Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/487

ITALY 467 PART II. HISTORY. The difficulty of Italian history lies in this that until our own time 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 evolu tion, but of a group of cognate populations, exemplifying divers types of constitutional development. Without attaching undue importance to the date 476 as marking the boundary between ancient and modern history, there is no doubt that this year opened a new age for the" Italian people. Oiovakar, a chief of the Herulians, deposed Romulus, the last Augustus of the West, and placed the peninsula beneath the titular sway of the Byzan tine emperors. At Pavia the barbarian conquerors of Italy proclaimed him king, and he received from Zeno the dignity of Roman patrician. Thus began that system of mixed government, Teutonic and Roman, which, in the absence of a national monarch, impressed the institutions of new Italy from the earliest date with dualism. The same revolution vested supreme authority in a non-resident and inefficient autocrat, whose title gave him the right to interfere in Italian affairs, but who lacked the power and will to rule the people for his own or their advantage. Odovakar inaugurated that long series of foreign rulers Greeks, Franks, Germans, Spaniards, and Austrians who have successively contributed to the misgovernment of Italy from distant seats of empire. Gothic and Lombard Kingdoms. In 488 Theodoric, king of the East Goths, received commission from the Greek emperor, Zeno, to undertake the affairs of Italy. He defeated Odovakar, drove him to Ravenna, besieged him there, and in 493 completed the conquest of the country by murdering the Herulian chief with his own hand. 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 chieftain s Roman izing 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 Po, resembled an army of occupation rather than a people numerous enough to blend with the Italic stock. Though their rule was favourable to the Romans, they were Arians ; and religious differences, combined with the pride and jealousies of a nation accustomed to imperial honours, rendered the inhabitants of Italy eager to throw off their yoke. When, therefore, Justinian undertook the recon- quest of Italy, his generals, Belisarius and Narses, were supported by the south. The struggle of the Greeks and the Goths was carried on for fourteen years, between 539 and 553, when Teia, the last Gothic king, was finally defeated in a bloody battle near Vesuvius. At its close the provinces of Italy were placed beneath Greek dukes, con trolled by a governor-general, entitled exarch, who ruled in the Byzantine emperor s name at Ravenna. This new settlement lasted but a few years. Narses had employed Lombard auxiliaries in his campaigns against the T Goths ; and when he was recalled by an insulting message bards in from the empress in 565, he is said to have invited this Italy, fiercest and rudest of the Teutonic clans to seize the spoils of Italy. Be this as it may, the Lombards, their ranks swelled by the Gepida3, whom they had lately conquered, and by the wrecks of other barbarian tribes, passed south ward under their king Alboin in 568. The Herulian invaders had been but a band of adventurers ; the Goths were an army ; the Lombards, far more formidable, were a nation in movement. Pavia offered stubborn resistance ; but after a three years siege it was taken, and Alboin made it the capital of his new kingdom. In order to understand the future history of Italy, it is necessary to form a clear conception of the method pur sued 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 Po, and moved slowly downward through the centre of the country. Numerous as they were compared with their Gothic pre decessors, 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 in vincible 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. The strength of Alboin s kingdom was in the north ; his capital, Pavia. As his people pressed south ward, they omitted to possess themselves of the coasts ; and what was worse for the future of these conquerors, the original impetus of the invasion was checked by the un timely murder of Alboin in 573. After this event, the semi-independent chiefs of the Lombard tribe, who bor rowed the title of dukes from their Roman predecessors, seem to have been contented with consolidating their power in the districts each had occupied. The duchies of Spoleto in the centre, and of Beuevento in the south, inserted wedge-like into the middle of the peninsula, and enclosing independent Rome, were but loosely united to the king dom at Pavia. Italy was broken up into districts, each offering points for attack from without, and fostering the seeds of internal revolution. Three separate capitals must be discriminated Pavia, the seat of the new Lombard kingdom ; Ravenna, the garrison city of the Byzantine emperor ; and Rome, the rallying point of the old nation, where the successor of St Peter was already beginning to assume that national protectorate which proved so influen tial in the future. 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 general 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. The Italians were reduced to the last extremity when Gregory the Great