A Short History Of Italy - free ebook by Henry Dwight Sedgwick

A SHORT HISTORY OF ITALY

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HENRY DWIGHT SEDGWICK

O passi graviora ... ... forsan et hæc olim meminisse juvabit....

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PREFACE

This volume is a mere sketch in outline; it makes no pretence to original investigation, or even to an extended examination of the voluminous literature which deals with every part of its subject. It is an attempt to give a correct impression of Italian history as a whole, and employs details only here and there, and then merely for the sake of giving greater clearness to the general outline. So brief a narrative is mainly a work of selection; and perhaps no two persons would agree upon what to

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CHAPTER I

In the year 476 an unfortunate young man, mocked with the great names of the founders of the City and of the Empire, Romulus Augustus, nicknamed Augustulus, was deposed from the throne of the Cæsars by a Barbarian general in the Imperial service, and the Roman Empire in Italy came to its end. This act was but the outward sign that the power of Italy was utterly gone, and that in the West at least the Barbarians were indisputably conquerors in the long struggle which they had carried on for centu

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CHAPTER II

The Ostrogoths were a fine people; and historians have speculated sadly on the immense advantage, the vast saving of ills, that would have accrued to Italy had they succeeded in their attempt to establish a kingdom. Such a union of strength and vigour with the gifted Italian nature might well have produced a happy result. But my business is merely to indicate why and how the attempt failed. The Ostrogoths (East Goths), one branch of the great Gothic nation, of which the Visigoths (West Goths) we

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CHAPTER III

The Imperial dominion over all Italy had lasted scarce a dozen years before another Barbarian nation, the Lombards, came and repeated the experiment in which the Goths had failed. The period of Lombard dominion lasted two hundred years (568-774). It is rather an uninteresting time; nevertheless, like most history, it has a dramatic side. It makes a play for four characters. The Lombards occupy the larger part of the stage, but the protagonist is the Papacy. The Empire is the third character. Fin

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CHAPTER IV

One great political effect of the Lombard conquest was the opportunity which it gave the Papacy, while Lombard and Byzantine were buffeting each other, to grow strong and independent. Had Italy remained a Greek province the Pope would have been a mere provincial bishop, barely taking ceremonial precedence of the metropolitans of Ravenna, Aquileia, and Milan; had Italy become a Lombard kingdom, the Pope would have been a royal appointee; but with the Lombard kings fighting the Byzantine Exarchs,

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CHAPTER V

We now come to the separation of the Latin world from the Greek world in both political and ecclesiastical affairs, and to the reconstruction of Europe by the alliance of the Franks and the Papacy. The plot continues to be very simple. The Empire, pressed by dangerous enemies, tried once more to gain political strength by ecclesiastical legislation; the effect of this legislation on the Imperial provinces in Italy was to cause rebellion. The Papacy broke the ties that bound it to the Empire; the

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CHAPTER VI

The papal theory embodied in the Donation of Constantine was obviously crammed with seeds of future strife; for the present, however, the fortunes of the House of Pippin and of the Papacy were bound together in amity. The constant accession of strength to the former and of prestige to the latter made them the central figures of European politics. The new political form to which their union gave birth slowly shaped itself. In Italy the first step was to get rid of the Lombards. On the death of th

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CHAPTER VII

The period from the death of Charlemagne (814) to the coronation of Otto the Great (962) is a long dismal stretch, tenanted by discord and ignorance. At the beginning stands the commanding figure of Charlemagne, With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear The weight of mightiest monarchies. But his descendants were unequal to their inheritance, and under them his Empire crumbled away and resolved itself into incipient nations. That Empire, in theory the restored Roman Empire, was in fact strictly Teut

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CHAPTER VIII

These triumphs were due to the brilliant vigour of Pope Nicholas; but that triumphant position could not last, it was fictitious. The Papacy needed the support of a strong secular power, and when the Carlovingian Empire dissolved, it had nothing to rest on, neither genius nor military force, and fell into deep degradation. To illustrate that degradation one episode will suffice; but there must first be a word of prologue. The Papacy, as has been said, occupied an anomalous position. From this sp

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CHAPTER IX

This Roman Empire (it did not receive its full title of Holy Roman Empire until later) deserved the name Roman because it rested on the Roman tradition of the political unity of the civilized world. This tradition, by means of the ecclesiastical unity of Europe, had survived the Barbarian invasions, had gained strength through Charlemagne's Empire, and now joined together two nations so fundamentally different as Germany and Italy. The Germans were big blond men, beer-drinkers, huge eaters, roug

