Chapter I: The Beginnings (2)

Once begun, the new life was extraordinarily energetic on the industrial and constructive side, the independence and rivalry of so many communities securing for the time the maximum of effort. Already in the seventh century, indeed, their industry stood for a new era in history.[522] Where before even the men of the cities had gone clad in skins after the manner of the barbarian conquerors, they now began to weave for themselves woollen cloths like the civilised ancients.[523] Soon the art of weaving the finer cloths, which had hitherto been imported from Greece in so far as they were used at all, followed the simpler craft of wool-weaving.[524] It was in these cities that architecture may be said to have had its first general revival in western Europe since the beginning of the decay of Rome. Walls, towers, ports, quays, canals, municipal palaces, prisons, churches, cathedrals--such were the first outward and visible signs of the new era in Italian civilisation.[525] On these foundations were to follow the literature and the art and science which began the civilisation of modern Europe, the whole presided over and in part ordered and inspired by the recovered use of the great system of ancient Roman law, which too began to be redelivered to Europe early in the twelfth century from Italian Bologna.

[The public buildings of the eleventh century are to this day among
the greatest in Italy. Cp. Sismondi with Testa, _History of the War
of Frederick I against the Communes of Lombardy_, Eng. trans, p.
101. Before the tenth century the houses were mostly of wood, and
thatched with straw or shingles (Testa, p. 11). It seems highly
probable that the great development of building in the eleventh
century was due to the sense of a new lease of life which came upon
Christendom when it was found that the world did not come to an
end, as had been expected, with the year 1000. That expectation
must have gone far to paralyse all activity towards the end of the
tenth century.]

And whereas the common political path to independence had been originally by way of the headship of the bishop as against the count, that headship in turn disappears during the eleventh century without any visible or general cataclysm. It would seem as if, when the obsessing fear of the end of the world with which men entered the year 1000 had passed away, the secular spirit recovered new life; and the intimate tyranny of the feudal representative of the military monarch being no longer a danger, the hand of the bishop was in turn thrown off. For a time the combination of city and prelate was politically valid, as in the case of Archbishop Aribert of Milan, under whose nominal rule the civic _caroccio_ seems to have made its appearance; but even Aribert was shelved before his death, in the course of a civil strife between the people and the nobles. Thenceforward, for an age, the great Lombard city practically ruled itself, the nobles being included in a compromise brought about by Lanzone, who, himself a noble, had led the faction of the burghers. Fresh strifes followed, in which the succeeding archbishops bore part; but the virtual autonomy of the city remained.[526]

A similar evolution took place throughout northern Italy, in a sufficiently simple fashion. The bishops were still in large measure elected by the people, and rival candidates for vacant sees were always ready to outbid each other in surrendering political functions which were becoming ever harder to fulfil.[527] Beyond this, the course of the final stage of the emancipation of the cities is not traceable. "All that we can say is that at the opening of the eleventh century the bishops exercised in the cities the authority which had formerly been vested in the counts: at the close the cities have reduced the prelates to insignificance, and stand before us as so many free republics."[528] "The power of the bishops was the calyx which for a certain time had kept the flower of Italian life close-packed within the bud. Then the calyx weakened and opened, and Italian civic life unfolded itself to the eye to form and bear fruit."[529]

To this, however, we should add that in Florence the process was somewhat different. Under the Franks, Florence was ruled, like other cities, by a count, who replaced the Longobard duke; and under the later Germanic empire all Tuscany, and some further territory, is found ruled by a Marquis, or Markgraf, Ugo, in the tenth century. In the latter part of the tenth century his descendant Matilda sided with Hildebrandt against the Emperor. At this period Florence was a centre of the papal movement of monastic reform; and the people actually rose against a simoniacal bishop, whom they fought for five years[530] (1063-68). Here, under the rule of Countess Matilda, the republic or "commune" is seen growing up rather of its own faculty than by help of the bishop; it already calls itself _Populus Florentinus_;[531] and after Matilda's death in 1115, it speedily develops the self-governing functions which it had partially exercised in her lifetime.[532] And Florence, be it noted, was the most democratic in population of the northern cities from the beginning.[533]

In no case, however, should we be right in supposing that "republic" or "commune" or "free city" meant a population united in devotion to a civic ideal. The eternal impulses of strife and repulsion had in no degree been eliminated by the formation of new State units. In Florence we find all the elements of Greek _stasis_ at work in the first century of the commune.[534] Among the _grandi_ were men who had risen from the people, and men descended from old feudal houses; and these spontaneously ranged themselves in factions. Such a division furthered imperialism by inclining groups to take the side of the emperor, who, wherever he could, set up his _Podestà_ (_potestas_ or "authority") in the cities.[535] Imperialistic nobles further formed groups called "Societies of the Towers," each of which had its common defensive tower or fort, communicating with the houses of neighbouring members; the officials of these societies were at times called consuls; and from these were usually chosen, in the early days, the consuls of the commune.[536] At times they were also consuls of trade guilds, a state of things proving a certain amount of assimilation between the trading and the noble class, who together formed the enfranchised "people," the town artisans and the rural cultivators of the surrounding _contado_ or "county" being excluded.

