CHAPTER XXII

RECENT HISTORY (1878-1903 A.D.) 628

Irredentism, the Triple Alliance and “Trasformismo,” 630. The power of Crispi, 632. Death of King Humbert, of Crispi, and of Leo XIII, 633.

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS 635

A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MEDIÆVAL AND MODERN ITALY 639

A CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY OF ITALIAN HISTORY 646

INTRODUCTION

THE SCOPE OF ITALIAN HISTORY: A PREFATORY CHARACTERISATION

THE DARK AGE

It has been observed again and again that the sweep of history is a continuous stream, and that all attempts to divide it into epochs are more or less arbitrary. Nevertheless, one cannot escape the tendency to classify, and memory is greatly aided by such arbitrary divisions. The largest and perhaps the most uniformly accepted of such arbitrary parcelling out of history is the classification into ancient, mediæval, and modern. Everyone is aware that the general historian usually regards ancient history as closing either with the later decades of the fourth century, when the northern barbarians began their invasions, or, perhaps more generally, with the precise date 476, when the last emperor of old Rome was dethroned. The ensuing epoch, comprising a period of about a thousand years, is known as the mediæval period; which epoch is usually considered as closing with the discovery of the New World in 1492. The earlier centuries of this epoch are usually spoken of as constituting the dark age.

Such a division is arbitrary, but not altogether illogical. It has been urged that Rome itself did not know it had fallen in the year 476; and that the Roman Empire--even the Roman Republic, in the phrasing of the time--went on, as the minds of contemporaries conceived it, uninterruptedly for many centuries after the date which we of later time fix for the quietus of Roman imperial life. But few things are better established than the fact that a clear conception of history demands a certain opportunity for the observation of events in perspective. In other words a contemporary judgment is rarely, if ever, the best judgment regarding any epoch. In the multiplicity of details that are thrust necessarily upon the attention of the contemporary observer, large proportions are lost, and a confused mass of little things makes the picture as unintelligible as is the large canvas of the painter when viewed at too short a focus. With the historical view, as with the painting, one must recede to a certain distance before gaining a measurably true conception. And so looking back through the vista of centuries one is able to observe very clearly that the time of the alleged fall of the Western Roman Empire was a time of real crisis in the sweep of historical events. The erection of the one focal date is, to be sure, a quite unjustifiable marking of boundary lines, unless it be regarded in the same way in which one thinks of the parallels of latitude and longitude on the globe. It is a convenient milestone, nothing more. But the epoch which it marks, if not to be limited to the confines of a single year, is none the less a true epoch; as no one can doubt who will consider the history of Rome in the aggregate during the first, second, and third centuries of the Christian era, and then will consider the history of the same city during the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries. Obviously, a vast change has come over the spirit of civilisation in this time; the later centuries, contrasted with the earlier ones, may well be considered a dark age.

We have already shown that during its period the eastern division of the later Roman Empire was the seat of a culture which found expression in the production of an elaborate literature. But the West during this period was under quite different auspices. Rome had ceased to be important as a centre of civilisation; its chief citizens had removed to the city of Constantinople. Here in the West the half-civilised Herulians and Ostrogoths held almost undisputed sway from 476 till about the middle of the sixth century. Then for a century the Eastern Empire reasserted control over Rome and the legions of Narses and Longinus upheld the authority of the Byzantine emperors. But in 568 the Lombards under Alboin swept down into Italy and their supremacy was hardly disputed until the Carlovingians took a hand in Italian affairs, with the result that in 774 Charlemagne, capturing Desiderius in Pavia, assumed the title of king of the Lombards and virtually ended the Lombard kingdom.

In 781 Charlemagne crowned his son Pepin king of Italy, and in the memorable year 800 Charlemagne was himself crowned emperor of the West, reviving the title and a semblance of the glory of the old Imperium. Charlemagne’s successors retained nominal control over the empire, and disputed with the popes the real control of Italy. This warfare between the papal monarch and the emperors was a salient feature of the later centuries of the epoch. The power of the church had increased slowly and insidiously until in the ninth and tenth centuries the bishop of Rome aspired to real kingship over Italy,--even over the entire empire.

The five hundred years of Italian history outlined in this period contrast strangely (as has been said) in their world historical meaning with the half millennium of empire that preceded it, or with the other half millennium within which were comprised the events of the Roman commonwealth. Those earlier periods, as we glance back over them in perspective, bristle with great events; whereas this later epoch shows a bare plane of mediocrity, if not of decline. Yet we must not think of these later centuries as representing a time of relapse into actual barbarism. It was rather an epoch when the decadent civilisation was struggling against complete overthrow on the one hand, while the new civilisation was striving to make itself felt,--striving as yet ineffectually as regards the higher culture, yet none the less preparing the way for the future germination of a new life in the old empire.