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CHAPTER X

The struggle over the lay investiture of bishops did not arise at first. The Papacy was still a dependent bishopric in the gift of the Emperors, who continued to depose bad Roman Popes and appoint upright Germans. Popes and Emperors worked together to enforce celibacy among the clergy and to put down simony. The Emperors could not see, what is evident in retrospect, that when the spirit of reform should have taken full possession of the Papacy, then the Papacy would not rest content to be a Germ

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CHAPTER XI

The last chapter dealt with the struggle between the two great mediæval institutions, the Empire and the Papacy. This deals with the contest between the Empire, representing the feudal system, and a new social force, the spirit of trade, represented by the Lombard cities. Naturally the Papacy joined in the fray and sided with the Lombard cities; and, before the end, all Italy was divided into two great parties designated by terms derived from Germany: Guelfs, which indicated those opposed to the

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CHAPTER XII

Gregory VII was well named the Julius Cæsar of the Papacy. His great conception of a sovereign ecclesiastical power, supreme over Europe, was destined to be realized. For in the fulness of time came Innocent III, the Augustus Cæsar of the Papacy, who ruled the civilized world of Europe more after the fashion of the old Roman Emperors than any one, except Charlemagne, had done. But in the interval between these two famous Popes, there was a period of reaction in which it looked for a time as if t

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CHAPTER XIII

In spite of the dazzling success achieved by Innocent, matters were not well with the Church in Italy. Corruption threatened it from within, heresy from without. Simony was rampant; livings were almost put up at auction. Innocent asserted that there was no cure but fire and steel. The prelates of the Roman Curia were "tricky as foxes, proud as bulls, greedy and insatiable as the Minotaur." The priests were often shameless; some became usurers to get money for their bastards, others kept taverns

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CHAPTER XIV

The Church seized the Franciscan Order as a man in danger grasps at a means of safety, and shaped it to her needs; for, in spite of her brilliant triumphs under Innocent, her needs were great. The Papacy and the Empire approached their final struggle; both felt instinctively that the issue must be decisive. Their fundamental incompatibility had been aggravated by the union of the crowns of Sicily and Germany. Innocent had been pushed by circumstances into supporting Frederick's claim to Germany,

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CHAPTER XV

We are now coming out of the Middle Ages, and the dawn of a new era grows more and more apparent. The Empire, embodiment of an old outworn theory, has already fallen, and its victorious rival, the Papacy, in so far as it embodies the mediæval idea of a theocratic supremacy, is tottering, and it, too, will soon fall before the unsympathetic forces of a new age. So long as the Papacy stood untouched, it looked as potent and sovereign, and spoke with as lofty a tone, as in the days of Innocent; but

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CHAPTER XVI

After the Papacy had been dragged in servitude to France, the Empire, like a dying soldier who gets on his feet to shout one shout of triumph over his enemy's fall, made a last gallant effort to recover life and strength. The effort was very gallant but very ineffectual, and owes its chief celebrity to its connection with the great man, who summed up and reiterated the Imperial creed, somewhat in the same way that Pope Boniface had summed up and reiterated the papal creed. Both creeds were dead,

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CHAPTER XVII

Now that the two great actors, whose long-drawn quarrel has been the main thread of Italian history, have made their exits, and left us, as it were, with a sense of emptiness, it becomes necessary to call the roll and make a better acquaintance with the lesser dramatis personæ , who step to the front of the stage and carry on the plot of history. The programme reads as follows:— In the South, the kingdom of the Two Sicilies has already been torn in two. Charles of Anjou, the conqueror of the Hoh

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CHAPTER XVIII

This intervening period—the twilight between the Middle Ages and the dawn of the Modern World—needs a little further emphasis, from the very fact that it is a period of transition and sheds light both on the time before and the time after. On its emotional side it belonged to the Middle Ages, on its intellectual side it belonged to the Modern World. Its religion was essentially mediæval. For instance, a religious wave arose in Perugia, spread through Italy, and crossed the Alps. Hosts of peniten

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CHAPTER XIX

Though the beginning of the Modern World manifested itself in every department of life, political, social, and intellectual, it is best known to us through the arts, because in them it embodied itself in permanent forms. Italy suddenly leaped forward, as if she had drained a beaker of champagne. To explain and illustrate this burst of passion, the books generally use such phrases as emphasis upon individuality, imitation of the classic, observation of nature, wider range of interest, the awakeni

