ITALY
An independent republic in southern Europe, on the northern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It occupies all of the boot-shaped Italian peninsula, except for the 23 square miles (60 sq km) of the republic of San Marino (near Rimini) and the 108 acres (44 hectares) of the Vati¬can City State. Italy also includes two large Mediterranean islands, Sardinia and Sicily, and many smaller ones. Its peninsular territory is separated from the rest of Europe by the Alps and the country is bordered on the northwest by France, on the north by Switzerland and Austria, and on the northeast by Yugoslavia.
The name Italy was first used by the Greeks to describe the southern tip of the peninsula, where they settled in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. Gradually, as the peninsula was unified under the Roman Republic, the name came to be applied to all of the land south of the Alps.
From Italy, the core of the Roman Empire, the civilization of the ancient Mediterranean world was brought to Western Europe. After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West in the fifth century A.D., it was subjected to a series of invasions, and political unity was lost. In the fa¬miliar phrase, Italy became a “geographical expression,” an often-changing succession of petty states, principalities, and kingdoms, which fought among themselves and were sub¬ject to the ambitions of foreign powers.
The tradition of Roman leadership survived, however. It was embodied in the popes of Rome, who regarded them¬selves as the heirs of the Roman emperors. The popes ruled central Italy and sought, as spiritual leaders, to become the rulers of all Europe. Through the church headed by the popes the ancient civilization brought by Rome to the West was preserved, and even extended. But the rival ambitions of popes and German Holy Roman emperors, who claimed Italy as their domain, helped make the peninsula a battlefield. The commercial prosperty of the great northern Italian cities, which began in the nth century, proved, however, to be a stronger force than medieval political rivalries. In these cities a new world of ideas, learning, and art was born. The Renaissance (“rebirth”), as it was called, marked the begin¬ning of modern times, not only for Italy but also for the whole of Western Europe.
Italy’s influence declined in the 16th century. The peninsula became a backwater of European life, and its feeble states became the pawns of rival European dynasties. But the emergence of a common literary language during the Renaissance had strengthened the idea of a single Italian nationality. By the early 19th century the feeling of Italian nationality was vigorous enough to give rise to the Risorgi-mento, a movement to bring about the “resurgence” of a united Italy, freed of all foreign domination. Led by the popular heroes Mazzini and Garibaldi and the master states¬man Cavour, Italy, except for Rome, was at last reunited in the 1860′s. On Mar. 17, 1861, Victor Emmanuel II was proclaimed king of Italy. With the incorporation of Rome in 1870, the dream of the nation was realized. The tradition of regionalism remained strong, but the idea of unity proved stronger. The monarchy endured for 85 years. Discredited by its association with Mussolini’s Fascism and Italy’s defeat in World War II, the monarchy was abolished on June 13, 1946, in favor of the Italian Republic, or, in Italian, Repubblica Italiana.
The greater part of Italy consists of the boot-shaped pen¬insula protruding from southern Europe far into the Mediterranean Sea. About 700 miles (1,100 km) in length, the peninsula extends southeast from the complex mountain ranges of the French, Swiss, and Austrian Alps to the shores of the Ionian Sea; it has a maximum width of about 150 miles (240 km). The area of the national territory, includ¬ing Sicily, Sardinia, and the smaller islands, is 116,304 square miles (301,225 sq km). Among the smaller islands is the Tuscan Archipelago, located in the strait between the French island of Corsica and the Italian mainland. The largest island of this group is Elba, Napoleon’s place of exile in 1814-1815. The volcanic Lipari Islands, northeast of Sicily, are noted for Stromboli, one of Italy’s three active volcanoes, and for many hot springs. Off the coast of Naples are the scenic islands of Ischia and Capri. Between Sicily and North Africa is Pantelleria, a small island impor¬tant for its command of a strategic sealane.
Except for a few parts of the Alps, no place in Italy is more than 75 miles (120 km) from the sea. To the east of the peninsula lies the Adriatic Sea, with the Gulf of Venice at its northern end. The Strait of Otranto, between Apulia (the heel of the Italian boot) and Albania, connects the Adriatic with the Ionian Sea. Between Apulia and Calabria (the toe of the boot) the southeast coast of the Italian penin¬sula is deeply indented by the Gulf of Taranto. Only the very narrow Strait of Messina separates Calabria from Sicily, and the 85-mile (135-km) Strait of Sicily is all that divides Sicily from the coast of North Africa. The Tyrrhenian Sea fills the triangular basin bounded by Sardinia, Corsica, the Tuscan Archipelago, the Italian mainland, and Sicily. North of Corsica lies the Ligurian Sea, with the Gulf of Genoa at its head. The narrow coastal plain along the shore of the Gulf of Genoa is the Italian Riviera (Liguria), whose beau¬tiful scenery and mild climate have made it an important center of tourism.
Sicily and the Italian peninsula have been used since prehistoric times as connecting links between Europe and Africa. Control of the straits between the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean has been of strategic importance from the time of the ancient Greek and Phoenician colonies in Sicily to the Malta convoys of World War II. In the Middle Ages the location of the Italian peninsula on the trade routes between the Middle East and Western Europe enabled the Italian merchant cities, especially Venice, to dominate the profitable luxury trade.
