Part 2 — Chapter III. (These four articles abrogated by the four articles following them, 118-122.) Article 118. The Federal Constitution may at any time be amended. (continued 86)

H. Martin, History of France: Age of Louis XIV., volume 1, page 40, foot-note.

"The Paris correspondent of the 'Daily Telegraph' records a fact which, if it is correctly reported, goes a long way towards clearing up one of the problems of modern history. A letter to Louvois by Louis XIV., written in cipher, has been long in the archives of the Ministry of War, and has at length been deciphered. In it the King orders Louvois to arrest General de Burlonde for having raised the siege of Conti without permission, to send him to Pignerol, and to conceal his features under a 'loup' or black-velvet mask. The order was executed, and the presumption is therefore violent that the 'Man in the Iron Mask'—it was a black-velvet one with iron springs—was General de Burlonde. The story tallies with the known fact that the prisoner made repeated attempts to communicate his name to soldiers, that he was treated with respect by his military jailors, and that Louis XV., who knew the truth of the whole affair, declared it to be a matter of no importance. The difficulty is to discover the King's motive for such a precaution; but he may have feared discontent among his great officers, or the soldiery."

The Spectator, October 14, 1893.

The cipher despatch above referred to, and the whole subject of the imprisonment of General de Burlonde, are discussed at length, in the light of official records and correspondence, by M. Émile Burgaud and Commandant Bazeries (the latter of whom discovered the key to the cipher), in a book entitled "Le Masque de Fer: Révélation de la correspondance chiffrée de Louis XIV.," published at Paris in 1893. It seems to leave small doubt that the mysteriously masked prisoner was no other than General de Burlonde.

ALSO IN: G. A. Ellis, True History of the State Prisoner commonly called the Iron Mask.

E. Lawrence, The Man in the Iron Mask (Harper's Magazine, volume 43, page 98).

M. Topin, The Man in the Iron Mask (Cornhill Magazine, volume 21, page 333).

Quarterly Review, volume 34, page 19.

{1802}

IRONCLAD OATH.

An oath popularly styled the "Ironclad oath" was prescribed by the Congress of the United States, during the War of the Rebellion, in July, 1862, to be taken by every person elected or appointed to any office under the Government of the United States, the President only excepted. He was required to swear that he had "never voluntarily borne arms against the United States"; that he had "voluntarily given no aid, countenance, counsel, or encouragement to persons engaged in armed hostility to the National Government"; that he had "neither sought nor accepted, nor attempted to exercise the functions of any office whatever under authority or pretended authority in hostility to the United States"; that he had "never yielded a voluntary support to any pretended Government within the United States, hostile or inimical thereto."

J. G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, volume 2, page 88.

IRONSIDES, Cromwell's.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (MAY).

"IRONSIDES, Old."

A name popularly given to the American frigate "Constitution."

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1814.

IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY, The.

According to their traditions, the founder of the League or confederacy which united the five nations of the Iroquois—the Mohawks, the Onondagas, the Oneidas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas, was Hiawatha, the hero of Iroquois legend.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY.

He was an Onondaga chief, and is supposed to have lived about the middle of the 15th century. "Hiawatha had long beheld with grief the evils which afflicted not only his own nation, but all the other tribes about them, through the continual wars in which they were engaged, and the misgovernment and miseries at home which these wars produced. With much meditation he had elaborated in his mind the scheme of a vast confederation which would ensure universal peace. In the mere plan of a confederation there was nothing new. There are probably few, if any, Indian tribes which have not, at one time or another, been members of a league or confederacy. It may almost be said to be their normal condition. But the plan which Hiawatha had evolved differed from all others in two particulars. The system which he devised was to be not a loose and transitory league, but a permanent government. While each nation was to retain its own council and its management of local affairs, the general control was to be lodged in a federal senate, composed of representatives elected by each nation, holding office during good behavior, and acknowledged as ruling chiefs throughout the whole confederacy. Still further, and more remarkably, the confederation was not to be a limited one. It was to be indefinitely expansible. The avowed design of its proposer was to abolish war altogether. He wished the federation to extend until all the tribes of men should be included in it, and peace should everywhere reign. Such is the positive testimony of the Iroquois themselves: and their statement, as will be seen, is supported by historical evidence. … His conceptions were beyond his time, and beyond ours; but their effect, within a limited sphere, was very great. For more than three centuries the bond which he devised held together the Iroquois nations in perfect amity. It proved, moreover, as he intended, elastic. The territory of the Iroquois, constantly extending as their united strength made itself felt, became the 'Great Asylum' of the Indian tribes. … Among the interminable stories with which the common people [of the Five Nations] beguile their winter nights, the traditions of Atotarho and Hiawatha became intermingled with the legends of their mythology. An accidental similarity, in the Onondaga dialect, between the name of Hiawatha and that of one of their ancient divinities, led to a confusion between the two, which has misled some investigators. This deity bears, in the sonorous Canienga tongue, the name of Taronhiawagon, meaning 'the Holder of the Heavens.' The Jesuit missionaries style him 'the great god of the Iroquois.' Among the Onondagas of the present day, the name is abridged to Taonhiawagi, or Tahiawagi. The confusion between this name and that of Hiawatha (which, in another form, is pronounced Tahionwatha) seems to have begun more than a century ago. … Mr. J. V. H. Clark, in his interesting History of Onondaga, makes the name to have been originally Ta-own-ya-wat-ha, and describes the bearer as 'the deity who presides over fisheries and hunting-grounds.' He came down from heaven in a white canoe, and after sundry adventures, which remind one of the labors of Hercules, assumed the name of Hiawatha (signifying, we are told, 'a very wise man'), and dwelt for a time as an ordinary mortal among men, occupied in works of benevolence. Finally, after founding the confederacy and bestowing many prudent counsels upon the people, he returned to the skies by the same conveyance in which he had descended. This legend, or, rather, congeries of intermingled legends, was communicated by Clark to Schoolcraft, when the latter was compiling his 'Notes on the Iroquois.' Mr. Schoolcraft, pleased with the poetical cast of the story, and the euphonious name, made confusion worse confounded by transferring the hero to a distant region and identifying him with Manabozho, a fantastic divinity of the Ojibways. Schoolcraft's volume, which he chose to entitle 'The Hiawatha Legends,' has not in it a single fact or fiction relating either to Hiawatha himself or to the Iroquois deity Taronhiawagon. Wild Ojibway stories concerning Manabozho and his comrades form the staple of its contents. But it is to this collection that we owe the charming poem of Longfellow; and thus, by an extraordinary fortune, a grave Iroquois lawgiver of the fifteenth century has become, in modern literature, an Ojibway demigod, son of the West Wind, and companion of the tricksy Paupukkeewis, the boastful Iagoo, and the strong Kwasind. If a Chinese traveler, during the middle ages, inquiring into the history and religion of the western nations, had confounded King Alfred with King Arthur, and both with Odin, he would not have made a more preposterous confusion of names and characters than that which has hitherto disguised the genuine personality of the great Onondaga reformer."

H. Hale, editor, The Iroquois Book of Rites (Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature, number 2, pages 21-36).

{1803}

IRREDENTISTS.

"This is the name given to a political organisation formed in 1878, with the avowed object of freeing all Italians from foreign rule, and of reuniting to the Italian kingdom all those portions of the Italy of old which have passed under foreign dominion. The operations of the 'Italia Irredenta' party are chiefly carried on against Austria, in consequence of the retention by that Empire of Trieste and the Southern Tyrol. Until these territories have been relinquished, Italy, or at least a certain part of it, will remain unsatisfied."

J. S. Jeans, Italy (National Life and Thought, chapter 8).

ISAAC II. (Comnenus), Emperor in the East (Byzantine, or Greek), A. D. 1057-1059.

Isaac II. (Angelus), Emperor in the East (Byzantine, or Greek), 1185-1195.

ISABELLA, Queen of Castile (wife of Ferdinand II., King of Aragon), A. D. 1474-1504.

Isabella I., Queen of Spain, 1833-1868.

ISABELLA. The city founded by Columbus on the island of Hispaniola, or Hayti.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1493-1496.

ISANDLANA, The English disaster at (1879).

See SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1877-1879.

ISASZEG, Battle of (1849).

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1848-1849.

ISAURIAN DYNASTY, The.

See BYZANTINE EMPIRE: A. D. 717-797.

ISAURIANS, The.

The Isaurians were a fierce and savage race of mountaineers, who occupied anciently a district in Asia Minor, between Cilicia and Pamphylia on the south and Phrygia on the north. They were persistently a nation of robbers, living upon the spoils taken from their neighbors, who were never able to punish them justly in their mountain fastnesses. Even the iron hand of the Romans failed to reduce the Isaurians to order, although P. Servilius, in 78 B. C., destroyed most of their strongholds, and Pompey, eleven years later, in his great campaign against the pirates, put an end to the lawless depredations on sea and land of the Cilicians, who had become confederated with the Isaurians. Five centuries afterwards, in the days of the Eastern Empire, the Isaurians were the best soldiers of its army, and even gave an emperor to the throne at Constantinople in the person of Zeno or Zenon.

E. W. Brooks, The Emperor Zenon and the Isaurians (English Historical Review, April, 1893).

ISCA.

The name of two towns in Roman Britain, one of which is identified with modern Exeter and the other with Caerleon-on-Usk. The latter was the station of the 2d legion.

T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 8, chapter 5.

See EXETER, ORIGIN OF; also, CAERLEON.

ISHMAELIANS, The. See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 908-1171; also, ASSASSINS; and CARMATHIANS.

ISIDORE, The False Decretals of.

See PAPACY: A. D. 829-847.

ISINÆ.

See CAUSENNÆ.

ISLAM.

"The religion founded by Mahomet is called Islam, a word meaning 'the entire surrender of the will to God'; its professors are called Mussulmans—'those who have surrendered themselves,' or 'Believers,' as opposed to the 'Rejectors' of the Divine messengers, who are named 'Kafirs,' or 'Mushrikin,' that is, 'those who associate, are [not?] companions or sharers with the Deity.' Islam is sometimes divided under the two heads of Faith and Practical Religion.

I. Faith (Iman) includes a belief in one God, omnipotent, omniscient, all-merciful, the author of all good; and in Mahomet as his prophet, expressed in the formula 'There is no God but God, and Mahomet is the Prophet of God.' It includes, also, a belief in the authority and sufficiency of the Koran, in angels, genii, and the devil, in the immortality of the soul, the resurrection, the day of judgment and in God's absolute decree for good and evil.

