contributed to the misgovernment of

Italy from distant seats of empire.

I. _Gothic and Lombard Kingdoms._--In 488 Theodoric, king of the East

Goths, received commission from the Greek emperor, Zeno, to undertake

the affairs of Italy. He defeated Odoacer, drove him to Ravenna,

besieged him there, and in 493 completed the conquest of the country by

murdering the Herulian chief with his own hand. Theodoric respected the

Roman institutions which he found in Italy, held the Eternal City

sacred, and governed by ministers chosen from the Roman population. He

settled at Ravenna, which had been the capital of Italy since the days

of Honorius, and which still testifies by its monuments to the Gothic

chieftain's Romanizing policy. Those who believe that the Italians would

have gained strength by unification in a single monarchy must regret

that this Gothic kingdom lacked the elements of stability. The Goths,

except in the valley of the Po, resembled an army of occupation rather

than a people numerous enough to blend with the Italic stock. Though

their rule was favourable to the Romans, they were Arians; and

religious differences, combined with the pride and jealousies of a

nation accustomed to imperial honours, rendered the inhabitants of Italy

eager to throw off their yoke. When, therefore, Justinian undertook the

reconquest of Italy, his generals, Belisarius and Narses, were supported

by the south. The struggle of the Greeks and the Goths was carried on

for fourteen years, between 539 and 553, when Teias, the last Gothic

king, was finally defeated in a bloody battle near Vesuvius. At its

close the provinces of Italy were placed beneath Greek dukes, controlled

by a governor-general, entitled exarch, who ruled in the Byzantine

emperor's name at Ravenna.

The Lombards.

This new settlement lasted but a few years. Narses had employed Lombard

auxiliaries in his campaigns against the Goths; and when he was recalled

by an insulting message from the empress in 565, he is said to have

invited this fiercest and rudest of the Teutonic clans to seize the

spoils of Italy. Be this as it may, the Lombards, their ranks swelled by

the Gepidae, whom they had lately conquered, and by the wrecks of other

barbarian tribes, passed southward under their king Alboin in 568. The

Herulian invaders had been but a band of adventurers; the Goths were an

army; the Lombards, far more formidable, were a nation in movement.

Pavia offered stubborn resistance; but after a three years' siege it was

taken, and Alboin made it the capital of his new kingdom.

In order to understand the future history of Italy, it is necessary to

form a clear conception of the method pursued by the Lombards in their

conquest. Penetrating the peninsula, and advancing like a glacier or

half-liquid stream of mud, they occupied the valley of the Po, and moved

slowly downward through the centre of the country. Numerous as they were

compared with their Gothic predecessors, they had not strength or

multitude enough to occupy the whole peninsula. Venice, which since the

days of Attila had offered an asylum to Roman refugees from the northern

cities, was left untouched. So was Genoa with its Riviera. Ravenna,

entrenched within her lagoons, remained a Greek city. Rome, protected by

invincible prestige, escaped. The sea-coast cities of the south, and the

islands, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, preserved their independence.

Thus the Lombards neither occupied the extremities nor subjugated the

brain-centre of the country. The strength of Alboin's kingdom was in the

north; his capital, Pavia. As his people pressed southward, they omitted

to possess themselves of the coasts; and what was worse for the future

of these conquerors, the original impetus of the invasion was checked by

the untimely murder of Alboin in 573. After this event, the

semi-independent chiefs of the Lombard tribe, who borrowed the title of

dukes from their Roman predecessors, seem to have been contented with

consolidating their power in the districts each had occupied. The

duchies of Spoleto in the centre, and of Benevento in the south,

inserted wedge-like into the middle of the peninsula, and enclosing

independent Rome, were but loosely united to the kingdom at Pavia. Italy

was broken up into districts, each offering points for attack from

without, and fostering the seeds of internal revolution. Three separate

capitals must be discriminated--Pavia, the seat of the new Lombard

kingdom; Ravenna, the garrison city of the Byzantine emperor; and Rome,

the rallying point of the old nation, where the successor of St Peter

was already beginning to assume that national protectorate which proved

so influential in the future.

It is not necessary to write the history of the Lombard kingdom in

detail. Suffice it to say that the rule of the Lombards proved at first

far more oppressive to the native population, and was less intelligent

of their old customs, than that of the Goths had been. Wherever the

Lombards had the upper hand, they placed the country under military

rule, resembling in its general character what we now know as the feudal

system. Though there is reason to suppose that the Roman laws were still

administered within the cities, yet the Lombard code was that of the

kingdom; and the Lombards being Arians, they added the oppression of

religious intolerance to that of martial despotism and barbarous

cupidity. The Italians were reduced to the last extremity when Gregory

the Great (590-604), having strengthened his position by diplomatic

relations with the duchy of Spoleto, and brought about the conversion of

the Lombards to orthodoxy, raised the cause of the remaining Roman

population throughout Italy. The fruit of his policy, which made of Rome

a counterpoise against the effete empire of the Greeks upon the one hand

and against the pressure of the feudal kingdom on the other, was seen in

the succeeding century. When Leo the Isaurian published his decrees

against the worship of images in 726, Gregory II. allied himself with

Liudprand, the Lombard king, threw off allegiance to Byzantium, and

established the autonomy of Rome. This pope initiated the dangerous

policy of playing one hostile force off against another with a view to

securing independence. He used the Lombards in his struggle with the

Greeks, leaving to his successors the duty of checking these unnatural

allies. This was accomplished by calling the Franks in against the

Lombards. Liudprand pressed hard, not only upon the Greek dominions of

the exarchate, but also upon Rome. His successors, Rachis and Aistolf,

attempted to follow the same game of conquest. But the popes, Gregory

III., Zachary and Stephen II., determining at any cost to espouse the

national cause and to aggrandize their own office, continued to rely

upon the Franks. Pippin twice crossed the Alps, and forced Aistolf to

relinquish his acquisitions, including Ravenna, Pentapolis, the coast

towns of Romagna and some cities in the duchy of Spoleto. These he

handed over to the pope of Rome. This donation of Pippin in 756

confirmed the papal see in the protectorate of the Italic party, and

conferred upon it sovereign rights. The virtual outcome of the contest

carried on by Rome since the year 726 with Byzantium and Pavia was to

place the popes in the position held by the Greek exarch, and to confirm

the limitation of the Lombard kingdom. We must, however, be cautious to

remember that the south of Italy was comparatively unaffected. The dukes

of the Greek empire and the Lombard dukes of Benevento, together with a

few autonomous commercial cities, still divided Italy below the Campagna

of Rome (see LOMBARDS).