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CHAPTER XX

Perhaps the quality which strikes us most in this dawn of our Modern World is its suddenness; Niccolò Pisano gets up, as it were, out of the ground, Giotto follows Cimabue, Dante is born while Guido Guinicelli is still a young man. We are amazed and bewildered, and it is not in the arts alone that the change is so startling. The political structure shifts with equal quickness, and while we are trying to connect and coördinate this outburst of art with the democratic triumph of the communes, the

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CHAPTER XXI

We are now well started on the fourteenth century, and it will be well to glance at the chief Italian states in order to get our bearings. Sicily was in a state of hopeless despondency. The island was nominally subject to the House of Aragon, but its kings were not men of sufficient character to impose their authority, and the unfortunate kingdom was beginning to go down hill. The Kingdom of Naples was, for the time being, much better off, for its king, Robert, grandson of Charles of Anjou, was

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CHAPTER XXII

The fourteenth century undoubtedly felt itself emancipated from the limitations of the Middle Ages, and with justice, so far as the classical revival was concerned, but it did little or nothing to free itself from ills that were distinctly of a mediæval character,—plague, lawlessness, and tyranny. In that respect, the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern World was slow and made a striking contrast with the rapid evolution of art. The chief of these ills was the plague. Only in remote pl

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CHAPTER XXIII

The return of the Papacy to Rome was an event of importance both for Italy and the Catholic Church. Had it remained in France, it must have dwindled and shrunk, like Antæus, kept away from its source of strength. Nevertheless, the Papacy was no longer what it once had been; it cannot serve us now as a central channel for the course of Italian history, and will rank no higher than the first of half-a-dozen little channels, which we must pursue separately. The returning Pope found his territory in

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CHAPTER XXIV

By Renaissance, new birth, we mean the rapid, many-sided, intellectual development which started forward in Italy at this time. It was really a stage in the movement which began a hundred years earlier, but the textbooks confine the term Renaissance to the period which began at the opening of the fifteenth century; and just as the first beginning took place in Florence, so this fresh start, like a stream of energy issuing at a divine touch, also burst out of the city of Florence. The simplest wa

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CHAPTER XXV

The last chapter confined itself to the fine arts and omitted the main element, humanism, which gave volume and impetus to the stream, and, though not memorable for conspicuous achievements as the fine arts were, flowed more directly from the classic impulse and produced the greatest immediate effect. The humanists played a part analogous to that which men of science play in our own time; they devoted themselves heart and soul to the classics, as men of science do to Nature. For some time they h

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CHAPTER XXVI

We must now leave the great intellectual progress of the Renaissance on its way from its home in Florence to its culmination in Rome, and look over the political condition of the principal divisions of Italy. A complete change comes during this period, that can only be likened to the change wrought by the invasions of the Barbarians in ancient times. In fact, it is a period of fresh invasions by Barbarians, as the Italians, and not without some justice, still called foreigners. The year 1494 was

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CHAPTER XXVII

The Papacy found itself in an exceedingly difficult situation. It had to adapt an ecclesiastical system, matured in the Middle Ages, to new political systems, to new knowledge, to new thought, in short, to a new world. During its struggle with the Empire, the course before it, however arduous, had been plain, namely, to abase the Emperors; during its captivity at Avignon, its duty to return to Rome (though individual Popes were blind or indifferent) likewise had been plain; during the schism, th

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CHAPTER XXVIII

We are now at liberty to return to the great intellectual and artistic movement that lifted Italy to the primacy in Europe, and reached its zenith in the period of time to which the last two chapters have been devoted. This is the culminating period, in which the greatest masters did their work, and separates the earlier and more experimental stage that preceded it from the later stage of exaggeration and decadence which followed. The movement swept all the arts along with it. It produced the gr

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CHAPTER XXIX

We have now come to the beginning of long centuries of national degradation, and one has a general sense of passing from a glorious garden into a series of gas-lit drawing-rooms, somewhat over-decorated, where naughty princes amuse themselves with bagatelles. We must glance at the political degradation first. The struggle between the Barbarians of France and Spain for mastery in Italy, of which we spoke in the last political chapter, was practically decided by the battle of Pavia (1525), in whic

