ATDTDA 724-747 Italy

[Glenn Scheper]

Part 4 of 9.

History

The difficulty of Italian history lies in the fact, that until modern times the 
Italians have had no political unity, no independence, no organized existence as 
a nation. Split up into numerous and mutually hostile communities, they never, 
through the fourteen centuries which have elapsed since the end of the old 
Western empire, shook off the yoke of foreigners completely; they never until 
lately learned to merge their local and conflicting interests in the common good 
of undivided Italy. Their history is therefore not the history of a single 
people, centralizing and absorbing its constituent elements by a process of 
continued evolution, but of a group of cognate populations, exemplifying divers 
types of constitutional developments.

The early history of Italy will be found under ROME and allied headings. The 
following account is therefore mainly concerned with the periods succeeding AD. 
476, when Romulus Augustulus was deposed by Odoacer.

The ethnography of ancient Italy is a very complicated and difficult subject, 
and notwithstanding the researches of modern scholars is still involved in some 
obscurity. The great beauty and fertility of the country, as well as the charm 
of its climate, undoubtedly attracted, even in early ages, successive swarms of 
invaders from the north, who sometimes drove out the previous occupants of the 
most favored districts, at others reduced them to a state of serfdom, or settled 
down in the midst of them, until the two races gradually coalesced. Ancient 
writers are agreed as to the composite character of the population of Italy, and 
the diversity of races that were found within the limits of the peninsula. But 
unfortunately the traditions they have transmitted to us are often various and 
conflicting, while the only safe test of the affinities of nations, derived from 
the comparison of their languages, is to a great extent inapplicable, from the 
fact that the idioms that prevailed in Italy in and before the 5th century B.C. 
are preserved, if at all, only in a few scanty and fragmentary inscriptions, 
though from that date onwards we have now a very fair record of many of them 
(see, e.g. LATIN LANGUAGE, OSCA LINGUA, IGUVIUM, V0LScI, ETRURIA: section 
Language, and below).

Taking the term Italy to comprise the whole peninsula with the northern region 
as far as the Alps, we must first distinguish the tribe or tribes which spoke 
Indo-European languages from those who did not. To the latter category it is now 
possible to refer with certainty only the Etruscans (for the chronology and 
limits of their occupation of Italian soil see ETRURIA: section Language). Of 
all the other tribes that inhabited Italy down to the classical period, of whose 
speech there is any record (whether explicit or in the form of names and 
glosses), it is impossible to maintain that any one does not belong to the 
Indo-European group.

I. Latin will be counted the language of the earlier plebeian stratum of the 
population of Rome and Latium, probably once spread over a large area of the 
peninsula, and akin in sijme degree to the language or languages spoken in north 
Italy before either the Etruscan or the Gallic invasions began.

2. It would follow, on the other hand, that what is called Oscan represented the 
language of the invading Sabines (more correctly Safines), whose racial 
affinities would seem to be of a distinctly more northern cast, and to mark 
them, like the Dorians or Achaeans in Greece, as an early wave of the invaders 
who more than once in later history havevitally influenced the fortunes of the 
tempting southern land into which they forced their way.

Augustus was the first who gave a definite administrative organization to Italy 
as a whole, and at the same time gave official sanction to that wider 
acceptation of the name which had already established itself in familiar usage, 
and which has continued to prevail ever since.

The division of Italy into eleven regions, instituted by Augustus for 
administrative purposes, which continued in official use till the reign of 
Constantine, was based mainly on the territorial divisions previously existingi 
and preserved with few exceptions the ancient limits.

The arrangements thus established by Augustus continued almost unchanged till 
the time of Constantine, and formed the basis of all subsequent administrative 
divisions until the fall of the Western empire.

The mainstay of the Roman military control of Italy first, and of the whole 
empire afterwards, was the splendid system of roads. As the supremacy of Rome 
extended itself Roads, over Italy, the Roman road system grew step by step, each 
fresh conquest being marked by the pushing forward of roads through the heart of 
the newly-won territory, and the establishment of fortresses in connection with 
them.

Theodoric respected the Roman institutions which he found in Italy, held the 
Eternal City sacred, and governed by ministers chosen from the Roman population. 
He settled at Ravenna, which had been the capital of Italy since the days of 
Honorius, and which still testifies by its monuments to the Gothic chieftains 
Romanizing policy. Those who believe that the Italians would have gained 
strength by unification in a single monarchy must regret that this Gothic 
kingdom lacked the elements of stability. The Goths, except in the valley of the 
P0, resembled an army of occupation rather than a people numerous enough to 
blend with the Italic stock. Though their rule was favorable to the Romans, they 
were Arians; and religious differences, combined with the pride and jealousies 
of a nation accustomed to imperial honors, rendered the inhabitants of Italy 
eager to throw off their yoke.