II. Practical religion (Din) consists of five observances: (1) Recital of the formula of Belief, (2) Prayer with Ablution, (3) Fasting, (4) Almsgiving, (5) the Pilgrimage.

… The standard of Moslem orthodoxy is essentially the Koran and to it primary reference is made; but … some more extended and discriminating code became necessary. The deficiency was supplied by the compilation of the 'Sunnah,' or Traditional Law, which is built upon the sayings and practices of Mahomet, and, in the opinion of the orthodox, is invested with the force of law, and with some of the authority of inspiration. … In cases where both the Koran and the Sunnah afford no exact precept, the 'Rule of Faith' in their dogmatic belief, as well as the decisions of their secular courts, is based upon the teaching of one of the four great Imams, or founders of the orthodox sects, according as one or another of these prevails in any particular country. … The great Sunni sect is divided among the orthodox schools mentioned above, and is so called from its reception of the 'Sunnah,' as having authority concurrent with and supplementary to the Koran. In this respect it differs essentially from the Shias, or partisans of the house of Ali [the nephew of Mahomet and husband of his daughter Fatima] who, adhering to their own traditions, reject the authority of the 'Sunnah.' These two sects, moreover, have certain observances and matters of belief peculiar to themselves, the chief of which is the Shia doctrine, that the sovereign Imamat, or temporal and spiritual lordship over the faithful, was by divine right vested in Ali and in his descendants, through Hasan and Hosein, the children of Fatima, the daughter of the prophet. And thus the Persian Shias add to the formula of belief the confession, 'Ali is the Caliph of God.' In Persia the Shia doctrines prevail, and formerly so intense was sectarian hatred that the Sunni Mahometans paid a higher capitation tax there than the infidels. In Turkey the great majority are Sunni. In India the Shias number about one in twenty. The Shias, who reject this name, and call themselves Adliyah, or the 'Society of the Just,' are subdivided into a great variety of minor sects; but these … are united in asserting that the first three Caliphs, Abu Bekr, Omar, and Othman were usurpers, who had possessed themselves of the rightful and inalienable inheritance of Ali."

J. W. H. Stobart, Islam and its Founder, chapter 10.

"The twelve Imams, or pontiffs, of the Persian creed, are Ali, Hassan, Hosein, and the lineal descendants of Hosein to the ninth generation. Without arms, or treasures, or subjects, they successively enjoyed the veneration of the people and provoked the jealousy of the reigning caliphs. … The twelfth and last of the Imams, conspicuous by the title of Mahadi, or the Guide, surpassed the solitude and sanctity of his predecessors. He concealed himself in a cavern near Bagdad: the time and place of his death are unknown; and his votaries pretend that he still lives and will appear before the day of judgment."

E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 50.

ALSO IN: E. Sell, The Faith of Islam.

S. Lane-Poole, Studies in a Mosque, chapters 3 and 7.

R. D. Osborn, Islam under the Arabs, part 2, chapter 1.

W. C. Taylor, History of Mohammedanism, chapters 5-13.

R. Bosworth Smith, Mohammed and Mohammedanism

T. Nöldeke, Sketches from Eastern History, chapter 3.

See, also, MAHOMETAN CONQUEST.

{1804}

ISLAM, Dar-ul-, and Dar-ul-harb.

See DAR-UL-ISLAM.

ISLAND NUMBER TEN, The capture of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (MARCH-APRIL: ON THE MISSISSIPPI).

ISLE OF FRANCE.

The old French province containing Paris. Also the French name of Mauritius island, taken by England in 1810.

ISLE ROYALE.

See CAPE BRETON: A. D. 1720-1745.

ISLES, Lords of the.

See HEBRIDES: A. D. 1346-1504, and HARLAW, BATTLE OF.

ISLES OF THE BLESSED.

See CANARY ISLANDS.

ISLY, Battle of (1843).

See BARBARY STATES: A. D. 1830-1846.

ISMAIL, Khedive of Egypt, The reign and the fall of.

See EGYPT: A. D. 1840-1869; 1870-1883; and 1875-1882.

Ismail I., Shah of Persia, A. D. 1502-1523.

Ismail II., Shah of Persia, 1576-1577.

ISMAIL, Siege and capture of (1790).

See TURKS: A. D. 1776-1792.

ISMAILEANS, OR ISHMAELIANS.

See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 908-1171; also, ASSASSINS; and CARMATHIANS.

ISONOMY. ISOTIMY. ISAGORIA.

"The principle underlying democracy is the struggle for a legalised equality which was usually described [by the ancient Greeks] by the expressions Isonomy, or equality of law for all,—Isotimy, or proportionate regard paid to all, —Isagoria, or equal freedom of speech, with special reference to courts of justice and popular assemblies."

G. F. Schömann, Antiquity of Greece: The State, part 2, chapter 12.

ISONZO, Battle of the (A. D. 489).

See ROME: A. D. 488-526.

ISOPOLITY.

"Under Sp. Cassius [B. C. 493], Rome concluded a treaty with the Latins, in which the right of isopolity or the 'jus municipi' was conceded to them. The idea of isopolity changed in the course of time, but its essential features in early times were these: between the Romans and Latins and between the Romans and Caerites there existed this arrangement, that any citizen of the one state who wished to settle in the other, might forthwith be able to exercise there the rights of a citizen."

B. G. Niebuhr, Lectures on the History of Rome, lecture 13 (volume 1).

ISRAEL.

See JEWS.

ISRAEL, Lost Ten Tribes of.

See JEWS: THE KINGDOMS OF ISRAEL AND JUDAH.

ISSUS, Battle of (B. C. 333).

See MACEDONIA: B. C. 334-330.

ISTÆVONES, The.

See GERMANY: AS KNOWN TO TACITUS.

ISTAKR, OR STAKR.

The native name under the later, or Sassanian, Persian empire, of the ancient capital, Persepolis.

G. Rawlinson, Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy, chapter 3, footnote.

ISTER, The.

The ancient Greek name of the Danube, below the junction of the Theiss and the Save.

ISTHMIAN GAMES.

See NEMEAN.

—————ISTRIA: Start————

ISTRIA: Slavonic Occupation of.

See SLAVONIC PEOPLES: SIXTH AND SEVENTH CENTURIES.

ISTRIA: A. D. 1797. Acquisition by Austria.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1797 (MAY-OCTOBER).

—————ISTRIA: End————

ISTRIANS, The.

See ILLYRIANS.

ISURIUM.

A Roman town in Britain, which had previously been the chief town of the British tribe of the Brigantes. It is identified with Aldborough, Yorkshire, "where the excavator meets continually with the tessellated floors of the Roman houses."

T. Wright, Celt, Roman and Saxon, chapter 5.

ITALI, The.

See ŒNOTRIANS.

ITALIAN WAR, The.

See ROME: B. C. 90-88.

ITALIOTES.

See SICELIOTEB.

—————ITALY: Start————

[Image: Two maps of Italy, at the beginning of the Seventh Century, and A. D. 1492.]

ITALY: Ancient. Early Italians.

"It was not till the close of the Republic, or rather the beginning of the Empire, that the name of Italy was employed, as we now employ it, to designate the whole Peninsula, from the Alps to the Straits of Messina.

See ROME: B. C. 275.

The term Italia, borrowed from the name of a primæval tribe who occupied the southern portion of the land, was gradually adopted as a generic title in the same obscure manner in which most of the countries of Europe, or (we may say) the Continents of the world, have received their appellations. In the remotest times the name only included Lower Calabria: from these narrow limits it gradually spread upwards, till about the time of the Punic Wars, its northern boundary ascended the little river Rubicon (between Umbria and Cisalpine Gaul), then followed the ridge of the Appennines westward to the source of the Macra, and was carried down the bed of that small stream to the Gulf of Genoa. When we speak of Italy, therefore, in the Roman sense of the word, we must dismiss from our thoughts all that fertile country which was at Rome entitled the provincial district of Gallia Cisalpina, and Liguria."

H. G. Liddell, History of Rome, introduction, section. 2.

"Philological research teaches us to distinguish three primitive Italian stocks, the Iapygian, the Etruscan, and that which we shall call the Italian. The last is divided into two main branches,—the Latin branch, and that to which the dialects of the Umbri, Marsi, Volsci and Samnites belong. As to the Iapygian stock, we have but little information. {1805} At the southeastern extremity of Italy, in the Messapian or Calabrian peninsula, inscriptions in a peculiar extinct language have been found in considerable numbers; undoubtedly remains of the dialect of the Iapygians, who are very distinctly pronounced by tradition also to have been different from the Latin and Samnite stocks. … With the recognition of … a general family relationship or peculiar affinity between the Iapygians and Hellenes (a recognition, however, which by no means goes so far as to warrant our taking the Iapygian language to be a rude dialect of Greek), investigation must rest content. … The middle of the peninsula was inhabited, as far back as reliable tradition reaches, by two peoples or rather two branches of the same people, whose position in the Indo-Germanic family admits of being determined with greater precision than that of the Iapygian nation. We may with propriety call this people the Italian, since upon it rests the historical significance of the peninsula. It is divided into the two branch-stocks of the Latins and the Umbrians; the latter including their southern off-shoots, the Marsians and Samnites, and the colonies sent forth by the Samnites in historical times. … These examples [philological examples, given in the work, but omitted from this quotation], selected from a great abundance of analogous phenomena, suffice to establish the individuality of the Italian stock as distinguished from the other members of the Indo-Germanic family, and at the same time show it to be linguistically the nearest relative, as it is geographically the next neighbour, of the Greek. The Greek and the Italian are brothers; the Celt, the German and the Slavonian are their cousins. … Among the languages of the Italian stock, again, the Latin stands in marked contrast with the Umbro-Samnite dialects. It is true that of these only two, the Umbrian and the Samnite or Oscan, are in some degree known to us. … A conjoint view, however, of the facts of language and of history leaves no doubt that all these dialects belonged to the Umbro-Samnite branch of the great Italian stock. … It may … be regarded as certain that the Italians, like the Indians, migrated into their peninsula from the north. The advance of the Umbro-Sabellian stock along the central mountain-ridge of Italy, in a direction from north to south, can still be clearly traced; indeed its last phases belong to purely historical times. Less is known regarding the route which the Latin migration followed. Probably it proceeded in a similar direction along the west coast, long, in all likelihood, before the first Sabellian stocks began to move."

T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 1, chapters 2-3.