Charles the Great and the Carolingians.

II. _Frankish Emperors._--The Franko-Papal alliance, which conferred a

crown on Pippin and sovereign rights upon the see of Rome, held within

itself that ideal of mutually supporting papacy and empire which

exercised so powerful an influence in medieval history. When Charles the

Great (Charlemagne) deposed his father-in-law Desiderius, the last

Lombard king, in 774, and when he received the circlet of the empire

from Leo III. at Rome in 800, he did but complete and ratify the compact

offered to his grandfather, Charles Martel, by Gregory III. The

relations between the new emperor and the pope were ill defined; and

this proved the source of infinite disasters to Italy and Europe in the

sequel. But for the moment each seemed necessary to the other; and that

sufficed. Charles took possession of the kingdom of Italy, as limited by

Pippin's settlement. The pope was confirmed in his rectorship of the

cities ceded by Aistolf, with the further understanding, tacit rather

than expressed, that, even as he had wrung these provinces for the

Italic people from both Greeks and Lombards, so in the future he might

claim the protectorate of such portions of Italy, external to the

kingdom, as he should be able to acquire. This, at any rate, seems to be

the meaning of that obscure re-settlement of the peninsula which Charles

effected. The kingdom of Italy, transmitted on his death by Charles the

Great, and afterwards confirmed to his grandson Lothar by the peace of

Verdun in 843, stretched from the Alps to Terracina. The duchy of

Benevento remained tributary, but independent. The cities of Gaeta and

Naples, Sicily and the so-called Theme of Lombardy in South Apulia and

Calabria, still recognized the Byzantine emperor. Venice stood aloof,

professing a nominal allegiance to the East. The parcels into which the

Lombards had divided the peninsula remained thus virtually unaltered,

except for the new authority acquired by the see of Rome.

Internally Charles left the affairs of the Italian kingdom much as he

found them, except that he appears to have pursued the policy of

breaking up the larger fiefs of the Lombards, substituting counts for

their dukes, and adding to the privileges of the bishops. We may reckon

these measures among the earliest advantages extended to the cities,

which still contained the bulk of the old Roman population, and which

were destined to intervene with decisive effect two centuries later in

Italian history. It should also here be noticed that the changes

introduced into the holding of the fiefs, whether by altering their

boundaries or substituting Frankish for Lombard vassals, were chief

among the causes why the feudal system took no permanent hold in Italy.

Feudalism was not at any time a national institution. The hierarchy of

dukes and marquises and counts consisted of foreign soldiers imposed on

the indigenous inhabitants; and the rapid succession of conquerors,

Lombards, Franks and Germans following each other at no long interval,

and each endeavouring to weaken the remaining strength of his

predecessor, prevented this alien hierarchy from acquiring fixity by

permanence of tenure. Among the many miseries inflicted upon Italy by

the frequent changes of her northern rulers, this at least may be

reckoned a blessing.

Frankish and Italian kings.

The Italians acknowledged eight kings of the house of Charles the Great,

ending in Charles the Fat, who was deposed in 888. After them followed

ten sovereigns, some of whom have been misnamed Italians by writers too

eager to catch at any resemblance of national glory for a people passive

in the hands of foreign masters. The truth is that no period in Italian

history was less really glorious than that which came to a close in 961

by Berengar II.'s cession of his rights to Otto the Great. It was a

period marked in the first place by the conquests of the Saracens, who

began to occupy Sicily early in the 9th century, overran Calabria and

Apulia, took Bari and threatened Rome. In the second place it was marked

by a restoration of the Greeks to power. In 890 they established

themselves again at Bari, and ruled the Theme of Lombardy by means of an

officer entitled Catapan. In the third place it was marked by a decline

of good government in Rome. Early in the 10th century the papacy fell

into the hands of a noble family, known eventually as the counts of

Tusculum, who almost succeeded in rendering the office hereditary, and

in uniting the civil and ecclesiastical functions of the city under a

single member of their house. It is not necessary to relate the scandals

of Marozia's and Theodora's female reign, the infamies of John XII. or

the intrigues which tended to convert Rome into a duchy. The most

important fact for the historian of Italy to notice is that during this

time the popes abandoned, not only their high duties as chiefs of

Christendom, but also their protectorate of Italian liberties. A fourth

humiliating episode in this period was the invasion of the Magyar

barbarians, who overran the north of Italy, and reduced its fairest

provinces to the condition of a wilderness. Anarchy and misery are

indeed the main features of that long space of time which elapsed

between the death of Charles the Great and the descent of Otto. Through

the almost impenetrable darkness and confusion we only discern this

much, that Italy was powerless to constitute herself a nation.

The discords which followed on the break-up of the Carolingian power,

and the weakness of the so-called Italian emperors, who were unable to

control the feudatories (marquises of Ivrea and Tuscany, dukes of Friuli

and Spoleto), from whose ranks they sprang, exposed Italy to

ever-increasing misrule. The country by this time had become thickly

covered over with castles, the seats of greater or lesser nobles, all of

whom were eager to detach themselves from strict allegiance to the

"Regno." The cities, exposed to pillage by Huns in the north and

Saracens in the south, and ravaged on the coast by Norse pirates,

asserted their right to enclose themselves with walls, and taught their

burghers the use of arms. Within the circuit of their ramparts, the

bishops already began to exercise authority in rivalry with the counts,

to whom, since the days of Theodoric, had been entrusted the government

of the Italian burghs. Agreeably to feudal customs, these nobles, as

they grew in power, retired from the town, and built themselves

fortresses on points of vantage in the neighbourhood. Thus the titular

king of Italy found himself simultaneously at war with those great

vassals who had chosen him from their own class, with the turbulent

factions of the Roman aristocracy, with unruly bishops in the growing

cities and with the multitude of minor counts and barons who occupied

the open lands, and who changed sides according to the interests of the

moment. The last king of the quasi-Italian succession, Berengar II.,

marquis of Ivrea (951-961), made a vigorous effort to restore the

authority of the regno; and had he succeeded, it is not impossible that

now at the last moment Italy might have become an independent nation.

