Part 590

"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.