There is no more fascinating effort open to the historian than to glance back through the mists of the centuries and attempt to penetrate the gloom of this dark age, and visualise its social conditions. At best such an attempt at reconstructing the distant past can be but partially successful. If it be true that “we view the world through our own eyes, each of us, and make from within us the things we see,” as Thackeray tells us regarding our contemporary environment, vastly more distorted must our image be of any past events. Where the monuments, art treasures, and the literature of a great civilisation have been preserved to us, as in the case of Egypt and Mesopotamia, and Greece, and Rome, we have aids and accessories for the reconstruction of the picture that enable us to view our rehabilitation with a certain confidence. But where these mementoes of the past are lost or altogether lacking, the picture must, indeed, be a vague and uncertain one,--the foggy tracery of the impressionist as contrasted with the firm outlines of a Michelangelo.

And such are the disadvantages that beset the task of reconstructing the image of Italy, or indeed of any other part of Europe, in the so-called dark age. It was a time when the wealth of the later empire had been transferred to the East. Western Europe was poverty-stricken; and this practical fact, perhaps more than any other one cause, operated to prevent the construction of such monuments of architecture and of art as the earlier centuries achieved. We have seen illustrated again and again that the seat of the greatest civilisation is almost sure to be the commercial and monetary centre of the world; and we shall see the same thing illustrated again with renewed force at a later day in Italy, when the gold of the Florentine tradesmen, the Medici, stimulates the art development of the later Renaissance. But in these post-imperial times Italy has no wealth in commerce, as compared with the new centre of the empire in Constantinople. Such Romans as remain in Italy are too poor to build palaces and amphitheatres comparable to those of their predecessors. They have enough to do to guard themselves against the invaders from the north. At best they can hardly repair the structures that the earlier civilisation has left them. We read that in Venice it was at one time made a legal offence, punishable with a fine of one thousand florins, to suggest any draft on the public treasury for repairing state buildings. According to the familiar tradition, the doge who finally had the temerity to violate the restriction, came before the council with the thousand florins in his hand when making the suggestion. This story illustrates the financial stress under which the Italian cities laboured even at a comparatively late period of the Middle Ages.

But it would be a very great mistake to suppose that the lapse in the material civilisation which undoubtedly took place in the later day of imperial Rome coincided with an entire change in the social conditions of the people. No trait in human nature is more fixed and more insistent than the tendency to cling to the ways of our forbears. Conservatism is the dominant motive of the mass of humanity. What our fathers thought and believed, we for the most part think and believe. The average man inherits his religion and his politics much as he inherits the colour of his eyes; and has scarcely more likelihood of changing one than the other. In the sweep of the centuries, ideas and customs do change, to be sure; but the changes, in so far as they pertain to long-standing principles or customs, are always slow and gradual.

Geologists of the nineteenth century demonstrated, after long study and much argument, that there are no cataclysmic vaults in the sweep of the geological and biological ages. The lesson thus taught regarding nature at large is one which the sociologist might apply to his own would-be science with advantage. In particular this lesson should be called to the attention of the student of history who would have us believe that there was a sudden and catastrophic change in the mentality of the people of Italy in the fifth century A.D. No one who appreciates the true character of human progress will be disposed to believe, in the absence of confirmatory evidence, that the Italian of the sixth century differed very greatly in his desires and aspirations from his grandparent who lived while Rome was yet nominally governed by an Italian emperor. The successive hordes of barbarians that swept down from the north took booty wherever they could find it, and impoverished the country, but for the most part they were not imbued with the spirit of wanton destruction. We may well believe that they looked rather with awestruck admiration akin to reverence upon the wonderful monuments of a civilisation so different from anything they had previously witnessed. We know that relatively civilised nations of the north sacked Rome in the sixteenth century more disastrously than it was sacked by their alleged barbaric precursors of the earlier millennium. Moreover, these invaders from the north were not omnipresent. They came and went at relatively long intervals, and there were some territories that they did not greatly molest. And the history of invasions everywhere goes to show that after the moment of initial conquest the barbaric vanquisher becomes, in matters of custom and thought, a follower rather than a leader of the vanquished.

In the present case there can be no doubt that this rule held true. The nations of the north were gifted with potentialities that were rapidly developed through imitation of the southern civilisation. Long before the so-called dark ages ended, there began to be centres of civilisation in the north, and here and there a man of real genius--a Roger Bacon or an Abelard--appeared to prove the rapid forward sweep of the culture movement, since the highest genius never towers far above the culture level of its time. But this could not have come to pass if the invader from the north had entered Italy as an all-devastating eliminator of previous civilisations. He came to conquer, but he remained to learn the arts of civilisation.