But this attempt at unification was reckoned to Berengar for a crime. He

only won the hatred of all classes, and was represented by the obscure

annalists of that period as an oppressor of the church and a remorseless

tyrant. In Italy, divided between feudal nobles and almost hereditary

ecclesiastics, of foreign blood and alien sympathies, there was no

national feeling. Berengar stood alone against a multitude, unanimous in

their intolerance of discipline. His predecessor in the kingdom, Lothar,

had left a young and beautiful widow, Adelheid. Berengar imprisoned her

upon the Lake of Como, and threatened her with a forced marriage to his

son Adalbert. She escaped to the castle of Canossa, where the great

count of Tuscany espoused her cause, and appealed in her behalf to Otto

the Saxon. The king of Germany descended into Italy, and took Adelheid

in marriage. After this episode Berengar was more discredited and

impotent than ever. In the extremity of his fortunes he had recourse

himself to Otto, making a formal cession of the Italian kingdom, in his

own name and that of his son Adalbert, to the Saxon as his overlord. By

this slender tie the crown of Italy was joined to that of Germany; and

the formal right of the elected king of Germany to be considered king of

Italy and emperor may be held to have accrued from this epoch.

Saxon and Franconian emperors.

III. _The German Emperors._--Berengar gained nothing by his act of

obedience to Otto. The great Italian nobles, in their turn, appealed to

Germany. Otto entered Lombardy in 961, deposed Berengar, assumed the

crown in San Ambrogio at Milan, and in 962 was proclaimed emperor by

John XII. at Rome. Henceforward Italy changed masters according as one

or other of the German families assumed supremacy beyond the Alps. It is

one of the strongest instances furnished by history of the fascination

exercised by an idea that the Italians themselves should have grown to

glory in this dependence of their nation upon Caesars who had nothing

but a name in common with the Roman Imperator of the past.

The first thing we have to notice in this revolution which placed Otto

the Great upon the imperial throne is that the Italian kingdom, founded

by the Lombards, recognized by the Franks and recently claimed by

eminent Italian feudatories, virtually ceased to exist. It was merged in

the German kingdom; and, since for the German princes Germany was of

necessity their first care, Italy from this time forward began to be

left more and more to herself. The central authority of Pavia had always

been weak; the regno had proved insufficient to combine the nation. But

now even that shadow of union disappeared, and the Italians were

abandoned to the slowly working influences which tended to divide them

into separate states. The most brilliant period of their chequered

history, the period which includes the rise of communes, the exchange of

municipal liberty for despotism and the gradual discrimination of the

five great powers (Milan, Venice, Florence, the Papacy and the kingdom

of Naples), now begins. Among the centrifugal forces which determined

the future of the Italian race must be reckoned, first and foremost, the

new spirit of municipal independence. We have seen how the cities

enclosed themselves with walls, and how the bishops defined their

authority against that of the counts. Otto encouraged this revolution by

placing the enclosures of the chief burghs beyond the jurisdiction of

the counts. Within those precincts the bishops and the citizens were

independent of all feudal masters but the emperor. He further broke the

power of the great vassals by redivisions of their feuds, and by the

creation of new marches which he assigned to his German followers. In

this way, owing to the dislocation of the ancient aristocracy, to the

enlarged jurisdiction of a power so democratic as the episcopate, and to

the increased privileges of the burghs, feudalism received a powerful

check in Italy. The Italian people, that people which gave to the world

the commerce and the arts of Florence, was not indeed as yet apparent.

But the conditions under which it could arise, casting from itself all

foreign and feudal trammels, recognizing its true past in ancient Rome,

and reconstructing a civility out of the ruins of those glorious

memories, were now at last granted. The nobles from this time forward

retired into the country and the mountains, fortified themselves in

strong places outside the cities, and gave their best attention to

fostering the rural population. Within the cities and upon the open

lands the Italians, in this and the next century, doubled, trebled and

quadrupled their numbers. A race was formed strong enough to keep the

empire itself in check, strong enough, except for its own internecine

contests, to have formed a nation equal to its happier neighbours.

The recent scandals of the papacy induced Otto to deprive the Romans of

their right to elect popes. But when he died in 973, his son Otto II.

(married to Theophano of the imperial Byzantine house) and his grandson,

Otto III., who descended into Italy in 996, found that the affairs of

Rome and of the southern provinces were more than even their imperial

powers could cope with. The faction of the counts of Tusculum raised its

head from time to time in the Eternal City, and Rome still claimed to be

a commonwealth. Otto III.'s untimely death in 1002 introduced new

discords. Rome fell once more into the hands of her nobles. The Lombards

chose Ardoin, marquis of Ivrea, for king, and Pavia supported his claims

against those of Henry of Bavaria, who had been elected in Germany.

Milan sided with Henry; and this is perhaps the first eminent instance

of cities being reckoned powerful allies in the Italian disputes of

sovereigns. It is also the first instance of that bitter feud between

the two great capitals of Lombardy, a feud rooted in ancient antipathies

between the Roman population of Mediolanum and the Lombard garrison of

Alboin's successors, which proved so disastrous to the national cause.

Ardoin retired to a monastery, where he died in 1015. Henry nearly

destroyed Pavia, was crowned in Rome and died in 1024. After this event

Heribert, the archbishop of Milan, invited Conrad, the Franconian king

of Germany, into Italy, and crowned him with the iron crown of the

kingdom.

Heribert and the Lombard burghs.