See, also, ETRUSCANS; LATIUM; SABINES; SAMNITES; UMBRIANS; MAGNA GRÆCIA; also, ROME: B. C. 343-290, and 339-338.

"In the February number of the 'Civiltà Cattolica,' Padre de Cara pleads for a national effort on the part of Italian archaeologists to solve the question of the origin of their country's civilisation by the systematic exploration and excavation of Pelasgic Italy. … In a series of articles, extending over several years, the learned father has contended for the identity of the Hittites and Proto-Pelasgians on archaeological, etymological, and historical grounds; and he here repeats that, if 'Italic' means Aryan, then it is among the peoples speaking Oscan, Umbrian, Latin, and other dialects of the Indo-European family that the parentage of Italian civilisation must be sought; but that 'Italy' meant in the first place the country of the Hittites (Hethei), and hence of the Pelasgians, and that name and civilisation are alike Pelasgic. Those who hold it to have been Aryan have not only the testimony of Greek and Roman writers against them, but also the facts that there were Pelasgians in Italy whose stone constructions are standing to this day, and that the Etruscan language and culture had no Aryan affinities. The writer further points out that the walls of Pelasgic cities, whether in Italy, Greece, or Asia Minor, all resemble each other, and that the origin of Greek civilisation was also Pelasgian. In Greece, as in Italy, the Aryans followed centuries after the Hittite-Pelasgians, and Aryan Greece carried the arts of Pelasgic Greece to perfection. He believes that, of two migratory bands of Hittites, one invaded Greece and the other Italy, about the same time. He also draws attention to the coincidence that it is not very long since Greece, like Italy at the present time, could date its civilisation no further back than 700 or 800 B. C. Schliemann recovered centuries for Greece, but 'Italy still remains imprisoned in the iron circle of the seventh century.' To break it, she must follow Schliemann's plan; and as he had steady faith in the excavation of the Pelasgic cities and cemeteries of Greece, so will like faith and conduct on the part of Italian archaeologists let in light upon this once dark problem."

Academy, March 31, 1894, page 273.

ITALY: Under the dominion of Rome.

See ROME.

ITALY: Invasions Repelled by Rome.

See ROME: B. C. 390-347, 282-275; PUNIC WARS; CIMBRI AND TEUTONES; ALEMANNI; and RADAGAISUS.

ITALY: A. D. 400-410. Alaric's invasions.

See GOTHS (VISIGOTHS): A. D. 400-403; and ROME: A. D. 408-410.

ITALY: A. D. 452. Attila's invasion. The origin of Venice.

See HUNS: A. D. 452; and VENICE: A. D. 452.

ITALY: A. D. 476-553. The fall of the Western Roman Empire. The Ostrogothic kingdom of Theodoric, and its fall. Recovery of Italy by Justinian.

See ROME: A. D. 455-476, to 535-553.

ITALY: A. D. 539-553. Frank invasions.

See FRANKS: A. D. 539-553.

ITALY: A. D. 554-800. Rule of the Exarchs of Ravenna.

See ROME: A. D. 554-800; and PAPACY: A. D. 728-774.

ITALY: A. D. 568-800. Lombard conquests and kingdom. Rise of the Papal power at Rome. Alliance of the Papacy with the sovereigns of the Franks. Revival of the Roman Empire under Charlemagne.

"Since the invasion of Alboin, Italy had groaned under a complication of evils. The Lombards who had entered along with that chief in A. D. 568 [see LOMBARDS: A. D. 568-573, and after] had settled in considerable numbers in the valley of the Po, and founded the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, leaving the rest of the country to be governed by the exarch of Ravenna as viceroy of the Eastern crown. This subjection was, however, little better than nominal. Although too few to occupy the whole peninsula, the invaders were yet strong enough to harass every part of it by inroads which met with no resistance from a population unused to arms, and without the spirit to use them in self-defence. … Tormented by their repeated attacks, Rome sought help in vain from Byzantium, whose forces, scarce able to repel from their walls the Avars and Saracens, could give no support to the distant exarch of Ravenna. {1806} The Popes were the Emperor's subjects; they it waited his confirmation, like other bishops; they had more than once been the victims of his anger. But as the city became more accustomed in independence, and the Pope rose to a predominance, real if not yet legal [see ROME: A. D. 590-640, and PAPACY: A. D. 728-774], his tone grew bolder than that of the Eastern patriarchs. In the controversies that had raged in the Church, he had had the wisdom or good fortune to espouse (though not always from the first) the orthodox side: it was now by another quarrel of religion that his deliverance from an unwelcome yoke was accomplished. The Emperor Leo, born among the Isaurian mountains, where a purer faith may yet have lingered, and stung by the Mohammedan taunt of idolatry, determined to abolish the worship of images, which seemed fast obscuring the more spiritual part of Christianity. An attempt sufficient to cause tumults among the submissive Greeks, excited in Italy a fiercer commotion. The populace rose with one heart in defence of what had become to them more than a symbol: the exarch was slain: the Pope, though unwilling to sever himself from the lawful head and protector of the Church, must yet excommunicate the prince whom he could not reclaim from so hateful a heresy.

See ICONOCLASTIC CONTROVERSY.

Liudprand, king of the Lombards, improved his opportunity: falling on the exarchate as the champion of images, on Rome as the minister of the Greek Emperor, he overran the one, and all but succeeded in capturing the other. The Pope escaped for the moment, but saw his peril: placed between a heretic and a robber, he turned his gaze beyond the Alps, to a Catholic chief who had just achieved a signal deliverance for Christendom on the field of Poitiers. Gregory II. had already opened communications with Charles Martel, mayor of the palace, and virtual ruler of the Frankish realm. As the crisis becomes more pressing, Gregory III. finds in the same quarter his only hope, and appeals to him in urgent letters, to haste to the succour of Holy Church. … Charles died before he could obey the call; but his son Pipin (surnamed the Short) made good use of the new friendship with Rome. He was the third of his family who had ruled the Franks with a monarch's full power [see FRANKS: A. D. 511-752]: it seemed time to abolish the pageant of Merovingian royalty; yet a departure from the ancient line might shock the feelings of the people. A course was taken whose dangers no one then foresaw: the Holy See, now for the first time invoked as an international power, pronounced the deposition of Childric, and gave to the royal office of his successor Pipin a sanctity hitherto unknown. … The compact between the chair of Peter and the Teutonic throne was hardly sealed, when the latter was summoned to discharge its share of the duties. Twice did Aistulf the Lombard assail Rome, twice did Pipin descend to the rescue: the second time at the bidding of a letter written in the name of St. Peter himself. Aistulf could make no resistance; and the Frank bestowed on the Papal chair all that belonged to the exarchate in North Italy, receiving as the meed of his services the title of Patrician [754]. … When on Pipin's death the restless Lombards again took up arms and menaced the possessions of the Church, Pipin's son Charles or Charlemagne swept down like a whirlwind from the Alps at the call of Pope Hadrian, seized king Desiderius in his capital, assumed himself the Lombard crown, and made northern Italy thenceforward an integral part of the Frankish empire [see GERMANY: A. D. 68-800]. … For the next twenty-four years Italy remained quiet. The government of Rome was carried on in the name of the Patrician Charles, although it does not appear that he sent thither any official representative; while at the same time both the city and the exarchate continued to admit the nominal supremacy of the Eastern Emperor, employing the years of his reign to date documents."

J. Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, chapter 4.

"Thus, by German hands, the internal ascendancy of the German race in Italy, which had lasted, first under the Goths, and then under the Lombards, for 281 years, was finally broken. A German was still king over Italy, as for ages Germans were still to be. But Roman and native influence reconquered its supremacy in Italy, under the management and leadership of the bishops of Rome. The Lombards, already becoming Italianized, melted into provincial Italians. The Teutonic language disappeared, leaving a number of words to Italian dialects, and a number of names to Italian families. The last king of the Lombards bore an Italian name, Desiderius. The latest of Italian national heroes bears the Bavarian and Lombard name of Garibaldi. But the overthrow of the Lombards, and the gift of provinces and cities to St. Peter had even more eventful results. The alliance between the king of the Franks and the bishop of Rome had become one of the closest kind. … The German king and the Italian pope found themselves together at the head of the modern world of the West. But the fascination of the name of Rome still, as it had done for centuries, held sway over the Teutonic mind. … It was not unnatural that the idea should recommend itself, both to the king and the pope, of reviving in the West, in close connexion with the Roman primacy, that great name which still filled the imagination of the world, and which in Roman judgments, Greek Byzantium had wrongfully stolen away—the name of Cæsar Augustus, the claim to govern the world. There was a longing in the West for the restoration of the name and authority, 'lest,' as the contemporary writers express it, 'the heathen should mock at the Christian if the name of Emperor had ceased among them.' And at this moment, the government at Constantinople was in the hands of a woman, the Empress Irene. Charles's services to the pope were recompensed, and his victorious career of more than thirty years crowned, by the restoration at Rome, in his person, of the Roman empire and the imperial dignity. The same authority which had made him 'patrician,' and consecrated him king, now created him Emperor of the Romans. On Christmas day, 800, when Charles came to pay his devotions before the altar of St. Peter's, Pope Leo III.—without Charles's knowledge or wish, so Charles declared to his biographer, Einhard, and, it may be, prematurely, as regards Charles's own feeling—placed a golden crown on his head, while all the people shouted, 'to Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned of God, the great and peace-giving Emperor of the Romans, life and victory.' … {1807} Thus a new power arose in Europe, new in reality and in its relations to society, though old in name. It was formally but the carrying on the line of the successors of Augustus and Constantine. But substantially it was something very different. Its authors could little foresee its destinies; but it was to last, in some sort the political centre of the world which was to be, for 1,000 years. And the Roman Church, which had done such great things, which had consecrated the new and mighty kings of the Franks, and had created for the mightiest of them the imperial claim to universal dominion, rose with them to a new attitude in the world. … The coronation of Charles at Rome, in the face of an imperial line at Constantinople, finally determined, though it did not at once accomplish, the separation of East and West, of Greek and Latin Christianity. This separation had long been impending, perhaps, becoming inevitable. … One Roman empire was still the only received theory. But one Roman empire, with its seat in the West, or one Roman empire, governed in partnership by two emperors of East and West, had become impossible in fact. The theory of its unity continued for ages; but whether the true successor of Augustus and Theodosius sat at Constantinople, or somewhere in the West, remained in dispute, till the dispute was ended by the extinction of the Eastern empire by the Turks on May 29, 1453."