In a word, then, we shall gain a truer picture of the state of Italy in the so-called dark age if we think of it as differing not so greatly in the ideals of its material civilisation from the Italy of the Roman Empire. There is no great architecture, no great art, no great literature; but we cannot believe that there were absolutely no aspirations towards these antique ideals. When we recall how much that was known to be produced in the earlier day has been utterly lost, we need not doubt that there were some productions even in the field of literature, of which we now have no knowledge, that we would gladly reclaim from oblivion. The _cacoethes scribendi_ is too dominant an impulse to be quite absent from any generation; surely, human nature did not change so utterly in the dark age as to rout this impulse from the human mind. What chiefly did occur, apparently, was the direction of the literary impulse into an unfortunate channel--the channel of ecclesiasticism. This carried it to a maelstrom from which the would-be producer of literature was not able to disengage himself for many generations. A startling evidence of this is found in the fact that as Robinson[1] points out, there was no literary layman of renown from Boetius (d. 524 or 525 A.D.) to Dante (1265-1321 A.D.).

Let us think, then, of the dark age as a time when Italy was impoverished; a time when its material civilisation retrogressed; a time when the stress of new conditions thrust some of the old ideals into the background; but also as a time when the mixture of races was taking place that was to give new strength and fibre to a senescent people; and to make possible the resuscitation of the old ideals, the rehabilitation of the old material civilisation, the regeneration of the race.

THE ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

The regeneration is not to be effected, however, for some time to come. The 11th and the 12th centuries are at best to see only the dawning of the new day.

Culture of the creative kind is still in abeyance in Italy; there are still no writers of significance; there is little art except as practised in the illumination of manuscripts, and as foreshadowed in the beginnings of architecture. Nevertheless, there is a germative culture. Here and there a knight brings back a book from the East--for this is the age of the Crusades. Here and there a monk pores over a classic manuscript. Virgil was read and copied all through the dark age, as we know from the incontestable evidence of extant manuscripts. There is no manuscript of Horace in the uncial writing of the early centuries, yet he too must have been read in the West, along with all the other Latin classics that have come down to us, else these works would scarcely have been preserved; for the Greek authors alone found favour in the East. Still it is to be feared that the chief interest felt by many of the monks in the old-time manuscripts was directed towards the material on which they were written rather than towards the text itself. Hagiology often took the place of history and many an ancient manuscript has been partially preserved in palympsest, merely because a monk who wished to write the life of a saint was too careless to complete the erasure of the earlier writing.

Contemplating the monastic life, through which it is often asserted the germs of learning were preserved in the western world in this dark age, one receives an impression of racial stasis which does not really accord with the facts. If the monks were the preservers of the feeble torch of learning, it was the wandering and warring hosts of the outside world who were preparing their generation to receive the new light when it should again burst forth. The Scandinavian and German hosts from the north invaded Italy _en masse_, from time to time, as we have seen, and successive bands of crusaders made Italy their highway when journeying to and from the East. Many of these invaders found the southern clime congenial and took up their permanent abode there. Thus the Normans established a kingdom in Italy, and if the other hosts settled as individuals rather than as nations, their influence must have been none the less potent in bringing about that mixture of racial elements which makes for racial progress.

Equally important must have been the influence of the commercial spirit. The conquest of the Normans took from the Greek cities of southern Italy, Amalfi, Naples, and Gaeta, the commercial supremacy they had previously enjoyed. They were now superseded by Pisa, Genoa, and Venice. These cities kept fleets on the sea in constant contact with the East. As might have been expected, they led other Italian cities in power and influence, and were the first to show intimations of that quickening of life which presaged the new birth.

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

The first half of the thirteenth century furnishes additional chapters in the old story of the fight between emperor and pope. Frederick II, the present incumbent of the imperial throne, is one of the most picturesque characters of the Middle Ages. He is a man of extraordinary versatility; master of many languages, including Greek and Arabic, patron of the arts, himself a poet, and what perhaps is most remarkable of all, considering his scholarly proclivities, an advocate of the use of the vernacular out of which is developing a new Italian language. Frederick is far too broad and versatile a man to be confined within the narrow boundaries of the church; hence his life is made up of a series of wrangles with the popes. Yet he upholds the religious liberties of his subjects in Sicily; he prosecutes a successful crusade, and restores the influence of the western world in Jerusalem. He is under ban of excommunication when he undertakes this crusade, and now he is again denounced for having undertaken it. He rebels against the papal antagonism, and declares that he will wear his crown and uphold its authority despite ecclesiastical interference. We have seen like threats pronounced before, and have seen such an emperor as Henry IV fail to make good his menace. But Frederick adopts a novel plan which for a time proves expedient; he colonises Luceria with a population of Saracens, which can furnish him a band of thirty thousand infidel warriors to whom papal authority means nothing. Notwithstanding this aid, however, he is barely able to hold his own against the pope in the long run, and he dies just at the middle of the century, worn out in middle life by endless warrings.