The intervention of this man, Heribert, compels us to turn a closer

glance upon the cities of North Italy. It is here, at the present epoch

and for the next two centuries, that the pith and nerve of the Italian

nation must be sought; and among the burghs of Lombardy, Milan, the

eldest daughter of ancient Rome, assumes the lead. In Milan we hear for

the first time the word _Comune_. In Milan the citizens first form

themselves into a _Parlamento_. In Milan the archbishop organizes the

hitherto voiceless, defenceless population into a community capable of

expressing its needs, and an army ready to maintain its rights. To

Heribert is attributed the invention of the _Carroccio_, which played so

singular and important a part in the warfare of Italian cities. A huge

car drawn by oxen, bearing the standard of the burgh, and carrying an

altar with the host, this carroccio, like the ark of the Israelites,

formed a rallying point in battle, and reminded the armed artisans that

they had a city and a church to fight for. That Heribert's device proved

effectual in raising the spirit of his burghers, and consolidating them

into a formidable band of warriors, is shown by the fact that it was

speedily adopted in all the free cities. It must not, however, be

supposed that at this epoch the liberties of the burghs were fully

developed. The mass of the people remained unrepresented in the

government; and even if the consuls existed in the days of Heribert,

they were but humble legal officers, transacting business for their

constituents in the courts of the bishop and his viscount. It still

needed nearly a century of struggle to render the burghers independent

of lordship, with a fully organized commune, self-governed in its

several assemblies. While making these reservations, it is at the same

time right to observe that certain Italian communities were more

advanced upon the path of independence than others. This is specially

the case with the maritime ports. Not to mention Venice, which has not

yet entered the Italian community, and remains a Greek free city, Genoa

and Pisa were rapidly rising into ill-defined autonomy. Their command of

fleets gave them incontestable advantages, as when, for instance, Otto

II. employed the Pisans in 980 against the Greeks in Lower Italy, and

the Pisans and Genoese together attacked the Saracens of Sardinia in

1017. Still, speaking generally, the age of independence for the burghs

had only begun when Heribert from Milan undertook the earliest

organization of a force that was to become paramount in peace and war.

Rome.

Next to Milan, and from the point of view of general politics even more

than Milan, Rome now claims attention. The destinies of Italy depended

upon the character which the see of St Peter should assume. Even the

liberties of her republics in the north hung on the issue of a contest

which in the 11th and 12th centuries shook Europe to its farthest

boundaries. So fatally were the internal affairs of that magnificent but

unhappy country bound up with concerns which brought the forces of the

civilized world into play. Her ancient prestige, her geographical

position and the intellectual primacy of her most noble children

rendered Italy the battleground of principles that set all Christendom

in motion, and by the clash of which she found herself for ever

afterwards divided. During the reign of Conrad II., the party of the

counts of Tusculum revived in Rome; and Crescentius, claiming the title

of consul in the imperial city, sought once more to control the election

of the popes. When Henry III., the son of Conrad, entered Italy in 1046,

he found three popes in Rome. These he abolished, and, taking the

appointment into his own hands, gave German bishops to the see. The

policy thus initiated upon the precedent laid down by Otto the Great was

a remedy for pressing evils. It saved Rome from becoming a duchy in the

hands of the Tusculum house. But it neither raised the prestige of the

papacy, nor could it satisfy the Italians, who rightly regarded the

Roman see as theirs. These German popes were short-lived and

inefficient. Their appointment, according to notions which defined

themselves within the church at this epoch, was simoniacal; and during

the long minority of Henry IV., who succeeded his father in 1056, the

terrible Tuscan monk, Hildebrand of Soana, forged weapons which he used

with deadly effect against the presumption of the empire. The condition

of the church seemed desperate, unless it could be purged of crying

scandals--of the subjection of the papacy to the great Roman nobles, of

its subordination to the German emperor and of its internal

demoralization. It was Hildebrand's policy throughout three papacies,

during which he controlled the counsels of the Vatican, and before he

himself assumed the tiara, to prepare the mind of Italy and Europe for a

mighty change. His programme included these three points: (1) the

celibacy of the clergy; (2) the abolition of ecclesiastical appointments

made by the secular authority; (3) the vesting of the papal election in

the hands of the Roman clergy and people, presided over by the curia of

cardinals. How Hildebrand paved the way for these reforms during the

pontificates of Nicholas II. and Alexander II., how he succeeded in

raising the papal office from the depths of degradation and subjection

to illimitable sway over the minds of men in Europe, and how his warfare

with the empire established on a solid basis the still doubtful

independence of the Italian burghs, renewing the long neglected

protectorate of the Italian race, and bequeathing to his successors a

national policy which had been forgotten by the popes since his great

predecessor Gregory II., forms a chapter in European history which must

now be interrupted. We have to follow the fortunes of unexpected allies,

upon whom in no small measure his success depended.

Norman conquest of the Two Sicilies.

In order to maintain some thread of continuity through the perplexed and

tangled vicissitudes of the Italian race, it has been necessary to

disregard those provinces which did not immediately contribute to the

formation of its history. For this reason we have left the whole of the

south up to the present point unnoticed. Sicily in the hands of the

Mussulmans, the Theme of Lombardy abandoned to the weak suzerainty of

the Greek catapans, the Lombard duchy of Benevento slowly falling to

pieces and the maritime republics of Naples, Gaeta and Amalfi extending

their influence by commerce in the Mediterranean, were in effect

detached from the Italian regno, beyond the jurisidiction of Rome,

included in no parcel of Italy proper. But now the moment had arrived

when this vast group of provinces, forming the future kingdom of the Two

Sicilies, was about to enter definitely and decisively within the bounds

of the Italian community. Some Norman adventurers, on pilgrimage to St

Michael's shrine on Monte Gargano, lent their swords in 1017 to the

Lombard cities of Apulia against the Greeks. Twelve years later we find

the Normans settled at Aversa under their Count Rainulf. From this

station as a centre the little band of adventurers, playing the Greeks

off against the Lombards, and the Lombards against the Greeks, spread

their power in all directions, until they made themselves the most

considerable force in southern Italy. William of Hauteville was

proclaimed count of Apulia. His half-brother, Robert Wiskard or

Guiscard, after defeating the papal troops at Civitella in 1053,

received from Leo IX. the investiture of all present and future

conquests in Apulia, Calabria and Sicily, which he agreed to hold as

fiefs of the Holy See. Nicholas II. ratified this grant, and confirmed

the title of count. Having consolidated their possessions on the

mainland, the Normans, under Robert Guiscard's brother, the great Count

Roger, undertook the conquest of Sicily in 1060. After a prolonged

struggle of thirty years, they wrested the whole island from the

Saracens; and Roger, dying in 1101, bequeathed to his son Roger a

kingdom in Calabria and Sicily second to none in Europe for wealth and

magnificence. This, while the elder branch of the Hauteville family

still held the title and domains of the Apulian duchy; but in 1127, upon

the death of his cousin Duke William, Roger united the whole of the

future realm. In 1130 he assumed the style of king of Sicily, inscribing

upon his sword the famous hexameter--

"Appulus et Calaber Siculus mihi servit et Afer."