The close community thus formed exhibited very much the same political tendencies as had marked that of early republican Rome. The cities, constantly flouted and menaced by the castled nobility of the surrounding territory, who blackmailed passing traders, soon learned to use the iron hand as against these, who in turn sought the emperor's protection; and cities wont to put down nobles were prompt to seek to coerce each other. On the death of the Emperor Frederick I (1197), Florence set on foot a League of the Tuscan cities, which, while primarily hostile to the Empire, repelled the claim of the Papacy to over-lordship as heir of the Countess Matilda. On such a basis there might conceivably have arisen a new and strong national life; but soon Florence, like old Athens, was oppressing her allies, who gave their sympathy to a town like Semifonte, the refuge of all who fled from places conquered and taxed by her. To individual allies like Sienna, Florence was substantially faithless, and so strengthened from the first the fatal tendency to separatism--this while the inner social sunderance was steadily deepening.[537]

None of the forces at work was remedial on this side; the regimen of the _Podestà_, even when he was actually a foreigner, furthered instead of checking strife between communities;[538] and the more "aristocratic" cities were at least as quarrelsome as the less. Bologna played the tyrant city as vigorously as Florence.[539] Rome was among the worst governed of all. In the thirteenth century, under Innocent IV, we find the fighting factions of the nobles using the Coliseum and other ancient monuments as fortresses, garrisoned by bandits in their pay, who pillaged traders and passengers; and not the Papacy, but the "senator" chosen by the people--a Bolognese noble--put them down, hanging nobles and bandits alike.[540]

Such was civilisation at the centre of Christendom after a thousand years of Christianity. The notable fact is that through all this wild play of primitive passion there _was_ yet growing up a new Italian civilisation; and it is part of our task to trace its causation.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 455: _Germania_, c. 2.]

[Footnote 456: For a good view of the many points in common between Teutonic barbarism and normal savagery, see the synopsis of Guizot, _Histoire de la civilisation en France_, i, 7ième leçon. Lamprecht acquiesces (_What is History?_ 1905, p. 213).]

[Footnote 457: "Everything about them [the Longobards], even for many years after they have entered upon the sacred soil of Italy, speaks of mere savage delight in bloodshed and the rudest forms of sensual indulgence" (Hodgkin, _Italy and her Invaders_, 2nd ed. v, 156. Cp. Lamprecht, _What is History?_ pp. 48-49.)]

[Footnote 458: Ranke's statement (_Latin and Teutonic Nations._ Eng. tr. p. 1) that the "collective German nations at last brought about" a Latino-Teutonic unity is a merely empirical proposition, true in no organic sense.]

[Footnote 459: Gibbon, ch. 11, Bohn ed. i, 365.]

[Footnote 460: It is true that none of the generals mentioned was an Italian. Stilicho was indeed a Vandal; Aetius was a Scythian; Belisarius was a Thracian; and Narses probably a Persian. But they handled armies made up of all races; and their common qualification was a military science to be learned only from Roman tradition. Cp. Finlay, _History of Greece from its Conquest by the Romans_, ed. 1877, i, 211.]

[Footnote 461: Paulus Orosius, vii, 43. The record has every appearance of trustworthiness, the historian premising that at Bethlehem he heard the blessed Jerome tell how he had known a wise old inhabitant of Narbonne, who was highly placed under Theodosius, and had known Athaulf intimately; and who often told Jerome how that great and wise king thus delivered himself.]

[Footnote 462: Sismondi, citing the _Diplomata_, tom. iv, p. 616.]

[Footnote 463: Because of his contempt for the religious controversies to which the literature of his time mainly ran.]

[Footnote 464: See Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt Rom_, B. ii, Kap. 2, as to his constant concern for culture and established usage.]