In order to understand the future history of Italy, it is necessary to form a 
clear conception of the method pursued by the Lombards in their conquest. 
Penetrating the peninsula, and advancing like a glacier or half-liquid stream of 
mud, they occupied the valley of the P0, and moved slowly downward through the 
centre of the country. Numerous as they were compared with their Gothic 
predecessors, they had not strength or. multitude enough to occupy the whole 
peninsula. Venice, which since the days of Attila had offered an asylum to Roman 
refugees from the northern cities, was left untouched. So was Genoa with its 
Riviera. Ravenna, entrenched within her lagoons, remained a Greek city. Rome, 
protected by invincible prestige, escaped. The sea-coast cities of the south, 
and the islands, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, preserved their independence. 
Thus the Lombards neither occupied the extremities nor subjugated the 
brain-centre of the country.

It is not necessary to write the history of the Lombard kingdom in detail. 
Suffice it to say that the rule of the Lombards proved at first far more 
oppressive to the native population, and was less intelligent of their old 
customs, than that of the Goths had been. Wherever the Lombards had the upper 
hand, they placed the country under military rule, resembling in its genera] 
character what we now know as the feudal system. Though there is reason to 
suppose that the Roman laws were still administered within the cities, yet the 
Lombard code was that of the kingdom; and the Lombards being Arians, they added 
the oppression of religious intolerance to that of martial despotism and 
barbarous cupidity.

Internally Charles left the affairs of the Italian kingdom much as he found 
them, except that he appears to have pursued the policy of breaking up the 
larger fiefs of the Lombards, substituting counts for their dukes, and adding to 
the privileges of the bishops. We may reckon these measures among the earliest 
advantages extended to the cities, which still contained the bulk of the old 
Roman population, and which were destined to intervene with decisive effect two 
centuries later in Italian history.

The discords which followed on the break-up of the Carolingian power, and the 
weakness of the so-called Italian emperors, who were unable to control the 
feudatories (marquises of Ivrea and Tuscany, dukes of Friuli and Spoleto), from 
whose ranks they sprang, exposed Italy to ever-increasing misrule. The country 
by this time had become thickly covered over with castles, the seats of greater 
or lesser nobles, all of whom were eager to detach themselves from strict 
allegiance to the Regno. The cities, exposed to pillage by Huns in the north and 
Saracens in the south, and ravaged on the coast by Norse pirates, asserted their 
right to enclose themselves with walls, and taught their burghers the use of 
arms. Within the circuit of their ramparts, the bishops already began to 
exercise authority in rivalry with the counts, to whom, since the days of 
Theodoric, had been entrusted the government of the Italian burghs. Agreeably to 
feudal customs, these nobles, as they grew in power, retired from the town, and 
built themselves fortresses on points of vantage in the neighborhood. Thus the 
titular king of Italy found himself simultaneously at war with those great 
vassals who had chosen him from their own class, with the turbulent factions of 
the Roman aristocracy, with unruly bishops in the growing cities and with the 
multitude of minor counts and barons who occupied the open lands, and who 
changed sides according to the interests of the moment.

The first thing we have to notice in this revolution which placed Otto the Great 
upon the imperial throne is that the Italian. kingdom, founded by the Lombards, 
recognized by the Franks and recently claimed by eminent Italian feudatories, 
virtually ceased to exist. It was merged in the German kingdom; and, since for 
the German princes Germany was of necessity their first care, Italy from this 
time forward began to be left more and more to herself.

The most brilliant period of their chequered history, the period which includes 
the rise of communes, the exchange of municipal liberty for despotism and the 
gradual discrimination of the five great powers (Milan, Venice, Florence, the 
Papacy and the kingdom of Naples), now begins. Among the centrifugal forces 
which determined the future of the Italian race must be reckoned, first and 
foremost, the new spirit of municipal independence. We have seen how the cities 
enclosed themselves with walls, and how the bishops defined their authority 
against that of the counts.

The recent scandals of the papacy induced Otto to deprive the Romans of their 
right to elect popes.

To Heribert is attributed the invention of the Carroccio, which played so 
singular and important a part in the warfare of Italian cities. A huge car drawn 
by oxen, bearing the standard of the burgh, and carrying an altar with the host, 
this carroccio, like the ark of the Israelites, formed a rallying point in 
battle, and reminded the armed artisans that they had a city and a church to 
fight for.

Yours truly,
Glenn Scheper
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