During the ensuing half century Italy is little troubled by the emperors; papal authority is at its height, but a disunited Italy consumes its strength in internal dissensions. The developing civilisation has gradually focalised more and more towards the north and now its centre has come to be Tuscany,--the same geographical location which furnished the pre-Roman civilisation of the Etruscans. Florence is coming to be the chief city of Tuscany; it is the chief centre also of one of the most persistent and disastrous strifes that are convulsing Italy,--the warfare of the Guelf and Ghibellines. This dissension is in no sense confined to Florence, to be sure; it includes all Italy and even extends beyond the national bounds. The factions war with varying success. In 1260 the Guelfs at Florence meet with a signal reverse at the battle of Monteaperto. But eight years later at Theliacozza, the Ghibellines under Conradin, the last of the Hohenstaufens, receive a most disastrous set-back.

An important feature of the epoch is the steady development of the half dozen cities; in particular the rivalry between the three chief maritime cities, Venice, Pisa, and Genoa. Pisa has more than held her own until now, but in 1284 she receives her quietus in the duel with Genoa off the isle of Meloria; henceforth, she must yield supremacy to her conqueror and to Venice.

But, as has been said, the maritime cities no longer hold uncontested supremacy. Florence, “The Flower of Tuscany,” though lacking the advantage of geographical position, is able, nevertheless, to take a place among the commercial centres; thanks to her location on the highway between Germany and southern Italy, she perhaps profits more by that all essential mingling of the races to which reference has been made, than any of her sister cities. Just at the close of the century the warfare of the Guelfs and Ghibellines receives a new development in Florence through the strife of the factions that come to be known as the Bianchi and Neri; the dispute which began as a mere personal strife spreads its baneful influence over the entire community.

Notwithstanding all these dissensions, however, there is marked progress in civilisation during this century. The Italian cities can boast that their streets are paved, while the streets of Paris, the foremost city of the north, are mere beds of mud. The growing desire for education is evidenced in the founding of schools and universities in Italy. Just at the close of the century the since famous Palazzo Vecchio and the even more famous Santa Croce were constructed. In the field of pictorial art there were also evidences of the new plane of culture to which Italy had attained, while scholarship found a worthy exponent in the celebrated Thomas Aquinas.

THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY

For about a half century Italy has been free from the intrusions of the emperors, but now early in the fourteenth century Henry VII crosses the Alps. Unlike some of his predecessors, he meets a rather hearty welcome from several of the cities and from the pope. The Florentines, on the other hand, do not welcome him, and his coming leads to the usual turmoils. His sudden death--perhaps from poison--dissipates all the hopes based on the imperial presence. His successor, Louis of Bavaria, also comes to Italy and in association with the great general Castruccio makes war upon the Florentines, who have been forced much against their will to put themselves under the leadership of the duke of Naples. The Florentines hold their own fairly well against the outside invaders, but find themselves unable to tolerate the tyranny within their walls, and end by expelling the tyrant.

A striking feature of the century is the abandonment of Rome by the popes, who retire to Avignon for more than seventy years, from 1305 to 1377, an interval famous ever since as the Babylonish captivity. During the absence of the popes the Romans fared but ill. Lacking the papal power which made their city a centre of world influence, they are given over to minor dissensions. The famous Rienzi--“The last of the tribunes”--makes an heroic effort to restore order just at the middle of the century, and for a time dominates the situation; only to be overthrown ingloriously after a brief period of authority.

In the north the Visconti make themselves dominant in Milan and interfere perpetually in general politics, striving to subordinate all Italy to their influence. Florence was brought into repeated conflicts with the successive rulers of this family, and it was in these contests that the great English general, Sir John Hawkwood came to the fore. Leader of a band of mercenaries,--soldier of fortune in the most literal sense of the word,--this famous warrior fought first against the Florentines, and subsequently in their service. Despite some reverses he gained a reputation which led Hallam to consider him the first great commander since Roman times. This estimate perhaps does Hawkwood something more than justice; it overlooks the great Castruccio, to go no further. But undoubtedly Hawkwood was a redoubtable leader, and he was among the first of a series of condottioria who gave distinction to Italian armies during the ensuing century.

Genoa and Venice are drawn into a disastrous warfare; in fact the various dominant cities of Italy are almost perpetually quarrelling. Even the great plague which sweeps over Italy in 1348, despite its devastations--so graphically described by Boccaccio--serves to give scarcely more than a temporary lull to the dissensions. The insurrection of the Ciompi, the Great Schism, and the outbreak of the war of Chioggia are dissensions that mark the later decades of the century.

