For fuller details the reader must be referred to the separate articles already mentioned, and toIguvium,Picenum,Osca Lingua,Marsi,Aequi,SiculiandLiguria. Such archaeological evidence as can be connected with the linguistic data will there be discussed.
For fuller details the reader must be referred to the separate articles already mentioned, and toIguvium,Picenum,Osca Lingua,Marsi,Aequi,SiculiandLiguria. 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 (seeLatium).
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 riverAriminus was substituted for the far-famed Rubicon as its limit on the Adriatic.
(Click to enlarge top section.)
(Click to enlarge bottom section.)
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.
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,Roads.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, inPapers 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 centuryB.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 187B.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 articlesRome,Latium, &c.
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 articlesRome,Latium, &c.
(T. As.)
C. From476 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 theirrule 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.
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 haveThe Lombards.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 (seeLombards).
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 soCharles the Great and the Carolingians.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 kingdommuch 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.
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 eagerFrankish and Italian kings.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.
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 SanSaxon and Franconian emperors.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 furtherbroke 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.
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;Heribert and the Lombard burghs.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 wordComune. In Milan the citizens first form themselves into aParlamento. 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 theCarroccio, 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.
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 libertiesRome.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.
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.Norman conquest of the Two Sicilies.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 (seeNormans;Sicily:History).
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. InWar of investitures.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 (seePapacy;Investiture).
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 handsRise of free cities.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 theirburghs. 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, calledcredenza, chosen from the more distinguished citizens. In addition to this privy council, we find agran consiglio, consisting of the burghers who had established the right to interfere immediately in public affairs, and a still larger assembly calledparlamento, 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 termpopolooccurs, it refers to this body and not to the whole mass of the population. Thecomuneincluded the entire city—bishop, consuls, oligarchy, councils, handicraftsmen, proletariate. Thepopolowas 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.
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 shakeRepublic in Rome.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 (seeRome:History).
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 ineradicableMunicipal wars.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.
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. NeitherSwabian emperors.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 hisFrederick Barbarossa and the Lombard cities.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 Fredericklistened 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.
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 itsLombard League.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.
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 theirPeace of Constance.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, andhis claim for sustenance at their expense when he came into Italy.
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 ofWar of cities against nobles.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 ascondottieri(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.
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 advantageInnocent III.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 fourcaporioni, who acted in concert with asenator, 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. was left without a rival for the imperial throne in 1218 by the death of Otto IV., and on the 22nd of November 1220, Honorius III., Innocent’s successor, crowned him in Rome. It was impossible for any section of theFrederick II. Emperor.Italians to mistake the gravity of his access to power. In his single person he combined the prestige of empire with the Crowns of Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Germany and Burgundy; and in 1225, by marriage with Yolande de Brienne, he added that of Jerusalem. There was no prince greater or more formidable in the habitable globe. The communes, no less than the popes, felt that they must prepare themselves for contest to the death with a power which threatened their existence. Already in 1218, the Guelphs of Lombardy had resuscitated their old league, and had been defeated by the Ghibellines in a battle near Ghibello. Italy seemed to lie prostrate before the emperor, who commanded her for the first time from the south as well as from the north. In 1227 Frederick, who had promised to lead a crusade, was excommunicated by Gregory IX. because he was obliged by illness to defer his undertaking; and thus the spiritual power declared war upon its rival. The Guelph towns of Lombardy again raised their levies. Frederick enlisted his Saracen troops at Nocera and Luceria, and appointed the terrible Ezzelino da Romano his vicar in the Marches of Verona to quell their insurrection. It was 1236, however, before he was able to take the field himself against the Lombards. Having established Ezzelino in Verona, Vicenza and Padua, he defeated the Milanese and their allies at Cortenuova in 1237, and sent their carroccio as a trophy of his victory to Rome. Gregory IX. feared lest the Guelph party would be ruined by this check. He therefore made alliance with Venice and Genoa, fulminated a new excommunication against Frederick, and convoked a council at Rome to ratify his ban in 1241. The Genoese undertook to bring the French bishops to this council. Their fleet was attacked at Meloria by the Pisans, and utterly defeated. The French prelates went in silver chains to prison in the Ghibelline capital of Tuscany. So far Frederick had been successful at all points. In 1243 a new pope, Innocent IV., was elected, who prosecuted the war with still bitterer spirit. Forced to fly to France, he there, at Lyons, in 1245, convened a council, which enforced his condemnation of the emperor. Frederick’s subjects were freed from their allegiance, and he was declared dethroned and deprived of all rights. Five times king and emperor as he was, Frederick, placed under the ban of the church, led henceforth a doomed existence. The mendicant monks stirred up the populace to acts of fanaticalenmity. To plot against him, to attempt his life by poison or the sword, was accounted virtuous. His secretary, Piero delle Vigne, was wrongly suspected of conspiring. The crimes of his vicar Ezzelino, who laid whole provinces waste and murdered men by thousands in his Paduan prisons, increased the horror with which he was regarded. Parma revolted from him, and he spent months in 1247-1248 vainly trying to reduce this one time faithful city. The only gleam of success which shone on his ill fortune was the revolution which placed Florence in the hands of the Ghibellines in 1248. Next year Bologna rose against him, defeated his troops and took his son Enzio, king of Sardinia, prisoner at Fossalta. Hunted to the ground and broken-hearted, Frederick expired at the end of 1250 in his Apulian castle of Fiorentino. It is difficult to judge his career with fairness. The only prince who could, with any probability of success, have established the German rule in Italy, his ruin proved the impossibility of that long-cherished scheme. The nation had outgrown dependence upon foreigners, and after his death no German emperor interfered with anything but miserable failure in Italian affairs. Yet from many points of view it might be regretted that Frederick was not suffered to rule Italy. By birth and breeding an Italian, highly gifted and widely cultivated, liberal in his opinions, a patron of literature, a founder of universities, he anticipated the spirit of the Renaissance. At his court Italian started into being as a language. His laws were wise. He was capable of giving to Italy a large and noble culture. But the commanding greatness of his position proved his ruin. Emperor and king of Sicily, he was the natural enemy of popes, who could not tolerate so overwhelming a rival.