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CHAPTER XXX

The Cinquecento , as the Italians call the sixteenth century, exhibits in the arts the same disintegration and decay that we have found in the political life of Italy. Honesty, independence, genuineness fade away, and in their stead we find cleverness and effort. The high tide of the Renaissance was in the pontificate of Julius II, but the flood lingered on at the full till 1540, and then the ebb began. This is the date which the famous German scholar and critic, Jakob Burckhardt, assigns as the

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CHAPTER XXXI

At the end of the sixteenth century Italy is well under way on a new stretch of history, which lasted until the nineteenth century. Except Venice, always individual, and the Papacy, freshly revivified, Italy has lost all moral force, and become wholly effeminate. In twenty-five years three hundred and twenty-six volumes of sonnets were published. Her political life has become what one may call grand-ducal; her religion formal, superstitious; her literature affected, stilted; her architecture Bar

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CHAPTER XXXII

We have now reached a period of comparative stability in which dukes, viceroys, oligarchs, and Popes sit settled in their respective dominions with a security that appears a little tame after the whir and uproar of Barbarian invasion. To be sure, the wars between Spain, France, and Austria, waged first to abate the over-greatness of the House of Hapsburg and afterwards that of the House of Bourbon, were often fought out in the north of Italy; nevertheless, the period of confusion has passed, and

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CHAPTER XXXIII

We should do wrong to leave these centuries to stand solely on their political record. Even this dreary period has contributed not a little to the sum of Italy's attractions. After the moral vigour of republican Florence, after the freshness of the Renaissance and its later grandeur, after the elegance of the courts of Urbino, Ferrara, and Milan, it requires time to adjust ourselves to a different standard and to acquire a relish for this period of dissipated little kings and dukes. But once fam

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CHAPTER XXXIV

Now come those great events, most important to Italy, the French Revolution and the invasion by Napoleon. The storm burst upon a scene of quiet. Italy was still like a comedy of Goldoni, dukes enjoying taxes and mistresses, priests accepting oblations and snuff, nobles sipping chocolate and pocketing rent, while the poor peasants, kept behind the scenes, sweated and toiled for a bare subsistence. Before the Revolution came the premonitory breezes of philosophical philanthropy wafted across the A

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CHAPTER XXXV

Outwardly despotism had been triumphantly reëstablished, and Popes, princes, and privileged persons in general made a gallant attempt to pretend that the French Revolution and the Napoleonic upheaval had never taken place. Nevertheless, the quiet on the surface did not extend underneath. Inwardly the new ideas and aspirations were fermenting from Piedmont to Calabria. The Carbonari (Charcoal-burners), a secret society organized against despotism, plotted for freedom and for constitutions. Their

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CHAPTER XXXVI

After 1821 followed ten years of outward repose. Times were hard for lovers of independence, but hope and purpose had been let loose, and in dark corners, cloaking themselves as best they could, the friends of freedom groped their way. Openly little was done except by exiles, but indirect aid came from literature, which followed the romantic movement, and loudly asserted the revolutionary ideas. There was Ugo Foscolo, the poet, half Venetian, half Greek, who after the return of the Austrians ref

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CHAPTER XXXVII

The period of waiting for coming events was short. The whole Continent of Europe was straining like a greyhound in its leash; Italy, from end to end, was on tiptoe with excitement; and the year 1848 came rushing in with swashbuckler fury. In Italy the revolutionary movement began in Palermo. The people attacked the Bourbon soldiers and drove them out. Their example was followed throughout the island. Across the channel Naples arose and demanded a constitution. The frightened king granted it (Jan

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CHAPTER XXXVIII

After the uprisings of 1848-49, the old tyrannical system prevailed for eight years and seemed heavier than ever. Liberalism meant suspicion, disfavour, danger. The liberals were not very numerous and did not agree among themselves. Some looked for hope to Piedmont, some to England, some to France. Some were for a republic, some for a confederation, some for unity; some wished insurrection, others lawful agitation. In Naples the king busied himself with putting the liberals in dungeons. Accordin

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CHAPTER XXXIX

The union of Italy was so triumphant, the efforts which accomplished it so heroic, and the whole tone of Italian history throughout the Risorgimento so romantic and noble, that the period since of necessity looks flat and dull. The Italians themselves had imagined that the union of Italy would be followed by some career, political, moral, or intellectual, that would be comparable to the career of ancient Rome. A reaction was inevitable. No nation could continue at so enthusiastic a pitch. Moreov

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