But all these political dissensions sink quite into insignificance in comparison with the tremendous intellectual development of the time. As we have seen, the western world has been preparing for centuries for the development of an indigenous culture. Now the promise meets fruition. It required but the waft of a breeze from the East to fan the smouldering embers into flame. This vivifying influence came about partly through the emigration of large numbers of scholars from Constantinople; a migration incited chiefly by fear of the Turks. These scholars brought with them their love of the Greek classics and stimulated the nascent scholarship of Italy into a like enthusiasm. Soon there began and developed a great fashion of searching for classical manuscripts, and many half-forgotten authors were brought to light. It became the fashion to copy these manuscripts, as every gentleman’s house must now have a library. The revival of interest came about in time to save more than one classical author from oblivion, whose works would probably have perished utterly had they been subjected to another century of neglect. Such an author as Velleius Paterculus, for example, is known exclusively through a single manuscript, which obviously must have escaped destruction through mere chance; and everyone is aware how large a proportion of classical writers were not accorded even this measure of fortune. No doubt many authors were inadvertently allowed to perish even after this revival of interest, but the number must have been very small in proportion to those that were already lost.

But the revival of interest in the works of antiquity was by no means the greatest literary feature of the time. There came with it a creative impulse which gave the world the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, not to mention the lesser chroniclers. Their work evidenced that spontaneous outbreak of the creative impulse for which the classicism of the East had been preparing. How spontaneous it was, how little understood, even by its originators, is illustrated in the fact that both Dante, the creator of Italian poetry, and Boccaccio, the creator of Italian prose, regarded their work in the vernacular as relatively unimportant; basing their hopes of immortality upon their archaic Latin treatises, which the world promptly forgot. No better illustration could be furnished anywhere of that spontaneity of truly creative art to which we have had occasion more than once to refer.

Nor was it in literature alone that the time was creative. Pictorial art had likewise its new beginning in this epoch. Cimabue, indeed, had made an effort to break with the crude traditions of the eastern school of art in the latter part of the thirteenth century; his greater pupil Giotto developed his idea in the early decades of the fourteenth century, and gathered by him, the school of painters in Florence attempted, following their master, to go to nature and to reproduce what they saw. Their effort was a crude and tentative one, judged according to the canons of the later development; but it was the beginning of great things. In architecture the effort of the time was not doomed to be content with mere beginnings: “Giotto’s tower,” the famous Campanile, still stands in evidence of the relative perfection to which this department of art had attained. All in all, then, the fourteenth century was a time of wonderful development in Italy; the clarion note of Dante has been called the voice of ten silent centuries; it told of a new phase of the Renaissance.

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

During the fifteenth century Italy enjoyed a period of relative immunity from outside interference. An emperor was crowned at Rome in the early days of the century, to be sure, and there were various efforts at interference by other powers, including the coming of Charles VIII in 1494. But, as a general thing, it was the Italians themselves who competed with one another, rather than outside powers who quarrelled with Italy as a whole. The great forces were, as before, the few important cities. These were forever quarrelling one with another. Pisa became subordinate to Florence, and the latter city waxed steadily in greatness. In Milan the rule of the Visconti continued till towards the middle of the century, when, on the disappearance of the last member of that important family, the house of Sforza came to the fore and took to itself the task of dictatorship. In Naples King Ladislaus, and later Queen Joanna II, maintained regal influence and made their principality a world power. Thus in the middle of the century the four great powers were Naples, Milan, Venice, and Florence.

In these wars the mercenary leaders were much in evidence. These were men to whom fighting was simply a business,--a means to a livelihood. No question of patriotism was involved in their warfare; they gave their services to the state that offered the most liberal payment in gold or its equivalent. Half a dozen of these men gained particular distinction in the fifteenth century. These were Braccio, Fortebraccio, Sforza Attendola, and his son Francesco Sforza, Carmagnola, Niccolo Piccinino, and Colleno Coleoni. These men were variously matched against one another in the important wars.

Braccio and Sforza Attendola came into prominence in the papal wars, having to do with the Great Schism, and beginning about the close of the first decade of the fifteenth century. Braccio fought for Florence, and Sforza at first for Pope John XXIII, and subsequently for King Ladislaus of Naples, who at this time was the strongest ruler in Italy. This war concerned most of the powers of Italy, and involved Anjou and France as well. The death of Ladislaus helped to terminate the conflict, but at the same time precipitated a new war, by raising the question of succession to the throne of Naples.

In this war of the Neapolitan succession Fillipo Maria, duke of Milan, upheld the cause of the house of Anjou, while Florence sided with Alfonzo. The chief scene of the war was in the north where the forces of Milan and Naples competed with those of Florence and Venice. It was here that Carmagnola (born Francesco Dussone) was given the opportunity to show his genius as a leader. He served first under Fillipo, but subsequently entered the service of Venice and acquired new honours as the opponent of his old employer. In later campaigns his chief opponent was Francesco Sforza. The tragic end of Carmagnola will be recalled by every reader.