R. W. Church, The Beginning of the Middle Ages, chapter 7.

See, also, FRANKS: A. D. 768-814.

ITALY: A. D. 685-1014. The founding of the duchy of Tuscany.

See TUSCANY: A. D. 685-1115.

ITALY: A. D. 781. Erected into a separate kingdom by Charlemagne.

In the year 781 Charlemagne erected Italy and Aquitaine into two separate kingdoms, placing his infant sons Pipin and Ludwig on the thrones.

P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, chapter 16.

ITALY: (Southern): A. D. 800-1016. Conflict of Greeks, Saracens and Franks.

"The southern provinces [of Italy], which now compose the kingdom of Naples, were subject, for the most part [in the 8th and 9th centuries], to the Lombard dukes and princes of Beneventum—so powerful in war that they checked for a moment the genius of Charlemagne—so liberal in peace that they maintained in their capital an academy of thirty-two philosophers and grammarians. The division of this flourishing state produced the rival principalities of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua; and the thoughtless ambition or revenge of the competitors invited the Saracens to the ruin of their common inheritance. During a calamitous period of two hundred years, Italy was exposed to a repetition of wounds which the invaders were not capable of healing by the union and tranquillity of a perfect conquest. Their frequent and almost annual squadrons issued from the port of Palermo and were entertained with too much indulgence by the Christians of Naples: the more formidable fleets were prepared on the African coasts. … A colony of Saracens had been planted at Bari, which commands the entrance of the Adriatic Gulf; and their impartial depredations provoked the resentment and conciliated the union of the two emperors. An offensive alliance was concluded between Basil the Macedonian [of the Byzantine Empire], the first of his race, and Lewis, the great grandson of Charlemagne; and each party Supplied the deficiencies of his associate. … The fortress of Bari was invested by the infantry of the Franks and by the cavalry and galleys of the Greeks; and, after a defence of four years, the Arabian emir submitted [A. D. 871] to the clemency of Lewis, who commanded in person the operations of the siege. This important conquest had been achieved by the concord of the East and West; but their recent amity was soon embittered by the mutual complaints of jealousy and pride. … Whoever might deserve the honour, the Greek emperors, Basil and his son Leo, secured the advantage of the reduction of Bari. The Italians of Apulia and Calabria were persuaded or compelled to acknowledge their supremacy, and an ideal line from Mount Garganus to the Bay of Salerno leaves the far greater part of the [modern] kingdom of Naples under the dominion of the Eastern empire. Beyond that line the dukes or republics of Amalfi and Naples, who had never forfeited their voluntary allegiance, rejoiced in the neighbourhood of their lawful sovereign; and Amalfi was enriched by supplying Europe with the produce and manufactures of Asia. But the Lombard princes of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua, were reluctantly torn from the communion of the Latin world, and too often violated their oaths of servitude and tribute. The city of Bari rose to dignity and wealth as the metropolis of the new theme or province of Lombardy; the title of Patrician, and afterwards the singular name of Catapan, was assigned to the supreme governor. … As long as the sceptre was disputed by the princes of Italy, their efforts were feeble and adverse; and the Greeks resisted or eluded the forces of Germany which descended from the Alps under the imperial standard of the Othos. The first and greatest of those Saxon princes was compelled to relinquish the siege of Bari: the second, after the loss of his stoutest bishops and barons, escaped with honour from the bloody field of Crotona (A. D. 983). On that day the scale of war was turned against the Franks by the valour of the Saracens. … The Caliph of Egypt had transported 40,000 Moslems to the aid of his Christian ally. The successors of Basil amused themselves with the belief that the conquest of Lombardy had been achieved, and was still preserved, by the justice of their laws, the virtues of their ministers, and the gratitude of a people whom they had rescued from anarchy and oppression. A series of rebellions might dart a ray of truth into the palace of Constantinople; and the illusions of flattery were dispelled by the easy and rapid success of the Norman adventurers."

E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 56.

ITALY: A. D. 803-810. Charlemagne's boundary treaties with the Byzantine Emperor. Attempts of Pipin against the Venetians. The founding of Modern Venice.

See VENICE: A. D. 697-810.

ITALY: A. D. 810-961. Spread of Venetian commerce and naval prowess.

See VENICE: A. D. 810-961.

{1808}

ITALY: A. D. 843-951. In the breaking up of Charlemagne's Empire. The founding of the Holy Roman Empire.

In the partition of Charlemagne's Empire among his three grandsons, by the treaty of Verdun, A. D. 843, Italy, together with the new kingdom called Lotharingia, or Lorraine, was assigned to the elder, Lothar, who bore the title of Emperor. Lothar, who died in 855, redivided his dominions among three sons, and Lorraine, separated from Italy, was soon dismembered and shared between Germany and France. The Italian kingdom fell to Louis or Ludwig II., who was crowned Emperor, and on his death without issue, A. D. 875, it was seized, together with the imperial title, by the French Carlovingian king, Charles the Bald. Two years afterwards he died, and Italy, together with the imperial crown, was acquired by the last legitimate survivor of the German Carlovingian line, Charles the Fat, who died in 888. "At that memorable era (A. D. 888) the four kingdoms which this prince [Charles the Fat] had united fell asunder: West France, where Odo or Eudes [Duke of Paris, ancestor of the royal line of Capet] then began to reign, was never again united to Germany; East France (Germany) chose Arnulf; Burgundy split up into two principalities, in one of which (Transjurane) Rudolf proclaimed himself king, while the other (Cisjurune with Provence) submitted to Boso; while Italy was divided between the parties of Berengar of Friuli and Guido of Spoleto. The former was chosen king by the estates of Lombardy; the latter, and on his speedy death his son Lambert, was crowned Emperor by the Pope. Arnulf's [the German king's] descent chased them away and vindicated the claims of the Franks, but on his flight Italy and the anti-German faction at Rome became again free. Berengar was made king of Italy, and afterwards Emperor. Lewis of Burgundy, son of Boso, renounced his fealty to Arnulf, and procured the imperial dignity, whose vain title he retained through years of misery and exile, till A. D. 928. None of these Emperors were strong enough to rule well even in Italy; beyond it they were not so much as recognized. … In A. D. 924 died Berengar, the last of these phantom Emperors. After him Hugh of Burgundy and Lothar his son reigned as kings of Italy, if puppets in the hands of a riotous aristocracy can be so called. Rome was meanwhile ruled by the consul or senator Alberic [called variously senator, consul, patrician, and prince of the Romans], who had renewed her never quite extinct republican institutions, and in the degradation of the papacy was almost absolute in the city." Affairs in Italy were at this stage when Otto or Otho, the vigorous and chivalrous German king of the new line, came in 951 to re-establish and reconstitute the Roman Empire of Charlemagne and to make it a lasting entity in European politics—the "Holy Roman Empire" of modern history.

J. Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, chapter 6.

See GERMANY: A. D. 936-973.

ALSO IN: F. Guizot, History of Civilization, lecture 24.

E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 49.

See, also, ROME: A. D. 903-964; and ROMAN EMPIRE, THE HOLY: A. D. 963.

ITALY: A. D. 900-924. Ravaged by the Hungarians.

"The vicinity of Italy had tempted their early inroads; but from their camp on the Brenta they beheld with some terror the apparent strength and populousness of the new-discovered country. They requested leave to retire; their request was proudly rejected by the Italian king; and the lives of 20,000 Christians paid the forfeit of his obstinacy and rashness. Among the cities of the West the royal Pavia was conspicuous in fame and splendour; and the pre-eminence of Rome itself was only derived from the relies of the apostles. The Hungarians appeared; Pavia was in flames; forty-three churches were consumed; and, after the massacre of the people, they spared about 200 wretches who had gathered some bushels of gold and silver (a vague exaggeration) from the smoking ruins of their country. In these annual excursions from the Alps to the neighbourhood of Rome and Capua, the churches that yet escaped resounded with a fearful litany: 'Oh! save and deliver us from the arrows of the Hungarians!' But the saints were deaf or inexorable; and the torrent rolled forward, till it was stopped by the extreme land of Calabria."

E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 55.

ITALY: A. D. 961-1039. Subjection to Germany.

"Otho I., his son Otho II., and his grandson Otho III., were successively acknowledged emperors and kings of Italy, from 961 to 1002. When this branch of the house of Saxony became extinct, Henry II. of Bavaria, and Conrad the Salic of Franconia, filled the throne from 1004 to 1039. During this period of nearly eighty years, the German emperors twelve times entered Italy at the head of their armies, which they always drew up in the plains of Roncaglia near Placentia; there they held the states of Lombardy, received homage from their Italian feudatories, caused the rents due to be paid, and promulgated laws for the government of Italy. A foreign sovereign, however, almost always absent, known only by his incursions at the head of a barbarous army, could not efficaciously govern a country which he hardly knew, and where his yoke was detested. … The emperors were too happy to acknowledge the local authorities, whatever they were, whenever they could obtain from them their pecuniary dues: sometimes they were dukes or marquises, whose dignities had survived the disasters of various invasions and of civil wars; sometimes the archbishops and bishops of great cities, whom Charlemagne and his successors had frequently invested with duchies and counties escheated to the crown, reckoning that lords elected for life would remain more dependent than hereditary lords; sometimes, finally, they were the magistrates themselves, who, although elected by the people, received from the monarch the title of imperial vicars, and took part with the nobles and prelates in the Plaids (placita), or diets of Roncaglia. After a stay of some months, the emperor returned with his army into Germany; the nobles retired to their castles, the prelates and magistrates to their cities: neither of these last acknowledged a superior authority to their own, nor reckoned on any other force than what they could themselves employ to assert what they called their rights. Opposite interests could not fail to produce collision, and the war was universal."

J. C. L. de Sismondi, History of the Italian Republics, chapter 1.

{1809}

During the reign of Henry II. (A. D. 1002-1024), against whom a rival king of Italy was set up by the Italians, "there was hardly any recognised government, and the Lombards became more and more accustomed, through necessity, to protect themselves, and to provide for their own internal police. Meanwhile the German nation had become odious to the Italians. The rude soldiery, insolent and addicted to intoxication, were engaged in frequent disputes with the citizens, wherein the latter, as is usual in similar cases, were exposed first to the summary vengeance of the troops, and afterwards to penal chastisement for sedition. In one of these tumults, at the entry of Henry II. in 1004, the city of Pavia was burned to the ground, which inspired its inhabitants with a constant animosity against that emperor. Upon his death, in 1024, the Italians were disposed to break once more their connexion with Germany, which had elected as sovereign Conrad duke of Franconia. They offered their crown to Robert king of France and to William duke of Guienne." But neither of these princes would accept the troublesome diadem; and, in the end, the archbishop of Milan and other Lombard lords "repaired to Constance and tendered the crown to Conrad, which he was already disposed to claim as a sort of dependency upon Germany. It does not appear that either Conrad or his successors were ever regularly elected to reign over Italy; but whether this ceremony took place or not, we may certainly date from that time the subjection of Italy to the Germanic body. It became an unquestionable maxim, that the votes of a few German princes conferred a right to the sovereignty of a country which had never been conquered, and which had never formally recognised this superiority."