[Footnote 465: Cassiodorus, 1. i, c. 34; iii, 44; iv, 5, 7. Cp. Finlay, ed. cited, i, 236, _note_. At the same time it is to be remembered that the population was in some districts greatly reduced. See below, p. 194. And there were, of course, Italian scarcities from time to time. Cassiodorus, v, 35; x, 27; xi, 5.]

[Footnote 466: Cp. Gibbon, ch. 39 (Bohn ed. iv, 270-71), as to the general care of the administration and the prosperity of agriculture.]

[Footnote 467: "Gross war Ruhm und Glanz seines [Theodoric's] Reiches; die inneren Schäden und Gefahren desselben blieben damals noch verhüllt, kaum etwa dem Kaiser und den Merovingen erkennbar" (F. Dahn, _Urgeschichte der germanischen und romanischen Völker_, in Oncken's _Allg. Gesch._ 1881, i, 246).]

[Footnote 468: Machiavelli points out (_Istorie Fiorentine_, 1. i) that this was the result of their having, at the death of their tyrant Clef, suspended the election of kings and set up the system of thirty dukes or marquises--an arrangement unfavourable to further conquest.]

[Footnote 469: See Guizot, _Essais sur l'histoire de France_, 7e édit. pp. 185, 189, 195. But cp. pp. 198-201 as to the rise of hereditary feudality. Cp. also the _Histoire de la civilisation en France_, 13e édit. iii, 103; iv, 77-79.]

[Footnote 470: Cp. Sismondi, _Républiques italiennes_, ed. cited, i, 85.]

[Footnote 471: Guizot, _Histoire de la civilisation en France_, ii, 134, 162; Bryce, _Holy Roman Empire_, 8th ed. pp. 71-74.]

[Footnote 472: See Guizot's table, pp. 130-32.]

[Footnote 473: For a favourable view of the case see Schröder's _Geschichte Karl's des Grossen_, 1869, Kapp. 15, 16; Bryce, as cited, pp. 71-74; and Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt Rom_, B. v, Kap. i, § 2. Gregorovius (p. 20) calls Charlemagne "the Moses of the Middle Ages, who had happily led mankind through the wilderness of barbarism"--a proposition grounded on race-pride rather than on evidence.]

[Footnote 474: Cp. Poole, _Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought_, 1884, pp. 15-16, 22.]

[Footnote 475: There is reason to infer that the very movement of theological thought which marks the ninth century was due to Moslem contacts. These might have been more fruitful under peace conditions than under those of Charlemagne's campaigns.]

[Footnote 476: _Républiques_, i, 91. "The Holy Roman Empire, taking the name ... as denoting the sovereignty of Germany and Italy vested in a Germanic prince, is the creation of Otto the Great" (Bryce, _Holy Roman Empire_, p. 80). Gregorovius, instead of giving Otto some such praise as he bestows on Karl, pronounces this time that "the Roman Empire was now regenerated by the German _nation_" (B. vi, Kap. iii, § 1).]

[Footnote 477: Guizot, _Civilisation_, iii, 103; Sismondi, _Républiques_, i, 87. In his _Essais_, however (p. 238, etc.), Guizot speaks of the "belle mais stérile tentative de Charlemagne." See the problem discussed in the author's essay on Gibbon, in _Pioneer Humanists_, p. 335 sq.]

[Footnote 478: Sismondi, _Républiques_, i, 95. See below, pp. 198-99.]

[Footnote 479: _E.g._ Wieseler, _Die deutsche Nationalität der kleinasiatischen Galater_, 1877; Holtzmann, _Kelten und Germanen_, 1855.]

[Footnote 480: _History of Rome_, bk. ii, ch. iv.]

[Footnote 481: The author has examined a later deliverance of Mommsen's on the subject in _The Saxon and the Celt_, pt. iii, § 1.]

[Footnote 482: In a later passage (bk. v, ch. 7) Mommsen credits the Celts with "unsurpassed fervour of national feeling." His History abounds in such contradictions.]

[Footnote 483: In the passage cited in the last note, the historian asserts that the Celts were unable "to attain, or barely to tolerate ... any sort of fixed military discipline." Such is the consistency of malice.]

[Footnote 484: Cp. Elton, _Origins of English History_, 2nd ed. 1890, p. 115.]

[Footnote 485: Tacitus, _Germania_, c. 26; Cæsar, _Bell. Gall._ vi, 21.]

[Footnote 486: See Virchow, as cited in Penka's _Die Herkunft der Arier_, 1886, p. 98.]

[Footnote 487: "Never was there a more rapid conquest than that of the vast kingdom of the Vandals" (Sismondi, _Fall of the Roman Empire_, Eng. tr. i. 221).]