After the settlement of this war of the Neapolitan succession Fillipo Maria was soon embroiled again, this time with Pope Eugenius. The pope took refuge in Florence and the Tuscans, again supported by Venice, upheld him. Francesco Sforza now fought for the Florentines, his opponent, the leader of the Visconti’s army, being Niccolo Piccinino. But before the war was over the Visconti had gained Sforza back again. On the death of Fillipo the Milanese established a republic, avowing that they would never again submit to a tyrant. But necessity soon drove them to call on Francesco Sforza to aid them in a war against Venice, and their successful general presently usurped power, and established a new line of tyrants. In the later wars between Milan and Venice Colleno Coleoni appeared, and after bartering his services first to one party and then to the other, became permanently established as generalissimo of the land-forces of Venice in 1454.

One of the most striking features of this warfare was that it came to nothing. So many rival interests were involved, so kaleidoscopic were the shiftings of the various leaders, so utterly lacking is any great central cause of contention, that it is sometimes almost impossible to say where one war ends and another begins. Each petty state is thinking of its own interests. And the only thing approaching a general principle of action is the fear on the part of each state that any other single state might gain too much influence over Italy as a whole. In other words the thought of maintaining a balance of power is in the mind of all such leaders as have no hope of making themselves supreme. As Florence at no time has a hope of becoming politically dominant, her efforts are always directed towards maintaining a balance of power, and where personalities do not enter into the matter, she tends in the main to champion the cause of the weaker party.

But despite the interest which necessarily attaches to all these political jarrings, the really world-historical importance of Florentine history during this period has to do not with wars, but with the marvellous internal culture development. Already in the van of the Renaissance movement Florence holds her proud position securely throughout the fifteenth century, and is incontestably the culture centre of the world.

This was the age of the Medici. It was then that Cosmo the Great and Lorenzo the Magnificent made their influence felt, and enjoyed practical dictatorship, though the form of government continued a democracy. The real source of Florentine influence was founded on the old familiar basis of commercial prosperity. We have seen how Florence in the previous century produced such men as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Giotto. The intellectual supremacy thus evidenced was maintained in the ensuing century, but the early part of that century has no names to show that are comparable to these in artistic greatness. The stamp of the times, at least of the first half of the fifteenth century, is industrial rather than artistic. This is the time when the gradually increasing commercial and industrial importance of Italy has culminated in unequivocal world supremacy. Venice and Florence are now the commercial centres of the world. In Florence various forms of craftsmanship have attained a degree of importance which will make them famous for all time. The guilds of woollen weavers, of cloth merchants, of silk weavers, and of money-changers have become institutions of world-wide influence. The money lenders of Florence are found plying their trade in every capital of Europe. Despite their extortions they are regarded everywhere as a necessary evil; and Florentine gold in this century exercises an influence almost as wide as the quondam influence of Roman arms. The Florentine money-changer holds almost unchallenged the position that the Jew occupied at a later day. Oddly enough, it may be noted that the Jew himself is barred from plying the trade of money lender in Florence until about the end of the first third of the fifteenth century when, paradoxical as it may seem, he is legally granted the privilege, to protect the borrower from the extortions of the native usurers of the city.

The rapid development of commerce and industry brings with it, not unnaturally, a great change in the habits of the Florentine people. Early in the century the houses in Florence are still simple and relatively plain in their equipment. The windows are barred by shutters, glass not being yet in common use; the stairways are narrow; the entrances unostentatious. But before the close of the century all this is changed. The power of wealth makes itself felt in the houses, equipments, and costumes of the people; in their luxurious habits of living; their magnificent banquets and demonstrations; and all that goes to make up a life of sensuous pleasure.

Most significant of all, however, is the influence which wealth has enabled one family to attain; for the power of the Medici is, in its essentials, the power of gold. It is a power wielded deftly in the hands of prominent representatives of the family; a power that seems to make for the good of the city. Under Lorenzo the Magnificent every form of art is patronised and cultivated, and Florence easily maintains its supremacy as the culture centre of Italy. Such sculptors as Donatello, Berrochio, and their fellows; such painters as Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, and Ghirlandajo, not to mention a varied company of almost equal attainments; and a company of distinguished workmen in all departments of the lesser arts, lend their influence to beautify the city under the patronage of Lorenzo. The school of art thus founded is to give the world such names as Michelangelo and Raphael in the succeeding generations. Curiously enough, by some unexplained oversight, the greatest painter of the century, Leonardo da Vinci, was led to make his greatest efforts in Milan and not in Florence during the life of Lorenzo, though he returned to the latter city not long after the death of the great patron of art.