This Norman conquest of the two Sicilies forms the most romantic episode

in medieval Italian history. By the consolidation of Apulia, Calabria

and Sicily into a powerful kingdom, by checking the growth of the

maritime republics and by recognizing the over-lordship of the papal

see, the house of Hauteville influenced the destinies of Italy with more

effect than any of the princes who had previously dealt with any portion

of the peninsula. Their kingdom, though Naples was from time to time

separated from Sicily, never quite lost the cohesion they had given it;

and all the disturbances of equilibrium in Italy were due in after days

to papal manipulation of the rights acquired by Robert Guiscard's act of

homage. The southern regno, in the hands of the popes, proved an

insurmountable obstacle to the unification of Italy, led to French

interference in Italian affairs, introduced the Spaniard and maintained

in those rich southern provinces the reality of feudal sovereignty long

after this alien element had been eliminated from the rest of Italy (see

NORMANS; SICILY: _History_).

War of investitures.

For the sake of clearness, we have anticipated the course of events by

nearly a century. We must now return to the date of Hildebrand's

elevation to the papacy in 1073, when he chose the memorable name of

Gregory VII. In the next year after his election Hildebrand convened a

council, and passed measures enforcing the celibacy of the clergy. In

1075 he caused the investiture of ecclesiastical dignitaries by secular

potentates of any degree to be condemned. These two reforms, striking at

the most cherished privileges and most deeply-rooted self-indulgences of

the aristocratic caste in Europe, inflamed the bitterest hostility.

Henry IV., king of Germany, but not crowned emperor, convened a diet in

the following year at Worms, where Gregory was deposed and

excommunicated. The pope followed with a counter excommunication, far

more formidable, releasing the king's subjects from their oaths of

allegiance. War was thus declared between the two chiefs of western

Christendom, that war of investitures which out-lasted the lives of both

Gregory and Henry, and was not terminated till the year 1122. The

dramatic episodes of this struggle are too well known to be enlarged

upon. In his single-handed duel with the strength of Germany, Gregory

received material assistance from the Countess Matilda of Tuscany. She

was the last heiress of the great house of Canossa, whose fiefs

stretched from Mantua across Lombardy, passed the Apennines, included

the Tuscan plains, and embraced a portion of the duchy of Spoleto. It

was in her castle of Canossa that Henry IV. performed his three days'

penance in the winter of 1077; and there she made the cession of her

vast domains to the church. That cession, renewed after the death of

Gregory to his successors, conferred upon the popes indefinite rights,

of which they afterwards availed themselves in the consolidation of

their temporal power. Matilda died in the year 1115. Gregory had passed

before her from the scene of his contest, an exile at Salerno, whither

Robert Guiscard carried him in 1084 from the anarchy of rebellious Rome.

With unbroken spirit, though the objects of his life were unattained,

though Italy and Europe had been thrown into confusion, and the issue of

the conflict was still doubtful, Gregory expired in 1085 with these

words on his lips: "I loved justice, I hated iniquity, therefore in

banishment I die."

The greatest of the popes thus breathed his last; but the new spirit he

had communicated to the papacy was not destined to expire with him.

Gregory's immediate successors, Victor III., Urban II. and Paschal II.,

carried on his struggle with Henry IV. and his imperial antipopes,

encouraging the emperor's son to rebel against him, and stirring up

Europe for the first crusade. When Henry IV. died, his own son's

prisoner, in 1106, Henry V. crossed the Alps, entered Rome, wrung the

imperial coronation from Paschal II. and compelled the pope to grant his

claims on the investitures. Scarcely had he returned to Germany when the

Lateran disavowed all that the pope had done, on the score that it had

been extorted by force. France sided with the church. Germany rejected

the bull of investiture. A new descent into Italy, a new seizure of

Rome, proved of no avail. The emperor's real weakness was in Germany,

where his subjects openly expressed their discontent. He at last

abandoned the contest which had distracted Europe. By the concordat of

Worms, 1122, the emperor surrendered the right of investiture by ring

and staff, and granted the right of election to the clergy. The popes

were henceforth to be chosen by the cardinals, the bishops by the

chapters subject to the pope's approval. On the other hand the pope

ceded to the emperor the right of investiture by the sceptre. But the

main issue of the struggle was not in these details of ecclesiastical

government; principles had been at stake far deeper and more widely

reaching. The respective relations of pope and emperor, ill-defined in

the compact between Charles the Great and Leo III., were brought in

question, and the two chief potentates of Christendom, no longer tacitly

concordant, stood against each other in irreconcilable rivalry. Upon

this point, though the battle seemed to be a drawn one, the popes were

really victors. They remained independent of the emperor, but the

emperor had still to seek the crown at their hands. The pretensions of

Otto the Great and Henry III. to make popes were gone for ever (see

PAPACY; INVESTITURE).

Rise of free cities.

IV. _Age of the Communes._--The final gainers, however, by the war of

investitures were the Italians. In the first place, from this time

forward, owing to the election of popes by the Roman curia, the Holy See

remained in the hands of Italians; and this, though it was by no means

an unmixed good, was a great glory to the nation. In the next place, the

antagonism of the popes to the emperors, which became hereditary in the

Holy College, forced the former to assume the protectorate of the

national cause. But by far the greatest profit the Italians reaped was

the emancipation of their burghs. During the forty-seven years' war,

when pope and emperor were respectively bidding for their alliance, and

offering concessions to secure their support, the communes grew in

self-reliance, strength and liberty. As the bishops had helped to free

them from subservience to their feudal masters, so the war of

investitures relieved them of dependence on their bishops. The age of

real autonomy, signalized by the supremacy of consuls in the cities, had

arrived.

In the republics, as we begin to know them after the war of

investitures, government was carried on by officers called consuls,

varying in number according to custom and according to the division of

the town into districts. These magistrates, as we have already seen,

were originally appointed to control and protect the humbler classes.