H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, chapter 3, part 1 (volume 1).

"The Italian Kingdom of the Karlings, the kingdom which was reunited to Germany under Otto the Great, was … a continuation of the old Lombard kingdom. It consisted of that kingdom, enlarged by the Italian lands which fell off from the Eastern Empire in the eighth century; that is by the Exarchate and the adjoining Pentapolis, and the immediate territory of Rome itself."

E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, chapter 8, section 3.

ITALY: (Southern): A. D. 1000-1090. Conquests and settlement of the Normans.

"A pilgrimage first took the Normans to Southern Italy, where they were to found a kingdom. Here there were, if I may so speak, three wrecks, three ruins of nations—Lombards in the mountains, Greeks in the ports, Sicilian and African Saracens rambling over the coasts. About the year 1000, some Norman pilgrims assist the inhabitants of Salerno to drive out a party of Arabs, who were holding them to ransom. Being well paid for the service, these Normans attract others of their countrymen hither. A Greek of Bari, named Melo or Meles, takes them into pay to free his city from the Greeks of Byzantium. Next they are settled by the Greek republic of Naples at the fort of Aversa, which lay between that city and her enemies, the Lombards of Capua (A. D. 1026). Finally, the sons of a poor gentleman of the Cotentin, Tancred of Hauteville, seek their fortune here. Tancred had twelve children; seven by the same mother. It was during William's [the Conqueror's] minority, when numbers of the barons endeavoured to withdraw themselves from the Bastard's yoke, that these sons of Tancred's directed their steps towards Italy, where it was said that a simple Norman knight had become count of Aversa. They set off penniless, and defrayed the expenses of their journey by the sword (A. D. 1037?). The Byzantine governor, or Katapan, engaged their services, and led them against the Arabs. But their countrymen beginning to flock to them, they no sooner saw themselves strong enough than they turned against their paymasters, seized Apulia [A. D. 1042], and divided it into twelve countships. This republic of Condottieri held its assemblies at Melphi. The Greeks endeavoured to defend themselves, but fruitlessly. They collected an army of 60,000 Italians; to be routed by the Normans, who amounted to several hundreds of well-armed men. The Byzantines then summoned their enemies, the Germans, to their aid; and the two empires, of the East and West, confederated against the sons of the gentleman of Coutances. The all-powerful emperor, Henry the Black (Henry III.), charged Leo IX., who had been nominated pope by him, and who was a German and kin to the imperial family, to exterminate these brigands. The pope led some Germans and a swarm of Italians against them [1053]; but the latter took to flight at the very beginning of the battle, and left the warlike pontiff in the hands of the enemy. Too wary to ill-treat him, the Normans piously cast themselves at their prisoner's feet, and compelled him to grant them, as a fief of the Church, all that they had taken or might take possession of in Apulia, Calabria, and on the other side of the strait; so that, in spite of himself, the pope became the suzerain of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies (A. D. 1052-1053)."

J. Michelet, History of France, book 4, chapter 2.

The two elder of the sons of Tancred were now dead, and the third son, Humphrey, died not long after. A fourth brother, Robert, surnamed Guiscard, who had lately arrived from Normandy with reinforcements, then established himself (A. D. 1057) with some difficulty in the leadership and succession. "He accomplished the reduction of almost all the country which composes the present kingdom of Naples, and, extinguishing the long dominion of the Beneventine Lombards and of the eastern empire in Italy [see BENEVENTUM, and AMALFI], finally received from Pope Nicholas II. the confirmation of the titles which he had assumed, of duke of Calabria and Apulia [A. D. 1080]. … While Robert Guiscard was perfecting his dominion on the continent, his younger brother Roger engaged in the astonishing design of conquering the large and beautiful island of Sicily from the Saracens with a few Norman volunteers. An air of romantic extravagance breathes over all the enterprises of the Normans in Italy; and, even if we discard the incredible tales which the legends and chronicles of the times have preserved of the valour and corporeal strength of these northern warriors, enough will remain in the authentic results of their expeditions to stagger the reason and warm the imagination with attractive visions of chivalrous achievement. … We are assured that 300 Christian knights were the greatest number which Roger could for many years bring into the field; and that 136 routed a prodigious host of Saracens at the battle of Ceramio. … But the Saracens were embroiled in internal discord, and their island was broken up into numerous petty states; we may, therefore, attribute to their dissensions a great part of the success which the chroniclers of the Normans have assigned to their good swords alone. Roger had, however, embarked in an arduous and laborious undertaking, which it required the unbending perseverance and patient valour of thirty years [A. D. 1060-1090] to accomplish. … At length, all Sicily bowed to his sway; Norman barons were infeuded over its surface; and Roger, with the title of great count, held the island as a fief of his brother's duchy."

G. Proctor, History of Italy, chapter 2, part 2.

ALSO IN: E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 56.

J. W. Barlow, Short History of the Normans in South Europe, chapters 1-7.

{1810}

ITALY: A. D. 1056-1122. Beginning of the conflict of the Popes with the Emperors. Hildebrand and Henry IV. The War of Investitures.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1056-1122; and GERMANY: A. D. 973-1122.

ITALY: A. D. 1056-1152. The rise of the republican cities.

"The war of investitures, which lasted more than sixty years, accomplished the dissolution of every tie between the different members of the kingdom of Italy. Civil wars have at least this advantage,—that they force the rulers of the people to consult the wishes of their subjects, oblige them to gain affections which constitute their strength, and to compensate, by the granting of new privileges, the services which they require. The prelates, nobles, and cities of Italy obeyed, some the emperor, others the pope; not from a blind fear, but from choice, from affection, from conscience, according as the political or religious sentiment was predominant in each. The war was general, but everywhere waged with the national forces. Every city armed its militia, which, headed by the magistrates, attacked the neighbouring nobles or towns of a contrary party. While each city imagined it was fighting either for the pope or the emperor, it was habitually impelled exclusively by its own sentiments: every town considered itself as a whole, as an independent state, which had its own allies and enemies; each citizen felt an ardent patriotism, not for the kingdom of Italy, or for the empire, but for his own city. At the period when either kings or emperors had granted to towns the right of raising fortifications, that of assembling the citizens at the sound of a great bell, to concert together the means of their common defence, had been also conceded. This meeting of all the men of the state capable of bearing arms was called a parliament. It assembled in the great square, and elected annually two consuls, charged with the administration of justice at home, and the command of the army abroad. … The parliament, which named the consuls, appointed also a secret council, called a Consilio di Credenza, to assist the government, composed of a few members taken from each division; besides a grand council of the people, who prepared the decisions to be submitted to the parliament. … As industry had rapidly increased, and had preceded luxury,—as domestic life was sober, and the produce of labour considerable,—wealth had greatly augmented. The citizens allowed themselves no other use of their riches than that of defending or embellishing their country. It was from the year 900 to the year 1200 that the most prodigious works were undertaken and accomplished by the towns of Italy. … These three regenerating centuries gave an impulse to architecture, which soon awakened the other fine arts. The republican spirit which now fermented in every city, and gave to each of them constitutions so wise, magistrates so zealous, and citizens so patriotic, and so capable of great achievements, had found in Italy itself the models which had contributed to its formation. The war of investitures had given wing to this universal spirit of liberty and patriotism in all the municipalities of Lombardy, in Piedmont, Venetia, Romagna, and Tuscany. But there existed already in Italy other free cities. … Venice, … Ravenna, … Genoa, … Pisa, … Rome, Gaëta, Naples, Amalfi, Bari, were either never conquered by the Lombards, or in subjection too short a time to have lost their ancient walls, and the habit of guarding them. These cities served as the refuge of Roman civilization. … Those cities which had accumulated the most wealth, whose walls inclosed the greatest population, attempted, from the first half of the twelfth century, to secure by force of arms the obedience of such of the neighbouring towns as did not appear sufficiently strong to resist them, … to force them in to a perpetual alliance, so as to share their good or evil fortune, and always place their armed force under the standard of the dominant city. … Two great towns in the plains of Lombardy surpassed every other in power and wealth: Milan, which habitually directed the party of the church; and Pavia, which directed that of the empire. Both towns, however, seem to have changed parties during the reigns of Lothario III. and Conrad II., who, from the year 1125 to 1152 placed in opposition the two houses of Guelphs and Ghibelines in Germany. … Among the towns of Piedmont, Turin took the lead, and disputed the authority of the counts of Savoy, who called themselves imperial vicars in that country. … The family of the Veronese marquises, … who from the time of the Lombard kings had to defend the frontier against the Germans, were extinct; and the great cities of Verona, Padua, Vicenza, Treviso, and Mantua, nearly equal in power, maintained their independence. Bologna held the first rank among the towns south of the Po. … Tuscany, which had also had its powerful marquises, saw their family become extinct with the countess Matilda, the contemporary and friend of Gregory VII. Florence had since risen in power, destroyed Fiesole, and … was considered the head of the Tuscan league; and the more so that Pisa at this period thought only of her maritime expeditions. … Such was the state of Italy, when the Germanic diet, assembled at Frankfort in 1152, conferred the crown on Frederick Barbarossa, duke of Swabia, and of the house of Hohenstaufen."

J. C. L. de Sismondi, History of the Italian Republics, chapters 1-2.

ALSO IN: E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, chapter 8, section 3.

W. K. Williams, The Communes of Lombardy (Johns Hopkins University Studies, 9th series, 5-6).

H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, chapter 3, part 1 (volume 1).

Europe during the Middle Ages (Lardner's Cabinet Cyclop., volume 1, chapter 1).

See, also, FLORENCE: 12TH CENTURY.

ITALY: A. D. 1063. Birth of Pisan architecture.

See PISA: A. D. 1063-1293.

ITALY: A. D. 1077-1102. Countess Matilda's donation to the Holy See.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1077-1102.