As a patron of literature Lorenzo was no less active. He founded and developed a wonderful library in which the treasures of antiquity were collected, in the original or in copies, without regard to expense, from all parts of Europe. The art of book-making was carried to its highest development in this period. The manuscripts of the time are marvels of beauty. The ornamentation is beautiful, and the letters themselves are printed with a degree of regularity closely rivalling the uniformity of a printed page. And then not long after the middle of the century, just when this art of the scribe was at its height, the printing-press was introduced from Germany, and an easy mechanical means was at hand by which the most perfect technique could be attained. True, the connoisseur did not at first recognise the printed book as a possible rival of the old hand-made work. For a long time the collector continued to employ the hand workman, and the dilettante looked upon the printed book with much the same scornful glance which the modern collector of paintings bestows upon a chromo or lithograph. The first printing-press was set up, according to Von Reumont, at Subiaco in a Benedictine monastery in 1465. Some fifteen years later Vespasiano da Bisticci, writing about the library of the duke of Urbino, could proudly state that “All the volumes are of the most faultless beauty, written by hand, with elegant miniatures, and all on parchment. There are no printed books among them; the duke would have been ashamed to have them.”[2]

Notwithstanding the scornful attitude of the connoisseur, however, the art of printing books made its way rapidly. Hitherto the cost of production had rendered even the most ordinary book a luxury not to be possessed by any but the relatively wealthy. Naturally enough, an eager band of book lovers hailed the advent of the new method, despite its supposed artistic shortcomings; and before the end of the century there were printing-presses in all the important centres of Italy, and numberless classics, beginning with Virgil, had been given a vastly wider currency than had ever previously been possible. It is needless here to dwell upon the remoter influences of this rapid diffusion of classical treasures; but nowhere was the influence more important than in Italy.

Summarising in a few words the influences of the fifteenth century in Italy, it may be repeated that, as a whole, it is an epoch of industrial and commercial progress rather than of the greatest art. The culminating achievements of the century, the invention of the printing-press and the discovery of America were not Italian triumphs; though as the birthplace of Columbus and the home of Amerigo Vespucci, Italy cannot well be denied a share in the finding of the New World. Indeed, the association of Italy with this great achievement is perhaps closer than might at first sight appear. For on the one hand, it is held that the geographical work of Toscanelli was directly instrumental in stimulating Columbus to the conception of a western passage to India; while, in another view, the influence of the spirit of exploration and discovery fostered by the commercial relations of Italy in making possible the feat of Columbus, must have been inestimable. Be all that as it may, the discovery of the New World--made in the last decade of the century, and, as it chanced in the same year in which Lorenzo de’ Medici died--may well be considered not merely as a culminating achievement of the century, but as symbolical of that commercial and industrial spirit for which the century is chiefly remarkable.

We have now advanced to the date which is usually named as closing the mediæval epoch, but what has been said about the arbitrary character of this classification should be borne in mind. The discovery of America in 1492 did indeed mark the beginning of a new era in one sense, since it opened up a new hemisphere to the observation and residence of civilised man. That discovery, too, prepared the way for the demonstration of the fact that the world is round; hence it became an important corner-stone in the building of that new structure of man’s conception of cosmology of which the master builders were Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. But the building of this new structure,--a revolutionising of man’s conception of the cosmos,--did not come about in a year or a century; the superstitions based on the old conception of cosmology have not lost their hold on mankind even in our own day. It has even been suggested that the year 1859, when the promulgation of thought occurred which gave the death-blow to the old ideas of cosmogony, and which may be said for the first time to have rendered the old superstitions truly obsolescent,--that this year rather than the year 1492 might well be named as limiting the mediæval epoch. So perhaps it may be with more remote generations of the future, but for the twentieth century observer the older date will doubtless seem the better one. But, after all, the question is one of no moment. Considering the recognised arbitrariness of all such divisions it does not in the least matter as to the exact bounds given to the mediæval epoch.

THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

The sixteenth century is a time of peculiar contrasts in Italy. The invasions which began with the coming of Charles VIII in 1494 continue and become more and more harassing. Italy comes to be regarded as the proper prey of the French and Spanish rulers. The Italian principalities, warring as ever with one another, welcome or repel the invaders in accordance with their own selfish interests. All this time there has been no unified government of Italy as a whole. Nominally the empire included all, but this was a mere theory which, for the most part, would not bear examination. Venice all along has claimed allegiance to the Eastern Empire, which since the middle of the fifteenth century has ceased to exist. Florence owes no allegiance to any outside power; it is strictly autonomous. The democratic feeling is still strong there notwithstanding the usurpations of the Medici. Venice and Florence with Siena and Lucca are the only republics remaining at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Of the scores of cities which formerly were republics, all the rest have come under the influence of tyrants, or have been brought into unwilling subordination to neighbouring cities. And now an even greater humiliation is in store for many of them at the hands of the transalpine conquerors.