But, in proportion as the people gained more power in the field the

consuls rose into importance, superseded the bishops and began to

represent the city in transactions with its neighbours. Popes and

emperors who needed the assistance of a city, had to seek it from the

consuls, and thus these officers gradually converted an obscure and

indefinite authority into what resembles the presidency of a

commonwealth. They were supported by a deliberative assembly, called

_credenza_, chosen from the more distinguished citizens. In addition to

this privy council, we find a _gran consiglio_, consisting of the

burghers who had established the right to interfere immediately in

public affairs, and a still larger assembly called _parlamento_, which

included the whole adult population. Though the institutions of the

communes varied in different localities, this is the type to which they

all approximated. It will be perceived that the type was rather

oligarchical than strictly democratic. Between the parlamento and the

consuls with their privy council, or credenza, was interposed the gran

consiglio of privileged burghers. These formed the aristocracy of the

town, who by their wealth and birth held its affairs within their

custody. There is good reason to believe that, when the term _popolo_

occurs, it refers to this body and not to the whole mass of the

population. The _comune_ included the entire city--bishop, consuls,

oligarchy, councils, handicraftsmen, proletariate. The _popolo_ was the

governing or upper class. It was almost inevitable in the transition

from feudalism to democracy that this intermediate ground should be

traversed; and the peculiar Italian phrases, _primo popolo_, _secondo

popolo_, _terzo popolo_, and so forth, indicate successive changes,

whereby the oligarchy passed from one stage to another in its progress

toward absorption in democracy or tyranny.

Under their consuls the Italian burghs rose to a great height of

prosperity and splendour. Pisa built her Duomo. Milan undertook the

irrigation works which enriched the soil of Lombardy for ever. Massive

walls, substantial edifices, commodious seaports, good roads, were the

benefits conferred by this new government on Italy. It is also to be

noticed that the people now began to be conscious of their past. They

recognized the fact that their blood was Latin as distinguished from

Teutonic, and that they must look to ancient Rome for those memories

which constitute a people's nationality. At this epoch the study of

Roman law received a new impulse, and this is the real meaning of the

legend that Pisa, glorious through her consuls, brought the pandects in

a single codex from Amalfi. The very name consul, no less than the

Romanizing character of the best architecture of the time, points to the

same revival of antiquity.

Republic in Rome.

The rise of the Lombard communes produced a sympathetic revolution in

Rome, which deserves to be mentioned in this place. A monk, named Arnold

of Brescia, animated with the spirit of the Milanese, stirred up the

Romans to shake off the temporal sway of their bishop. He attempted, in

fact, upon a grand scale what was being slowly and quietly effected in

the northern cities. Rome, ever mindful of her unique past, listened to

Arnold's preaching. A senate was established, and the republic was

proclaimed. The title of patrician was revived and offered to Conrad,

king of Italy, but not crowned emperor. Conrad refused it, and the

Romans conferred it upon one of their own nobles. Though these

institutions borrowed high-sounding titles from antiquity, they were in

reality imitations of the Lombard civic system. The patrician stood for

the consuls. The senate, composed of nobles, represented the credenza

and the gran consiglio. The pope was unable to check this revolution,

which is now chiefly interesting as further proof of the insurgence of

the Latin as against the feudal elements in Italy at this period (see

ROME: _History_).

Municipal wars.

Though the communes gained so much by the war of investitures, the

division of the country between the pope's and emperor's parties was no

small price to pay for independence. It inflicted upon Italy the

ineradicable curse of party-warfare, setting city against city, house

against house, and rendering concordant action for a national end

impossible. No sooner had the compromise of the investitures been

concluded than it was manifest that the burghers of the new enfranchised

communes were resolved to turn their arms against each other. We seek in

vain an obvious motive for each separate quarrel. All we know for

certain is that, at this epoch, Rome attempts to ruin Tivoli, and Venice

Pisa; Milan fights with Cremona, Cremona with Crema, Pavia with Verona,

Verona with Padua, Piacenza with Parma, Modena and Reggio with Bologna,

Bologna and Faenza with Ravenna and Imola, Florence and Pisa with Lucca

and Siena, and so on through the whole list of cities. The nearer the

neighbours, the more rancorous and internecine is the strife; and, as in

all cases where animosity is deadly and no grave local causes of dispute

are apparent, we are bound to conclude that some deeply-seated permanent

uneasiness goaded these fast growing communities into rivalry. Italy

was, in fact, too small for her children. As the towns expanded, they

perceived that they must mutually exclude each other. They fought for

bare existence, for primacy in commerce, for the command of seaports,

for the keys of mountain passes, for rivers, roads and all the avenues

of wealth and plenty. The pope's cause and the emperor's cause were of

comparatively little moment to Italian burghers; and the names of Guelph

and Ghibelline, which before long began to be heard in every street, on

every market-place, had no meaning for them. These watchwords are said

to have arisen in Germany during the disputed succession of the empire

between 1135 and 1152, when the Welfs of Bavaria opposed the Swabian

princes of Waiblingen origin. But in Italy, although they were severally

identified with the papal and imperial parties, they really served as

symbols for jealousies which altered in complexion from time to time and

place to place, expressing more than antagonistic political principles,

and involving differences vital enough to split the social fabric to its

foundation.

Swabian emperors.

Frederick Barbarossa and the Lombard cities.