{1811}

ITALY: (Southern): A. D. 1081-1194. Robert Guiscard's invasions of the Eastern Empire. Union of Sicily with Apulia, and creation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, or Naples.

"The success of his brother [Roger, in Sicily—see above: A. D. 1000-1090] furnished another spur to the ambition of Robert Guiscard. Taking advantage of a dynastic revolution at Constantinople, he and his son Bohemund commenced a series of invasions of the Eastern Empire [see BYZANTINE EMPIRE: A. D. 1081-1085] which only ended with his death. These, though unsuccessful in their ultimate result, were influential causes of the first crusade, and deeply affected the relations of East and West for years to come. Meanwhile in Sicily Roger had been succeeded by his son [Roger II.], and, in 1127, this heir of the destinies of his race added the dukedom of Apulia to that of Sicily, obtained from Pope Anacletus the title of king, and finally established the Norman kingdom of Naples [also called the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies]. His character is thus described by a contemporary chronicler: 'He was a lover of justice and most severe avenger of crime. He abhorred lying; did everything by rule, and never promised what he did not mean to perform. He never persecuted his private enemies; and in war endeavoured on all occasions to gain his point without shedding of blood. Justice and peace were universally observed throughout his dominions.' During his reign the intercourse between England and Sicily was close. The government was organized on principles very similar to that of England. … Under his wise rule and that of his immediate successors, the south of Italy and Sicily enjoyed a transient gleam of prosperity and happiness. Their equal and tolerant government, far surpassing anything at that day in Europe, enabled the Saracen, the Greek, and the Italian to live together in harmony elsewhere unknown. Trade and industry flourished, the manufacture of silk enriched the inhabitants, and the kingdom of Naples was at peace until she was crushed under the iron heel of a Teutonic conqueror."

A. H. Johnson, The Normans in Europe, chapter 6.

ALSO IN: E. A. Freeman, The Normans at Palermo (Historical Essays, 3d series).

J. W. Barlow, Short History of the Normans in South Europe, chapters 8-11.

ITALY: A. D. 1096-1102. The First Crusades.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1096-1099; and 1101-1102.

ITALY: A. D. 1138. The accession of the Hohenstaufens to the Imperial throne, and the origin, in Germany, of the Guelf and Ghibelline factions.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1138-1268.

ITALY: A. D. 1154-1162. The first and second expeditions of Frederick Barbarossa.

Frederick I., the second of the emperors of the Hohenstaufen line, called by the Italians Frederick Barbarossa (Red beard), was elected king at Frankfort in March, 1152. In October, 1154, he crossed the Alps and entered Italy with a strong German army, having two purposes in view:

1. To receive the imperial crown, from the hands of the Pope, and to place on his own head, at Pavia, the iron crown of Lombardy or Italy.

2. To reduce to order and submission the rising city-republics of Lombardy and Tuscany, which had been growing rapidly in independence and power during the last four troubled imperial reigns.

At Roncaglia, he held the diet of the kingdom, and listened to many complaints, especially against Milan, which had undoubtedly oppressed the weaker towns of its neighbourhood and abused its strength. Then he moved through the country, making a personal inspection of affairs, and giving a taste of his temper by burning the villages which failed to supply provisions to his troops with satisfactory promptitude. At Tortona he ordered the inhabitants to renounce their alliance with the Milanese. They refused, and endured in the upper portion of the city a siege of two months. Forced by want of water to surrender, at last, they were permitted to go free, but their town was sacked and burned. Asti, Chieri, Rosate, and other places of more or less importance, were destroyed. Frederick did not venture yet to attack Milan, but proceeded to Rome, demanding the imperial crown. The pope (Adrian IV.) and the Romans were alike distrustful of him, and he was not permitted to bring his army into the city. After no little wrangling over ceremonious details, and after being compelled to lead the horse and to hold the stirrup of the haughty pontiff, Barbarossa was finally crowned at St. Peter's, in the Vatican suburb. The Romans attempted to interrupt the coronation, and a terrible tumult occurred in which a thousand of the citizens were slain. But the Germans made no attempt to take possession of the city. On the contrary, they withdrew with haste, and the emperor led his army back to Germany, burning Spoleto on the way, because it failed in submissiveness, and marking a wide track of ruin and desolation through Italy as he went. This was in the summer of 1155. Three years passed, during which the Italian cities grew more determined in their independence, the emperor and his German subjects more bitter in hostility to them, and the pope and the emperor more antagonistic in their ambitions. In 1158 Frederick led a second expedition into Italy, especially determined to make an end of the contumacy of Milan. He began operations by creating a desert of blackened country around the offending city, being resolved to reduce it by famine. Mediators, however, appeared, who brought about a treaty of pacification, which interrupted hostilities for a few weeks. Then the Milanese found occasion to accuse the emperor of a treacherous violation of the terms of the treaty and again took up arms. The war was now to the death. But, before settling to the siege of Milan, Frederick gave himself the pleasure, first, of reducing the lesser city of Crema, which continued to be faithful among the allies of the Milanese. He held some children of the town in his hands, as hostages, and he bound them to the towers which he moved against the walls, compelling the wretched citizens to kill their own offspring in the act of their self-defense. By such atrocities as this, Crema was taken, at the end of seven months, and destroyed. Then Milan was assailed and beleaguered, harassed and blockaded, until, at the beginning of March, 1162, the starved inhabitants gave up their town. Frederick ordered the doomed city "to be completely evacuated, so that there should not be left in it a single living being. On the 25th of March, he summoned the militias of the rival and Ghibeline cities, and gave them orders to rase to the earth the houses as well as the walls of the town, so as not to leave one stone upon another. Those of the inhabitants of Milan whom their poverty, labour and industry attached to the soil, were divided into four open villages, built at a distance of at least two miles from the walls of their former city. Others sought hospitality in the neighbouring towns of Italy. … {1812} Their sufferings, the extent of their sacrifices, the recollection of their valour, and the example of their noble sentiments, made proselytes to the cause of liberty in every city into which they were received." Meantime Frederick Barbarossa returned to Germany, with his fame as a puissant monarch much augmented.

J. C. L. de Sismondi, History of the Italian Republics, chapter 2.

ALSO IN: U. Balzani, The Popes and the Hohenstaufen, chapters 3-5.

G. B. Testa, History of the War of Frederick I. against the Communes of Lombardy, books 1-6.

E. A. Freeman, Frederick the First, King of Italy (Historical Essays, 1st series).

ITALY: A. D. 1163-1164. Third visitation of Frederick Barbarossa. The rival Popes.

Frederick Barbarossa entered Italy for the third time in 1163, without an army, but imposingly escorted by his German nobles. He imagined that the country had been terrorized sufficiently by the savage measures of his previous visitation to need no more military repression. But he found the Lombard cities undismayed in the assertion of their rights, and drawing together in unions which had never been possible among them before. The hostility of his relations with the Papacy and with the greater part of the Church gave encouragement to political revolt. His quarrel with Pope Hadrian had been ended by the death of the latter, in 1159, but only to give rise to new and more disturbing contentions. It had grown so bitter before Hadrian died that the Pope had allied himself by treaty with Milan, Crema, and other cities resisting Frederick, and had promised to excommunicate the emperor within forty days. Sudden death frustrated the combination. At the election of Hadrian's successor there was a struggle of factions, each determined to put its representative in the papal chair, and each claiming success. Two rival popes were proclaimed and consecrated, one under the name of Alexander III., the other as Victor IV. Frederick recognized the latter, who made himself the emperor's creature. The greater part of Christendom soon gave its recognition to the former, although he had been driven to take refuge in France. Pope Alexander excommunicated Frederick and Frederick's pope, and Pope Victor retorted like anathemas. Whether the curses of Alexander were more effectual, or for other reasons, the authority of Victor dwindled, and he himself presently died (April 1164), while Frederick was making his third inspection of affairs in Italy. The emperor found it impossible to execute his unbending will without an army. Verona, Vicenza, Padua, and Treviso held a congress and openly associated themselves for common defense. Frederick attempted to make use of the militia forces of Pavia, Cremona, and other Ghibelline towns against them; but he found even these citizen-soldiers so mutinous with disaffection that he dared not pursue the undertaking. He returned to Germany for an army more in sympathy with his obstinate designs against Italian liberty.

U. Balzani, The Popes and the Hohenstaufen, chapters 4-5.

ALSO IN: H. H. Milman, History of Latin Christianity, book 8, chapters 7-8.

G. B. Testa, History of the War of Frederick I. against the Communes of Lombardy, book 7.

ITALY: A. D. 1166-1167. The fourth expedition of Frederick Barbarossa. The League of Lombardy.

"When Frederick, in the month of October, 1166, descended the mountains of the Grisons to enter Italy [for the fourth time] by the territory of Brescia, he marched his army directly to Lodi, without permitting any act of hostility on the way. At Lodi, he assembled, towards the end of November, a diet of the kingdom of Italy, at which he promised the Lombards to redress the grievances occasioned by the abuses of power by his podestas, and to respect their just liberties; he was desirous of separating their cause from that of the pope and the king of Sicily; and to give greater weight to his negotiation, he marched his army into central Italy. … The towns of the Veronese marches, seeing the emperor and his army pass without daring to attack them, became bolder: they assembled a new diet, in the beginning of April, at the convent of Pontida, between Milan and Bergamo. The consuls of Cremona, of Bergamo, of Brescia, of Mantua and Ferrara met there and joined those of the marches. The union of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, for the common liberty, was hailed with universal joy. The deputies of the Cremonese, who had lent their aid to the destruction of Milan, seconded those of the Milanese villages in imploring aid of the confederated towns to rebuild the city of Milan. This confederation was called the League of Lombardy. The consuls took the oath, and their constituents afterwards repeated it, that every Lombard should unite for the recovery of the common liberty; that the league for this purpose should last twenty years; and, finally, that they should aid each other in repairing in common any damage experienced in this sacred cause, by anyone member of the confederation: extending even to the past this contract for reciprocal security, the league resolved to rebuild Milan. The militias of Bergamo, Brescia, Cremona, Mantua, Verona, and Treviso, arrived the 27th of April, 1167, on the ground covered by the ruins of this great city. They apportioned among themselves the labour of restoring the inclosing walls; all the Milanese of the four villages, as well as those who had taken refuge in the more distant towns, came in crowds to take part in this pious work; and in a few weeks the new-grown city was in a state to repel the insults of its enemies. Lodi was soon afterwards compelled, by force of arms, to take the oath to the league; while the towns of Venice, Placentia, Parma, Modena, and Bologna voluntarily and gladly joined the association."