Venice, recovering from her duel to the death with Genoa--the war of Chioggia--continues to hold closely to her old traditions. Her commercial prosperity continues for a time, but is gradually lessened through the loss of eastern territories and through the rivalry brought about by the discovery of America and of a sea route to India. Florence, having thrown off in 1494 the thraldom imposed by the Medici, makes spasmodic efforts to return to the old purely democratic system; but fails in the end. In 1569 Cosmo de’ Medici is made Grand Duke of Tuscany, a position which his successors will continue to hold for seven generations (till 1737). In a word the spirit of democracy is virtually dead in Italy, and as yet no local tyrant arises who has the genius to unite the petty principalities into a unified kingdom.

But if political Italy is chaotic and unproductive in this century the case is quite different when we consider the civilisation of the time. The vivifying influences of the previous century produced a development particularly in the field of art, which now shows great results. The early decades of the sixteenth century constitute an epoch of the greatest art development in Italy. This is the age of Leonardo, of Michelangelo, of Raphael, and of Titian, and of the host of disciples of these masters. Under the patronage of successive popes, the master painters are stimulated to their best efforts, and those wonderful decorations of the Vatican are undertaken which have been the delight of all later times.

The literary development, if it does not quite keep pace with the pictorial, nevertheless attains heights which it has only once before reached since classical times. All this culture development in a time of turmoil and political disaster seems anomalous, and, as just intimated, can only be explained as the fruitage of a development which had its origin in an earlier epoch. The validity of this explanation is illustrated in the rapid decline that takes place in Italy after the middle of the sixteenth century--an intellectual decline which is scarcely to be interrupted until the nineteenth century.

THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

After the wonderful development of the sixteenth century it is amazing to consider this time of deterioration. The day of great men is not altogether past--witness Galileo--but there are no such great poets, historians, artists, as in past generations. Even the events of the political world have small world-historical importance. Italy is the battle-ground of nations; it is a geographical territory but it is scarcely a state. It has no unity, it has no individuality; it has no important autonomous states as a whole that command the attention of the historian. The intellectual sceptre which Italy so long swayed has been passed on to the nations of the north. The ecclesiastical spirit is everywhere dominant.

The burning of Giordano Bruno in the last year of the sixteenth century and the persecution of Galileo for daring to uphold the new Copernican conception of cosmogony are typical features of the epoch. Chronologically the mediæval era is past, but the spirit of mediævalism still pertains in Italy; rather let us say that this unfortunate country has lapsed back into an archaic cast of thought after having led the world for generations.

The historian must note the play and counterplay of outside nations who use the territory of Italy as their chess-board, but as regards the Italian himself the world historian might virtually disregard his existence during many generations. It is only towards the close of the eighteenth century when Italy came under the sway of Napoleon that there came about a reaction from the overbearing policy of this new tyrant; then a desire for liberty began to make itself felt in Italy, and to prepare the way for that struggle of a half century later which was to weld the disunited subject principalities into a unified and autonomous kingdom. But the intimations of this later development could hardly be appreciated by the contemporary observer who saw Italy ground beneath the heel of Napoleon, with no seeming chance of ever escaping from this humiliating position.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

With the overthrow of Napoleon there was but slight betterment in the immediate condition of Italy. An attempt was made by the powers that had overthrown the French usurper to restore the Italian principalities to something like their ante-revolutionary status. But, as has just been noted, the spirit of liberty was taking possession of the land and its long enslaved people began to dream of better things than they had known for centuries. But their efforts to secure the freedom so long renounced were at first only attempts; one petty rebellion after another seemed to come to nothing. But, at last, under the guidance of such leaders as Mazzini, Cavour, Garibaldi, and Victor Emmanuel, the seemingly impossible was accomplished: outside influences were subordinated; the papal power over secular affairs was restricted and at last virtually overthrown; and for the first time in something like fourteen centuries the geographical territory of Italy came politically under the sway of a single ruler who owed no allegiance to alien lands: the dream of the visionaries was accomplished: an Italian kingdom ruled by an Italian king took the place of the enslaved, disunited principalities of the earlier centuries.

True, this achievement was not the culmination that some of the most ardent patriots, with Mazzini at their head, had dreamed of. The aim of that leader, as of many another, had been to achieve not a monarchical but a republican unity. In their enthusiastic estimate the monarchical form of government was obsolescent. Their enthusiasm harked back to the days when Venice and Florence had carried out with so much success the precepts of democracy. Their imagination was fired also by the example of that newer republic of the West, whose free institutions have inspired so much of emulation and so much of hatred in the minds of different classes of people among the older governments of Europe. But if the dreams of these enthusiasts were not to be realised, it sufficed for the more conservative reformers that the constitutional monarchy, embodying many of the precepts and principles of democracy, had at last brought Italy under the sway of a single sceptre.

FOOTNOTES

[1] [_An Introduction to the History of Western Europe._]

[2] Quoted by Von Reumont, _Lorenzo de’ Medici il magnifico_.

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