MEDIEVAL ITALY Introduction

The last hundred years of the Western Roman Empire, from the second half of the 4C, coincided with large migrations of Germanic peoples (Visigoths, Vandals, Burgundians, Huns, Heruli, Alemanni etc.) who on different occasions settled within her territories. At the same time economic conditions also reflected the political instability of the imperial government, it deteriorated gradually and was accompanied by a chronic fall in population.

Already by the 5C the Italian population had been reduced to some six million inhabitants.

With the end of the Western Roman Empire the Italian territory remained basically united, first under the rule of Odoacer and then that of Theodoric the Ostrogoth (493-526). Under the latter, the country had periods of relative economic prosperity and peace. This was also due to the contribution of illustrious Romanists such as Boethius, Cassiodorus and Symmachus.

It was in this period that the influence of the Christian church began to make itself felt more consistently. This was in contrast to the progressive orientalization of the Empire, now focused on its new capital of Costantinople, founded by the emperor Constantine between 326-330 on the site of the ancient Greek colony of Byzantium. The Christian church sought to continue the authority and prestige of Rome. In particular there emerged the figures of popes such as Leo I (440-461) and Gregory the Great (590-604) who were capable of bringing prestige to the institution they represented. Under the latter in particular, the church also began to assume political and administrative functions due to repeated territorial acquisitions (St. Peter's patrimony).

Also at the end of the 4C there began to flower western monachism, with its major figure in St. Benedict of Nursia (480-543). The Benedictine monasteries and abbeys, but also those of other orders, became already in the early Middle Ages not only places of religion but centres for the preservation and spread of culture. In addition, they took an important economic role due to their schemes for the drainage and use of lands devastated and depopulated by recurrent war. The papacy, monasteries and other ecclesiastical institutions found themselves in possession of huge estates, often enlarged by further donations, that contributed to strengthen their political authority and power.

The deterioration in relations between Theodoric's successors and the Eastern Empire offered the emperor Justinian (527-565) the opportunity to re-unite the Empire.

This he did at the price of a difficult conflict, the Graeco-Gothic War (535-553), which had grave consequences for the Italian territory as it was placed under the government of the Exarchate of Ravenna.

The Lombards and Charlemagne

Byzantine dominion was however short-lived. In 568 a new Barbarian invasion brought the Lombards of Alboin to Italy. They reached as far as the southern regions and built a large kingdom, with its capital at Pavia, which was to last for over two hundred years (774). This put an end to the political and territorial unity that the country had preserved thus far. In fact, alongside the Lombards the temporal power of the church began to take shape. It acquired the Exarchate and the Pentapolis, former Byzantine territory corresponding to today's Marche and eastern Emilia, obtained from the Lombards themselves after their conversion to christianity. Meanwhile, the island and both extremities of the peninsula, Calabria (modern Puglia) and Bruttia (modern Calabria), remained under Byzantium.

Italy was now incapable of taking an independent political initiative and after the Lombards had to submit to another European people. The Franks descended into Italy to support the pope against the Lombards. With the victory of Charlemagne over the Lombard Desiderius, Italy was to remain for over two centuries (774) in the orbit of the Carolingian dynasty, which had substituted the Lombards in the Kingdom of Italy. It was, however, a vassal of the Holy Roman Empire in the context of which it co-existed with the Patrimony of St. Peter, which was to become the future Papal States. The Lombards retained the Duchy of Benevento, which was transformed into a principality and maintained considerable independence until the beginning of the 11C when it provided the origins for the principalities of Salerno and Capua.

In the meantime, there occurred the Arab expansion throughout the Mediterranean and Italy herself was involved. During the 9C, in fact (827-902), Sicily fell entirely into Saracen hands and became the base for raids along the coasts or even into the interior of the Italian peninsula. Still in the South of Italy, there began to appear in this period the first independent city-states with the formation of independent signorie such as at Naples, Amalfi and Gaeta, which because of their position on the sea were able to develop a mercantile economy. These are the first examples of the free communes that were to flourish slightly later in Central-Northern Italy. In Southern Italy instead they were to be suffocated after a brief season by the arrival, towards the middle of the 11C, of another conquering northern people.