J. C. L. de Sismondi, History of the Italian Republics, chapter 2.

Meantime Frederick Barbarossa had made himself master of the city of Rome. The Roman citizens had boldly ventured out to meet his German army and its allies on the Tusculan hills and had suffered a frightful defeat. Then some part of the walls of the Leonine City were carried by assault and the castellated church of St. Peter's was entered with ax and sword. Two German archbishops were among the leaders of the force which took the altars of the temple by storm and which polluted its floors with blood. Frederick's new 'anti-pope, Paschal III., successor to Victor IV., was now enthroned, and the empress was formally crowned in the apostolic basilica. Pope Alexander, who had been in possession of the city, withdrew, and the victorious emperor appeared to have the great objects of his burning ambition within his grasp. "Destiny willed otherwise. It was now August; the sun was burning the arid Campagna and oppressing the weary German troops. A slight rain came to refresh them, but the following day sudden destruction fell upon the camp. {1813} Deadly fever attacked the army with terrible violence and reduced it daily. The men fell in heaps, and when struck down in the morning were dead by night. The disease took stronger hold owing to the superstitious fears of the army and the idea of divine vengeance, for the soldiers remembered in terror the profanation of St. Peter's, and they felt the keen edge of the destroying angel's sword. Decimated, dismayed, demoralised, the imperial army was hopelessly defeated, and Frederick was compelled to strike his tents and fly before the in visible destroyer. … The flower of his troops lay unburied in the furrows, and with difficulty could he manage to carry back to their native land the bodies of his noblest and trustiest knights. Never perhaps before had Frederick given proofs of such unshaken strength of mind. … He returned to Germany alone and almost a fugitive, his bravest knights dead, his army destroyed, and leaving behind him a whole nation of proud and watchful enemies. He returned alone, but his spirit was undaunted and dreamt of future victory and of final revenge."

U. Balzani, The Popes and the Hohenstaufen, chapter 5.

ALSO IN: J. Miley, History of the Papal States, book 6, chapter 2.

H. H. Milman, History of Latin Christianity, book 8, chapter 10.

G. B. Testa, History of the War of Frederick I., books 8-9.

ITALY: A. D. 1174-1183. The last expedition of Frederick Barbarossa. The Battle of Legnano, and the Peace of Constance.

It was not until 1174—seven years after his flight from the Roman pestilence—that Barbarossa was able to return to Italy and resume his struggle with Pope Alexander and the Lombard cities. He had been detained by troubles in Germany—the growing quarrel with his most powerful vassal, Henry the Lion, of Saxony, more particularly. Meantime, the League of the Lombard cities had spread and gained strength, and Pope Alexander III. was in active co-operation with it. To better fortify the frontiers of Lombardy, the League had built a strong new city, at the junction of the Tanaro and Bormida, had given it an immediate population of 15,000 people and had named it Alessandria, after the Pope. "The Emperor, whose arrival in Italy was urgently implored, was retained in Germany by his mistrust of Henry the Lion, who, in order to furnish himself with a pretext for refusing his assistance in the intended campaign without coming to an open breach, undertook a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, A. D. 1171; whence, after performing his devotions at the holy sepulchre, without unsheathing his sword in its defence, he returned to his native country. … At length, in 1174, Frederick Barbarossa persuaded the sullen duke to perform his duty in the field, and for the fourth time [with an army] crossed the Alps. A terrible revenge was taken upon Susa, which was burnt to the ground. Alexandria [Alessandria] withstood the siege. The military science of the age, every 'ruse de guerre,' was exhausted by both the besiegers and the besieged, and the whole of the winter was fruitlessly expended without any signal success on either side. The Lombard league meanwhile assembled an immense army in order to oppose Frederick in the open field, whilst treason threatened him on another side. … Henry also at length acted with open disloyalty, and declared to the emperor, who lay sick at Chiavenna, on the lake of Como, his intention of abandoning him; and, unshaken by Frederick's exhortation in the name of duty and honour to renounce his perfidious plans, offered to provide him with money on condition of receiving considerable additions to his power in Germany, and the free imperial town of Goslar in gift. … Frederick, reduced to the alternative of either following his insolent vassal, or of exposing himself and his weakened forces to total destruction by remaining in his present position, courageously resolved to abide the hazard, and to await the arrival of fresh reinforcements from Germany; the Lombards, however, saw their advantage, and attacked him at Legnano, on the 29th of May, 1176. The Swabians (the southern Germans still remaining true to their allegiance) fought with all the courage of despair, but Berthold von Zähringen was taken prisoner, the emperor's horse fell in the thickest of the fight, his banner was won by the 'Legion of Death,' a chosen Lombard troop, and he was given up as dead. He escaped almost by a miracle, whilst his little army was entirely overwhelmed."

W. Menzel, History of Germany, chapter 151.

After the disastrous battle of Legnano, Frederic "was at length persuaded, through the mediation of the republic of Venice, to consent to a truce of six years, the provisional terms of which were all favourable to the league. … At the expiration of the truce Frederic's anxiety to secure the crown for his son overcame his pride, and the famous Peace of Constance [A. D. 1183] established the Lombard republics in real independence. By the treaty of Constance the cities were maintained in the enjoyment of all the regalian rights, whether within their walls or in their district, which they could claim by usage. Those of levying war, of erecting fortifications, and of administering civil and criminal justice, were specially mentioned. The nomination of their consuls, or other magistrates, was left absolutely to the citizens; but they were to receive the investiture of their office from an imperial legate. The customary tributes of provision during the emperor's residence in Italy were preserved; and he was authorized to appoint in every city a judge of appeal in civil causes. The Lombard league was confirmed, and the cities were permitted to renew it at their own discretion; but they were to take every ten years an oath of fidelity to the emperor. This just compact preserved, along with every security for the liberties and welfare of the cities, as much of the imperial prerogatives as could be exercised by a foreign sovereign consistently with the people's happiness. … The Peace of Constance presented a noble opportunity to the Lombards of establishing a permanent federal union of small republics. … But dark, long-cherished hatreds, and that implacable vindictiveness which, at least in former ages, distinguished the private manners of Italy, deformed her national character. … For revenge she threw away the pearl of great price, and sacrificed even the recollection of that liberty which had stalked like a majestic spirit among the ruins of Milan."

H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, chapter 3, part 1 (volume 1).

ALSO IN: U. Balzani, The Popes and the Hohenstaufen, chapter 6.

G. B. Testa, History of the War of Frederick I., book 10.

See, also, VENICE: A.D. 1177.

{1814}

A. D. 1183-1250. Frederick II. and the end of the Hohenstaufen struggles.

After the settlement of the Peace of Constance, Frederick Barbarossa made no further attempt to destroy the now well established liberties of the north Italian cities. On the contrary, he devoted himself, with considerable success, to the regaining of their confidence and good-will, as against the papacy, with which his relations were not improved. In southern Italy, he acquired an important footing by the marriage of his son Henry (already crowned King of Rome, as Henry VI.), to Constance, the sole heiress of the Norman kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Soon after which he went crusading to the Holy Land, and perished in Asia Minor (A. D. 1190). His son and successor, Henry VI., who survived him but seven years, was occupied so much in securing the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, already fallen to his wife (1194) by the death of the last of the Norman kings, that he had little time to trouble the peace of Lombardy or Germany. He was one of the meanest of kings, faithless and cold-blooded,—brutal to the Normans of the Sicilies and contemptible in his treatment of the English King Richard, when his vassal of Austria made a chance captive of the lion-hearted prince. He died in 1197, leaving as his heir a son but four years old—the Frederick II. of later years. There was war at once. Two rival kings were elected in Germany, by the two factions, Guelf and Ghibelline. The next year, one of them, Philip I., the Ghibelline, a younger son of Frederick Barbarossa, was assassinated; the other, Otho IV., a son of Henry the Lion, was recognized by his opponents, and went to Rome to claim the imperial crown. He received it, but soon quarrelled, as all his predecessors had done, with the pope (the great pope Innocent III. being now on the throne), and, Guelf as he was, began to put himself in alliance with the Ghibellines of Italy. Meantime, the boy Frederick had become king of the Two Sicilies by the death of his mother, and Pope Innocent was his guardian. He was now brought forward by the latter as a claimant of the Germanic crown, against Otho, and was sent into Germany to maintain his claim. The civil war which followed was practically ended by the battle of Bouvines (July 27, 1214—see BOUVINES) in which Otho's cause was lost. Four years after, the latter died, and Frederick reigned in Germany, Italy and the Two Sicilies, without a rival, holding the three separate crowns for five years before he received the imperial crown, in 1220. Meantime Innocent III. died, and Frederick became involved, even more bitterly than his father or his grandfather had been, in quarrels with the succeeding popes. He was a man far beyond his age in intellectual independence (see GERMANY: A. D. 1138-1268) and freedom from superstitious servility to the priesthood. His tastes were cultivated, his accomplishments were many. He welcomed the refinements which Europe at that time could borrow from the Saracens, and his court was one of gaiety and splendor. His papal enemies execrated him as a heretic, a blasphemer and an "apocalyptic beast." His greatest original offenses had grown out of two promises which he made in his youth:

1. To lead a crusade for the recovery of Jerusalem,—which he was slow in fulfilling;

2. To resign his Italian possessions to his son, retaining only the sovereignty of Germany for himself,—which promise he did not fulfil at all.

The war of the Church against him was implacable, and he was under its ban when he died. The pope even pursued him with maledictions when he went, at last, upon his crusade, in 1228, and when he did, by negotiations, free Jerusalem for a time from the Moslems (see CRUSADES: A. D. 1216-1229). He was involved, moreover, in conflicts with the Lombard cities (see FEDERAL GOVERNMENT: MEDIÆVAL LEAGUE) which the papacy encouraged and stimulated, and, in 1236, he won a great victory over the League, at Cortenuova, capturing the famous "Carroccio" of the Milanese and sending it as a gift to the Roman Senate. But, attempting to use his victory too inflexibly, he lost the fruits of it, and all his later years were years of trouble and disastrous war—disastrous to Italy and to himself. He died on the 13th of December 1250. "Out of the long array of the Germanic successors of Charles, he [Frederick II.] is, with Otto III., the only one who comes before us with a genius and a frame of character that are not those of a Northern or a Teuton. There dwelt in him, it is true, all the energy and knightly valour of his father Henry and his grandfather Barbarossa. But along with these, and changing their direction, were other gifts, inherited perhaps from his Italian mother and fostered by his education among the orange-groves of Palermo—a love of luxury and beauty, an intellect refined, subtle, philosophical. Through the mist of calumny and fable it is but dimly that the truth of the man can be discerned, and the outlines that appear serve to quicken rather than appease the curiosity with which we regard one of the most extraordinary personages in history. A sensualist, yet also a warrior and a politician; a profound lawgiver and an impassioned poet; in his youth fired by crusading fervour, in later life persecuting heretics while himself accused of blasphemy and unbelief; of winning manners and ardently beloved by his followers, but with the stain of more than one cruel deed upon his name, he was the marvel of his own generation, and succeeding ages looked back with awe, not unmingled with pity, upon the inscrutable figure of the last Emperor who had braved all the terrors of the Church and died beneath her ban, the last who had ruled from the sands of the ocean to the shores of the Sicilian sea. But while they pitied they condemned. The undying hatred of the Papacy threw round his memory a lurid light; him and him alone of all the imperial line, Dante, the worshipper of the Empire, must perforce deliver to the flames of hell."

J. Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, chapter 13.

"The Emperor Frederick was a poet who could not only celebrate the charms of his sovereign lady, 'the flower of all flowers, the rose of May,' but could also exhibit his appreciation for the beauties of nature. … Frederick also delighted in sculpture, painting, and architecture. … Under his fostering influence every branch of learning was starting into life after the slumber of ages. Frederick's age can only be compared to that glorious era of the Renaissance, when the sun of learning, no longer shorn of his beams, poured a flood of light over the dark places of Europe. Frederick was not only distinguished for his love of polite literature, but also for his ardour in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. He was himself an author on medical subjects. {1815} He was a great patron of natural history. He used his friendly relations with eastern kings to form a collection of animals not often seen in Europe—the elephant, camel, giraffe, and camelopard. He also wrote a treatise on Hawking, which is still cited with respect. He classifies birds, and treats generally of their habits. … But poetry and science were very far from occupying all the thoughts of this distinguished monarch. His great concern was the internal regulation of the kingdom committed to his charge. His code in Sicily and Naples was framed with the special view of securing equal rights to all classes of his subjects, and of delivering them from the yoke of the feudal oppressor. He stripped the nobles and prelates of their jurisdiction in criminal cases. He also decreed that any count or baron, carrying on war on his own account, should lose his head and his goods. These were amazing strides in the right direction, but the former was quite unprecedented in feudal kingdoms. Many justiciaries were appointed throughout the kingdom. No one might hold this office without the authorisation of the crown. He strove to make his officials as righteous as he was himself. He himself came before his courts. So great was his love of justice, that he would rather lose his cause than win it if he were in the wrong. No advocates were allowed to practise without an examination by the judicial bench. They were obliged to take an oath that they would allege nothing against their conscience. The court furnished widows, orphans, and the poor with champions free of expense. The law, by which it was guided, endeavoured to secure an even-handed administration of justice."

A. B. Pennington, The Emperor Frederick II. (Royal Historical Society, Transactions, new series, volume 1).

Although arbitrary and despotic in temper, the political intelligence of Frederick led him to practical ideas of government which were extraordinarily liberal for his age. In his Sicilian kingdom "the towns were shorn to a great extent of their local privileges, but were taught to unite their strength for the common good. Twice, at least, in the course of his reign, in 1232 and in 1240, Frederick summoned their deputies to a conference or Parliament, 'for the weal of the Kingdom and the general advantage of the State.' Forty-seven cities, all belonging to the Imperial domain, sent two deputies each to the Assembly convoked, which must not be confounded with the Solemn Courts held by the Sovereign and his Barons for the purpose Of revising charters, enacting Constitutions, and regulating the government. We should be mistaken in supposing that the Sicilian Parliament enjoyed much of the power implied by the name. There is no trace of any clamour against grievances, of any complaints against officials, or of any refusal to grant supplies. The only function of the deputies summoned seems to have been the assessing of the public burdens. The Emperor demanded a certain sum of money, and the deputies, meekly complying, regulated the ways and means of raising it. 'Send your messengers,' thus runs the writ, 'to see the Serenity of our face on your behalf, and to bring you back our will.' Later in the century, the Assembly acquired greater authority. It is just possible that Simon de Montfort, who is known to have visited the Imperial Court, may have borrowed his famous improvement on the old English constitution from an Apulian source; the gathering of the Commons at Foggia certainly preceded their first meeting at Westminster by thirty years. Other countries besides our own were indebted to Frederick for a better mode of legislation. Shortly after his death, many of his innovations were borrowed by his cousin Alonzo the Wise, and were inserted in Las Siete Partidas, the new Code of Castile. The ideas of the Suabian Emperor were evidently the model followed by St. Louis and his successors; in France, as well as in Southern Italy, the lawyer was feeling his way towards the enjoyment of the power wielded of old by the knight and the churchman; Philip the Fair was able to carry out the projects which Frederick had merely been able to sketch. The world made rapid strides between 1230 and 1300. The Northern half of Italy, distracted by endless struggles, was not insensible to the improvements introduced into the South by her mighty son. But in the North two fatal obstacles existed, the Papal power and the municipal spirit of the various States, which marred all Frederick's efforts in behalf of Italian unity." Frederick's court was the most brilliant and refined in Europe. Mr. Kington, his historian, introduces us to one of the Emperor's banquets, in the following description: "A great variety of strangers meet at the banqueting hour. Ambassadors from the Greek Monarch arrive with a present of falcons. Some clerical visitors from Germany are astounded to find themselves seated close to the turbaned men of the East, and shudder on hearing that these are envoys from the Sultan of Cairo and the Old Man of the Mountain. The honest Germans whisper among themselves some remarks on the late end of the Duke of Bavaria, who was stabbed at Kelheim by a man, suspected to be an assassin, employed by the mysterious Old Man on Frederick's behalf. The Emperor himself eats and drinks very little. He is the very model of a host. … The Emperor, it must be allowed, is rather loose in his talk. Speaking of his late Crusade, he remarks: 'If the God of the Jews had seen my Kingdom, the Terra di Lavoro, Calabria, Sicily, and Apulia, he would not have so often praised that land which he promised to the Jews and bestowed upon them.' The Bishops treasure up this unlucky speech, which will one day be noised abroad all over Italy. When the meal is over, the company are amused by the feats of some of the Almehs, brought from the East. Two young Arab girls of rare beauty place themselves each upon two balls in the middle of the flat pavement. On these they move backwards and forwards, singing and beating time with cymbals and castanets, while throwing themselves into intricate postures. Games and musical instruments, procured for the Empress, form part of the entertainment. We hear moreover of a Saracen dancer from Aquitaine. Such sports are relished by the guests quite as much as the Greek wine and the viands prepared by Berard the Court cook, who is famous for his scapece; this dish, consisting of fish boiled in salt water and sprinkled with saffron, popular to this day in the province of Lecce, has been derived from Apicius. … The Emperor now shows his guests the wild beasts, which he has brought from Africa and the East. There is the huge elephant, soon to be sent to Cremona, the bearer of the Imperial banner, guarded by a troop of Saracens. {1816} There is the female camelopard, called Seraph by the Arabs and Italians. Next come the camels and dromedaries which carry the Emperor's treasures when he is on the march. Lions, leopards, panthers, and rare birds form part of the collection, and are tended by Saracen keepers. Frederick perhaps wishes to show his friends some sport in the Apulian plains; he has hawks of all breeds, each of which has its name; but what most astonishes strangers is his method of bringing down the deer. The cheetahs, or hunting leopards of the East, are mounted on horseback behind their keepers; these animals, as the Emperor says, 'know how to ride.' He is a strict preserver of game; he gives orders that the wolves and foxes, which prey upon the small animals in his warren at Melazzo, be destroyed by means of a poison called wolf's powder. He has many parks and fishponds, to which he contrives to attend, even in the midst of Lombard wars. He directs the plantation of woods, and when a storm blows down his trees, the timber is to be sold at Naples. … The treasures, with which Frederick dazzles the eyes of his visitors, rival those of Solomon. The Sultan of Egypt has given his Christian brother a tent of wonderful workmanship, displaying the movements of the sun and moon, and telling the hours of the day and night. This prodigy, valued at 20,000 marks, is kept at Venosa. There is also a throne of gold, decked with pearls and precious stones, doomed to become the prey of Charles of Anjou and Pope Clement. There are purple robes embroidered with gold, silks from Tripoli, and the choicest works of the Eastern loom. Frederick charms the ears of his guests with melodies played on silver trumpets by black slaves, whom he has had trained. He himself knows how to sing. Travellers, jesters, poets, philosophers, knights, lawyers, all find a hearty welcome at the Apulian Court; if they are natives of the Kingdom they address its Lord in the customary second person singular, 'Tu, Messer.' He can well appreciate the pretensions of each guest, since he is able to converse with all his many subjects, each in his own tongue. The Arab from Palestine, the Greek from Calabria, the Italian from Tuscany, the Frenchman from Lorraine, the German from Thuringia, find that Cæsar understands them all. With Latin, of course, he is familiar. Very different is Frederick from his Northern grandsire, who could speak nothing but German and very bad Latin. Troubadour, Crusader, Lawgiver; German by blood, Italian by birth, Arab by training; the pupil, the tyrant, the victim of Rome; accused by the world of being by turns a Catholic persecutor, a Mohammedan convert, an Infidel freethinker; such is Frederick the Second. His character has been sketched for us by two men of opposite politics, Salimbene the Guelf and Jamsilla the Ghibelline, both of whom knew him well. Each does justice to the wonderful genius of the Emperor, and to the rapid development of the arts and commerce under his fostering care. But all is not fair, whatever appearances may be. Every generation of the Hohenstaufen Kaisers seemed to add a vice to the shame of their house. Cruelty is the one dark stain in the character of Barbarossa; cruelty and treachery mar the soaring genius of Henry the Sixth; cruelty, treachery, and lewdness are the three blots that can never be wiped away from the memory of Frederick the Second. He has painted his likeness with his own hand. His Registers with their varied entries throw more light upon his nature than any panegyrics or diatribes can do. One example will be enough. If he wishes to get an impregnable castle into his hands, he thus writes to his general:—'Pretend some business, and warily call the Castellan to you; seize on him if you can, and keep him till he cause the castle to be surrendered to you.' … Frederick's cruelty is indisputable. His leaden copes, which weighed down the victims of his wrath until death came to the rescue, were long the talk of Italy and are mentioned by Dante."