Under the imperial rule of Lothar the Saxon (1125-1137) and Conrad the

Swabian (1138-1152), these civil wars increased in violence owing to the

absence of authority. Neither Lothar nor Conrad was strong at home; the

former had no influence in Italy, and the latter never entered Italy at

all. But when Conrad died, the electors chose his nephew Frederick,

surnamed Barbarossa, who united the rival honours of Welf and

Waiblingen, to succeed him; and it was soon obvious that the empire had

a master powerful of brain and firm of will. Frederick immediately

determined to reassert the imperial rights in his southern provinces,

and to check the warfare of the burghs. When he first crossed the Alps

in 1154, Lombardy was, roughly speaking, divided between two parties,

the one headed by Pavia professing loyalty to the empire, the other

headed by Milan ready to oppose its claims. The municipal animosities of

the last quarter of a century gave substance to these factions; yet

neither the imperial nor the anti-imperial party had any real community

of interest with Frederick. He came to supersede self-government by

consuls, to deprive the cities of the privilege of making war on their

own account and to extort his regalian rights of forage, food and

lodging for his armies. It was only the habit of inter-urban jealousy

which prevented the communes from at once combining to resist demands

which threatened their liberty of action, and would leave them passive

at the pleasure of a foreign master. The diet was opened at Roncaglia

near Piacenza, where Frederick listened to the complaints of Como and

Lodi against Milan, of Pavia against Tortona and of the marquis of

Montferrat against Asti and Chieri. The plaintiffs in each case were

imperialists; and Frederick's first action was to redress their supposed

grievances. He laid waste Chieri, Asti and Tortona, then took the

Lombard crown at Pavia, and, reserving Milan for a future day, passed

southward to Rome. Outside the gates of Rome he was met by a deputation

from the senate he had come to supersede, who addressed him in words

memorable for expressing the republican spirit of new Italy face to face

with autocratic feudalism: "Thou wast a stranger, I have made thee a

citizen"; it is Rome who speaks: "Thou earnest as an alien from beyond

the Alps, I have conferred on thee the principality." Moved only to

scorn and indignation by the rhetoric of these presumptuous enthusiasts,

Frederick marched into the Leonine city, and took the imperial crown

from the hands of Adrian IV. In return for this compliance, the emperor

delivered over to the pope his troublesome rival Arnold of Brescia, who

was burned alive by Nicholas Breakspear, the only English successor of

St Peter. The gates of Rome itself were shut against Frederick; and even

on this first occasion his good understanding with Adrian began to

suffer. The points of dispute between them related mainly to Matilda's

bequest, and to the kingdom of Sicily, which the pope had rendered

independent of the empire by renewing its investiture in the name of the

Holy See. In truth, the papacy and the empire had become irreconcilable.

Each claimed illimitable authority, and neither was content to abide

within such limits as would have secured a mutual tolerance. Having

obtained his coronation, Frederick withdrew to Germany, while Milan

prepared herself against the storm which threatened. In the ensuing

struggle with the empire, that great city rose to the altitude of

patriotic heroism. By their sufferings no less than by their deeds of

daring, her citizens showed themselves to be sublime, devoted and

disinterested, winning the purest laurels which give lustre to Italian

story. Almost in Frederick's presence, they rebuilt Tortona, punished

Pavia, Lodi, Cremona and the marquis of Montferrat. Then they fortified

the Adda and Ticino, and waited for the emperor's next descent. He came

in 1158 with a large army, overran Lombardy, raised his imperial allies,

and sat down before the walls of Milan. Famine forced the burghers to

partial obedience, and Frederick held a victorious diet at Roncaglia.

Here the jurists of Bologna appeared, armed with their new lore of Roman

law, and expounded Justinian's code in the interests of the German

empire. It was now seen how the absolutist doctrines of autocracy

developed in Justinian's age at Byzantium would bear fruits in the

development of an imperial idea, which was destined to be the fatal

mirage of medieval Italy. Frederick placed judges of his own

appointment, with the title of podestà, in all the Lombard communes; and

this stretch of his authority, while it exacerbated his foes, forced

even his friends to join their ranks against him. The war, meanwhile,

dragged on. Crema yielded after an heroic siege in 1160, and was

abandoned to the cruelty of its fierce rival Cremona. Milan was invested

in 1161, starved into capitulation after nine months' resistance, and

given up to total destruction by the Italian imperialists of Frederick's

army, so stained and tarnished with the vindictive passions of municipal

rivalry was even this, the one great glorious strife of Italian annals.

Having ruined his rebellious city, but not tamed her spirit, Frederick

withdrew across the Alps. But, in the interval between his second and

third visit, a league was formed against him in north-eastern Lombardy.

Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Treviso, Venice entered into a compact to defend

their liberties; and when he came again in 1163 with a brilliant staff

of German knights, the imperial cities refused to join his standards.

This was the first and ominous sign of a coming change.

Lombard League.

Meanwhile the election of Alexander III. to the papacy in 1159 added a

powerful ally to the republican party. Opposed by an anti-pope whom the

emperor favoured, Alexander found it was his truest policy to rely for

support upon the anti-imperialist communes. They in return gladly

accepted a champion who lent them the prestige and influence of the

church. When Frederick once more crossed the Alps in 1166, he advanced

on Rome, and besieged Alexander in the Coliseum. But the affairs of

Lombardy left him no leisure to persecute a recalcitrant pontiff. In

April 1167 a new league was formed between Cremona, Bergamo, Brescia,

Mantua and Ferrara. In December of the same year this league allied

itself with the elder Veronese league, and received the addition of

Milan, Lodi, Piacenza, Parma, Modena and Bologna. The famous league of

Lombard cities, styled Concordia in its acts of settlement, was now

established. Novara, Vercelli, Asti and Tortona swelled its ranks; only

Pavia and Montferrat remained imperialist between the Alps and

Apennines. Frederick fled for his life by the Mont Cenis, and in 1168

the town of Alessandria was erected to keep Pavia and the marquisate in

check. In the emperor's absence, Ravenna, Rimini, Imola and Forli joined

the league, which now called itself the "Society of Venice, Lombardy,

the March, Romagna and Alessandria." For the fifth time, in 1174,

Frederick entered his rebellious dominions. The fortress town of

Alessandria stopped his progress with those mud walls contemptuously

named "of straw," while the forces of the league assembled at Modena and

obliged him to raise the siege. In the spring of 1176 Frederick

threatened Milan. His army found itself a little to the north of the

town near the village of Legnano, when the troops of the city, assisted

only by a few allies from Piacenza, Verona, Brescia, Novara and

Vercelli, met and overwhelmed it. The victory was complete. Frederick

escaped alone to Pavia, whence he opened negotiations with Alexander. In

consequence of these transactions, he was suffered to betake himself

unharmed to Venice. Here, as upon neutral ground, the emperor met the

pope, and a truce for six years was concluded with the Lombard burghs.

Looking back from the vantage-ground of history upon the issue of this

long struggle, we are struck with the small results which satisfied the

Lombard communes. They had humbled and utterly defeated their foreign

lord. They had proved their strength in combination. Yet neither the

acts by which their league was ratified nor the terms negotiated for

them by their patron Alexander evince the smallest desire of what we now

understand as national independence. The name of Italy is never

mentioned. The supremacy of the emperor is not called in question. The

conception of a permanent confederation, bound together in Offensive and

defensive alliance for common objects, has not occurred to these hard

fighters and stubborn asserters of their civic privileges. All they

claim is municipal autonomy; the right to manage their own affairs

within the city walls, to fight their battles as they choose, and to

follow their several ends unchecked. It is vain to lament that, when

they might have now established Italian independence upon a secure

basis, they chose local and municipal privileges. Their mutual

jealousies, combined with the prestige of the empire, and possibly with

the selfishness of the pope, who had secured his own position, and was

not likely to foster a national spirit that would have threatened the

ecclesiastical supremacy, deprived the Italians of the only great

opportunity they ever had of forming themselves into a powerful nation.