[Footnote 488: U.R. Burke, _History of Spain_, Hume's ed. i. 115. The special explanation of the Visgothic decadence is held by this historian to lie (1) in the elective character of the monarchy, which left the king powerless to check the extortions of the nobles who degraded and enfeebled the common people, and (2) in the ascendency of the Church.]

[Footnote 489: Burke, as cited, i. 119.]

[Footnote 490: Cp. Prof. Paul Vinogradoff, _Villainage in England_, 1892, pp. 10-11, 17.]

[Footnote 491: Guizot (_Hist. de la Civ. en France_, i, 2e leçon) has an extraordinary passage to the effect that while German and English civilisation was German _in origin_, that of France is _romaine dès ses premiers pas_. As if there had not been a primary Gallic society as well as a Germanic. If Mommsen be right, the Galli before their conquest were much more advanced in civilisation than the Germani. In point of fact, the Celtæ of Southern France had commercial contact with the Greeks before they had any with the Romans. And in the very passage under notice, Guizot goes on to say that the life and institutions of _northern_ France had been essentially _Germanic_. The theorem is hopelessly confused. The plain facts are that German "civilisation" came from Italy and Romanised Gaul, albeit later, as fully as did that of Gaul from Italy.]

[Footnote 492: Cp. Prof. Butler, _The Lombard Communes_, 1906, pp. 23, 28-30.]

[Footnote 493: Poole, _Illustrations_, as cited, p. 11.]

[Footnote 494: For a pleasing attempt to retain the credit for Teutonism, on the score that German invaders had "determined the character of the population" in the region of Paris, where the new architecture arose, see Dr. E. Richard's _History of German Civilisation_, New York, 1911, pp. 203-4. It is not explained at what stage the German responsibility for French evolution ceased.]

[Footnote 495: Burke, as cited, i, 118. On the "Gothic mania," cp. Michelet, _Hist. de France_, vii--_Renaissance_: Introd. § 10 and note in App.]

[Footnote 496: Sismondi, _Fall of the Roman Empire_, as cited, i, 35, 172, 238.]

[Footnote 497: Gibbon, ch. 36, _end_.]

[Footnote 498: Above, pp. 188.]

[Footnote 499: Citations in Gibbon, ch. 36; Bohn ed. iv, 105. For a somewhat fuller sketch than Gibbon's see Manso, _Geschichte des ost-gothischen Reiches in Italien_, 1824, §§ 73-79. Cp. Spalding, _Italy_, i, 398-400. It is possible that Gelasius and Ambrose were thinking mainly of the disappearance of the landowners, and were overlooking the serfs. Deserted villas would give the effect of desolation while the mass of the common people remained.]

[Footnote 500: Sismondi, _Fall_, i, 236. Cp. Gibbon, ch. 43; Bohn ed. iv, 536.]

[Footnote 501: Sismondi, _Fall_, i, 240; Gibbon, ch. 45, ed. cited, v. 116-18.]

[Footnote 502: Gibbon, as cited, v, 118.]

[Footnote 503: Sismondi, _Fall_, i, 241. The movement, as Sismondi notes, extended to Spain, to Africa, to Illyria, and to Gaul.]

[Footnote 504: Butler, _The Communes of Lombardy_, p. 45.]

[Footnote 505: Sismondi, _Fall_, i, 259. The historian decides that "the race of the conquerors took root and throve in the soil, without _entirely_ superseding that of the conquered natives, _whose language still prevailed_," but gives no proofs for the first proposition. The uncritical handling of these questions in the histories leaves essential problems still unsolved. Cp. Hodgkin, _Italy and her Invaders_, 2nd ed. vi (bk. vii), 579-93; vii (bk. viii), 384, 385. Mr. Boulting does not try to solve the problem.]

[Footnote 506: This is again Sismondi's generalisation (_Histoire des républiques italiennes_, ed. 1826, i, 21; _Short History_, p. 14; Boulting-Sismondi, p. 60). He has been followed by Procter (Perceval's _History of Italy_, 1825, 2nd ed. 1844, p. 9); by Dunham (_Europe in the Middle Ages_, i, 23); by Symonds (_Renaissance in Italy_, 2nd ed. i, 48); and by Prof. W.F. Butler (_The Communes of Lombardy_, p. 46). It is noteworthy that at the same period Henry the Fowler encouraged free cities in Germany for the same reason.]

[Footnote 507: Butler, pp. 40-43; Boulting-Sismondi, pp. 23-27.]