The Normans were professional soldiers and rapidly took control of all Southern Italy, Sicily included. Their rule lasted for almost two centuries, from 1029 (acquisition of Aversa) to 1220, which was the year of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen's accession to the Sicilian throne.

The Feudal System

With first the Normans and then the Hohenstaufen (1220-1266), besides the institution of particularly efficient state structures that formed a network of control throughout the territory, there was introduced into Italy, with all its juridical implications, the feudal system. This further favoured the expansion of large establishments, whether civil or ecclesiastical, but conserved for the towns sufficient independence to guarantee the development of economic activities.

Frederick II also made a notable cultural contribution. He founded the University of Naples and encouraged the formation of the Sicilian School, which made a fundamental contribution to the development of the new Italian language, alongside the contemporary Tuscan poets and prose-writers. The enlightened absolutism of Frederick II was however accompanied by an administrative reform (Constitution of Melfi, 1231) favouring bureaucracy and tax collection. The latter, in particular, imposed restrictions on economic activities.

Northern and Central Italy after the bitter contests of feudal lords, like Guy of Spoleto and Berengar of Friuli, was conquered, after the collapse of the Carolingian Empire, by Otto I of Saxony(951). He was crowned Holy Roman Emperor (962) by the pope, thus uniting the crowns of Italy and Germany in a relationship that was to last for some thousand years.

Again in Northern Italy, the city of Venice had managed to become independent. Founded on the lagoon by refugees from Aquileia destroyed by the Huns of Attila, it had initially developed under the protection of Byzantium.

Lacking a hinterland for centuries, the city was governed by a Maggior Consiglio presided over by a doge, supporting itself essentially by sea trade. It managed to achieve a monopoly over Eastern Mediterranean traffic by establishing permanent commercial bases (fondachi) that were often transformed into colonies.

In this quest for sea trade, Venice was often in competition with other marine republics. Genoa, for example, managed at the beginning of the 11C to conquer Corsica and Sardinia. Amalfi codified maritime law with its `Tabulae Amalfitanae'. While Pisa, who beseiged Sardinia (1116), was permanently defeated by Genoa at the sea battle of Meloria (1284). Perhaps the most significant factor in their development, however, were the Crusades (10-13C).

The Free Communes

This development of mercantile activity by the maritime cities (which also favoured the accumulation of capital as a necessary condition for economic enterprises, apart from often being an instrument of political influence) was accompanied, over the period spanning the first and second millennium AD, by a slow but sure social, economic and cultural growth in the rest of Italy. A new religious spirit can be seen in the initiatives of various, rulers, as in the case of Henry II, the last emperor from the House of Saxony (1002-24). Agriculture, crafts and commerce prospered, the latter two in particular becoming the foundations of an urban economy that was to produce the Free Communes so characteristic of a large part of Central-Northern Italy.

Notwithstanding their formal subjection to the emperor, his Italian feudal lords (and with them, though often in opposition, the newly emerging urban middle-classes, the religious and military aristocracy and the administrative bureaucracy) were particularly attached to the personal and caste privileges they had gradually acquired. Thus it was not surprising that they rebelled, led by Arduin, marquis of Ivrea, who was elected king of Italy (1002-14), against the excessive demands of the bishops and counts and the imperial attempts to re-establish supremacy.

The particular interest of the German imperial dynasties (Saxons and Franks) in Italy and the Church of Rome's constant assertions of independence, combined with identical claims for supremacy, inevitably led to conflict between emperor and pope. The ensuing investiture contest was to last for over sixty years (1059-1122) before being settled, in favour of the church, by the Concordat of Worms.

With the replacement of the Swabian House of Hohenstaufen over that of Bavaria at the head of the empire, the Italian Free Communes formed the Lombard League and, supported by the pope, defeated the new Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick I Barbarossa at the Battle of Legnano (1176). This was soon claimed as a symbol of refound national unity in the face of foreign intervention but can more realistically be seen as a particular reaction of Italian society of that period against the sovereignty of the emperor.

An echo of this conflict was to occur in the following century with the tragic end of the House of Hohenstaufen, following the deaths of Manfred, Frederick II's illegitimate son, at Benevento (1266) and then of Conradin (1268). These events marked the decline of the Ghibelline idea of imperial and lay supremacy against the consolidation of the church's temporal power and the prevailing Guelf ideal of papal authority over the State.