Peace of Constance.

When the truce expired in 1183, a permanent peace was ratified at

Constance. The intervening years had been spent by the Lombards, not in

consolidating their union, but in attempting to secure special

privileges for their several cities. Alessandria della Paglia, glorious

by her resistance to the emperor in 1174, had even changed her name to

Cesarea! The signatories of the peace of Constance were divided between

leaguers and imperialists. On the one side we find Vercelli, Novara,

Milan, Lodi, Bergamo, Brescia, Mantua, Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Treviso,

Bologna, Faenza, Modena, Reggio, Parma, Piacenza; on the other, Pavia,

Genoa, Alba, Cremona, Como, Tortona, Asti, Cesarea. Venice, who had not

yet entered the Italian community, is conspicuous by her absence.

According to the terms of this treaty, the communes were confirmed in

their right of self-government by consuls, and their right of warfare.

The emperor retained the supreme courts of appeal within the cities, and

his claim for sustenance at their expense when he came into Italy.

War of cities against nobles.

The privileges confirmed to the Lombard cities by the peace of Constance

were extended to Tuscany, where Florence, having ruined Fiesole, had

begun her career of freedom and prosperity. The next great chapter in

the history of Italian evolution is the war of the burghs against the

nobles. The consular cities were everywhere surrounded by castles; and,

though the feudal lords had been weakened by the events of the preceding

centuries, they continued to be formidable enemies. It was, for

instance, necessary to the well-being of the towns that they should

possess territory round their walls, and this had to be wrested from the

nobles. We cannot linger over the details of this warfare. It must

suffice to say that, partly by mortgaging their property to rich

burghers, partly by entering the service of the cities as _condottieri_

(mercenary leaders), partly by espousing the cause of one town against

another, and partly by forced submission after the siege of their strong

places, the counts were gradually brought into connexion of dependence

on the communes. These, in their turn, forced the nobles to leave their

castles, and to reside for at least a portion of each year within the

walls. By these measures the counts became citizens, the rural

population ceased to rank as serfs, and the Italo-Roman population of

the towns absorbed into itself the remnants of Franks, Germans and other

foreign stocks. It would be impossible to exaggerate the importance of

this revolution, which ended by destroying the last vestige of

feudality, and prepared that common Italian people which afterwards

distinguished itself by the creation of European culture. But, like all

the vicissitudes, of the Italian race, while it was a decided step

forward in one direction, it introduced a new source of discord. The

associated nobles proved ill neighbours to the peaceable citizens. They

fortified their houses, retained their military habits, defied the

consuls, and carried on feuds in the streets and squares. The war

against the castles became a war against the palaces; and the system of

government by consuls proved inefficient to control the clashing

elements within the state. This led to the establishment of podestàs,

who represented a compromise between two radically hostile parties in

the city, and whose business it was to arbitrate and keep the peace

between them. Invariably a foreigner, elected for a year with power of

life and death and control of the armed force, but subject to a strict

account at the expiration of his office, the podestà might be compared

to a dictator invested with limited authority. His title was derived

from that of Frederick Barbarossa's judges; but he had no dependence on

the empire. The citizens chose him, and voluntarily submitted to his

rule. The podestà marks an essentially transitional state in civic

government, and his intervention paved the way for despotism.

Innocent III.

The thirty years which elapsed between Frederick Barbarossa's death in

1190 and the coronation of his grandson Frederick II. in 1220 form one

of the most momentous epochs in Italian history. Barbarossa, perceiving

the advantage that would accrue to his house if he could join the crown

of Sicily to that of Germany, and thus deprive the popes of their allies

in Lower Italy, procured the marriage of his son Henry VI. to Constance,

daughter of King Roger, and heiress of the Hauteville dynasty. When

William II., the last monarch of the Norman race, died, Henry VI.

claimed that kingdom in his wife's right, and was recognized in 1194.

Three years afterwards he died, leaving a son, Frederick, to the care of

Constance, who in her turn died in 1198, bequeathing the young prince,

already crowned king of Germany, to the guardianship of Innocent III. It

was bold policy to confide Frederick to his greatest enemy and rival;

but the pope honourably discharged his duty, until his ward outgrew the

years of tutelage, and became a fair mark for ecclesiastical hostility.

Frederick's long minority was occupied by Innocent's pontificate. Among

the principal events of that reign must be reckoned the foundation of

the two orders, Franciscan and Dominican, who were destined to form a

militia for the holy see in conflict with the empire and the heretics of

Lombardy. A second great event was the fourth crusade, undertaken in

1198, which established the naval and commercial supremacy of the

Italians in the Mediterranean. The Venetians, who contracted for the

transport of the crusaders, and whose blind doge Dandolo was first to

land in Constantinople, received one-half and one-fourth of the divided

Greek empire for their spoils. The Venetian ascendancy in the Levant

dates from this epoch; for, though the republic had no power to occupy

all the domains ceded to it, Candia was taken, together with several

small islands and stations on the mainland. The formation of a Latin

empire in the East increased the pope's prestige; while at home it was

his policy to organize Countess Matilda's heritage by the formation of

Guelph leagues, over which he presided. This is the meaning of the three

leagues, in the March, in the duchy of Spoleto and in Tuscany, which now

combined the chief cities of the papal territory into allies of the holy

see. From the Tuscan league Pisa, consistently Ghibelline, stood aloof.

Rome itself again at this epoch established a republic, with which

Innocent would not or could not interfere. The thirteen districts in

their council nominated four _caporioni_, who acted in concert with a

_senator_, appointed, like the podestà of other cities, for supreme

judicial functions. Meanwhile the Guelph and Ghibelline factions were

beginning to divide Italy into minute parcels. Not only did commune

range itself against commune under the two rival flags, but party rose

up against party within the city walls. The introduction of the factions

into Florence in 1215, owing to a private quarrel between the

Buondelmonti, Amidei and Donati, is a celebrated instance of what was

happening in every burgh.

Frederick II. Emperor.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Italy" to "Jacobite Church" Volume 15, Slice 1 · 第 3 / 10 章