[Footnote 508: _Note by Leo._--"Except in the cities acquired latest, and by capitulation from the Romans"--_i.e._ the Greek Empire.]

[Footnote 509: Guizot, _Essais_, pp. 199-201; Stubbs, i, 277. Cp. refs. in Buckle, author's ed. p. 348-49.]

[Footnote 510: _Europe during the Middle Ages_, ch. ii, pt. ii, _end_. Compare Hodgkin on "the Feudal Anarchy which history has called, with unintended irony, the Feudal System," and on the fashion in which, in the capitularies of Charlemagne, "we have imperial sanction given to that most anti-social of all feudal practices, the levying of private war" (_Italy and her Invaders_, viii, 301-2).]

[Footnote 511: _Short History_, p. 15. "The liberated agricultural classes multiplied rapidly, and brought vast tracts of abandoned soil under cultivation" (Boulting, p. 27). It probably needed such an expansion, we may note, to make possible the Crusades.]

[Footnote 512: Sismondi finally decides that in the tenth century feudalism had induced in the main rather a dissolution than an organisation of society (_Républiques_, i, 85-91). Cp. Guizot, _History de la civ. en France_, as cited, iii, 103, 272-75, iv, 77-79; _Essais_, v; and Boulting, p. 17.]

[Footnote 513: Cp. Sismondi, _Républiques_, i, 105-14.]

[Footnote 514: See Neander, _Church History_, Eng. tr., vii, 128 _sq._ and Milman, _Hist. Latin Christ._, lv, 61 _sq._, as to Hildebrandt's efforts to win public opinion to his side against clerical marriage, and the resulting growth of private judgment.]

[Footnote 515: "Die Abtheilung in Zünfte und die daran sich anknüpfende Markt-polizei mögen die einzigen Institute aus römischer Zeit sein, die sich auch unter den Longobarden erhielten" (Leo, i, 85; cp. p. 335). Cp. Villari, _Two First Centuries_, Eng. trans, pp. 95-99.]

[Footnote 516: Leo decides (i, 335) that in Ravenna between 1031 and 1115 there appear "gar keine Stadtconsuln in Urkunden, aber wohl Leute, die sich _ex genere consulum_ nennen." Cp. Boulting-Sismondi, p. 58.]

[Footnote 517: As the general governor elected by the Venetians to stay their dissensions (697) bore the title of doge or duke, which was that borne by the Greek governors of Italian provinces, the influence of imperial example must be admitted, especially as Venice continued to profess allegiance to the Greek empire. The cities of Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi, again, while connected only nominally and commercially with Byzantium, gave the title of doge to their first magistrate likewise (Sismondi, _Short History_, pp. 25, 26).]

[Footnote 518: Nys. _Researches in the History of Economics_, Eng. trans. 1899, p. 61.]

[Footnote 519: _Id._ p. 59.]

[Footnote 520: Cp. Pignotti, _Hist. of Tuscany_, Eng. trans. 1823, iii, 256; Hallam, _Middle Ages_, 11th ed. iii, 328, 332. It is clear that the polarity of the magnet was known long before the practical use of it in the compass.]

[Footnote 521: Hallam, iii, 441; Pignotti, iii, 256-58.]

[Footnote 522: Sismondi, _Républiques_, i, 384, 385.]

[Footnote 523: Pignotti, iii, 262-64; Dante, _Paradiso_, xv, 116.]

[Footnote 524: Pignotti, iii, 265.]

[Footnote 525: "The citizens (900-1200) allowed themselves no other use of their riches than that of defending or embellishing their country" (Sismondi, _Short History_, p. 23).]

[Footnote 526: Butler, _The Communes of Lombardy_, pp. 58-70.]

[Footnote 527: _Id._ p. 71.]

[Footnote 528: _Id._ P.55.]

[Footnote 529: Leo, as cited, i, 417.]

[Footnote 530: Villari, _Two First Centuries_, p. 74 _sq._]

[Footnote 531: _Id._ p. 79.]

[Footnote 532: _Id._ pp. 84-92.]

[Footnote 533: _Id._ p. 91.]

[Footnote 534: _Id._ p. 142.]

[Footnote 535: _Id._ pp. 143, 148, 151, 153.]

[Footnote 536: _Id._ pp. 119, 121.]

[Footnote 537: Villari, _Two First Centuries_, pp. 158-72.]

[Footnote 538: _Id._ p. 173.]

[Footnote 539: Sismondi, _Short History_, p. 77.]

[Footnote 540: _Id._ p. 82.]