Medieval Italy
Italy, for half a century, was in a state lof chaos. Powerful nobles prevented unity under either the Lombards or the pope, and the Saracens had con¬quered Sicily and were ravaging southern Italy. In 951, Otto the Great invaded Italy and, in 962, had himself crowned Holy Roman emperor. The Holy Roman Empire of Otto was considered a revival of the Carolingian empire, just as the latter had been regarded as a continuation of the ancient Roman empire.
The people of medieval Europe had inherited two great traditions from Roman antiquity: that of a universal church and a universal state. The pope ruled the former, and Charlemagne, and now Otto, governed the latter. But the attempt to rule both in Germany and Italy was ruinous for the kings who attempted it. Although there were other rea¬sons as well, an important cause of the disunity of both Ger¬many and Italy, which lasted till the second half of the 19th century, was that the German rulers would not re¬linquish their desire to control Italy. They were unable to achieve this, and the efforts they expended to do so prevented them from gaining control of Germany. For nearly a century, from the coronation of Otto the Great to the death of Henry III in 1056, the emperors were the dominant members of the papal-imperial partnership, which claimed the right of uni¬versal rule over all Christendom. The struggle between the popes and the emperors continued for more than two cen¬turies and ended with the destruction of imperial authority.
The situation in Italy was further complicated by the invasions of the Normans in southern Italy, beginning with the landing at Salerno of a band of Norman knights on their way home from a pilgrimage. And in 1059 P°Pe Nicholas II, hard pressed in Rome by a revolt, gave Robert Guiscard title to the lands in the south which he had conquered.
The conflict between church and state was a struggle over spiritual values as well as temporal property. Many church¬men were also wealthy landowners who owed allegiance to the emperor; and it was true, also, that the emperor had in the past deposed popes and chosen their successors. At the same time the papacy asserted the supremacy of spiritual over temporal power. By the Concordat of Worms (1122) a division of the ceremony was agreed upon. The emperor was to invest bishops and abbots with the insignia of their secular office (that is, their fief), and the pope was to invest them with the ring and staff which symbolized their spir¬itual authority. In Italy, where the emperor had lost real authority, imperial investiture was to follow consecration.
In their contest with the imperial power, the popes found allies in the Lombard cities. Since the middle of the eleventh century, the Italian towns had been growing rapidly as the result of a great revival of international trade, and by the middle of the twelfth century, the cities of the Lombard Plain were centers of commerce and industry. With the growth of their economic strength, there also grew the de¬mand for political power, and after a bitter struggle the Lombard cities, organized as the Lombard League, won almost complete self-government, expressed in the Peace of Constance (1183). Although the pope did not acquire any extra power, the weakening of the emperor served to enhance the pope’s power. The popes, however, soon suffered a severe loss when Emperor Henry VI (reigned 1190-1197) won a victory over the Sicilian nobles who had been supported by the pope, who then lost his temporal power over the Papal States, except for the duchy of Rome.
Just as the fortunes of the papacy seemed at their lowest ebb, Innocent III became pope, and his pontificate (1198-1216) marked the highest point of papal power. His temporal power was great, and his assertions of the sovereignty of the papacy over the church and secular government were greater still. He fought with the emperors, twice excommunicated Otto IV (reigned 1198-1215) and made an alliance with Frederick II (reigned 1211-1250) who, after Innocent’s death, fought with both the papacy and the Lombard cities. From 1254 to 1273 there was no generally recognized em¬peror, and the papacy had at last triumphed, at least to the extent of temporarily destroying the empire and of leaving it permanently weakened. The papacy’s power over French and English rulers had now almost completely disappeared, but the popes had helped to prevent Italy from being united under the emperor. Italy was to remain disunited for five centuries longer.
At this time, however, the power of the papacy began to wane, especially during the sixty-seven years (1309-1376) that the popes were at Avignon, where they were under the influence of the French government. Finally, in 1377, the popes returned to Italy. There the pope was an Italian prince; there, because the land was not united, political force could not so effectively be brought to bear against him; and there the pope could be the independent head of the Church, though with severely restricted powers.
Renaissance Italy
Though not politically unified, Italy underwent in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a profound, if gradual, transformation. The character of Euro¬pean civilization was changed in many respects during this period, but in very few places did the changes equal those in Italy. Italy was the land of opportunity. Political unrest, the riches in this hub of world trade, and its history finally gave rise to a ferment out of which rose the Renaissance, the rebirth of the civilizaton of Creece and Rome. Men, in seeking to escape the present, tried to restore a golden past.
Growing wealth had created in Italy a society that was urban, worldly in its interests, and highly individualistic. Cities dating from a Roman past, which had never completely died out, were revived as a result of the great rise in trade and industry. Furthermore, the quarrels between the emperors and popes had enabled the cities, by playing off one side against another, to win freedom from outside control. Except for the south, the cities began to dominate the countryside. The feudal lords had to renounce, in effect, their own way of life, if they were to participate in the intellectual and economic advantages offered by the cities.
Politically, however, feudal anarchy was replaced by chaos. Except for the southern kingdom of Naples, the Italian Peninsula was divided into a host of petty city-states which were almost completely independent of emperor or pope. Conquest and amalgamation took place, but many of the Italian cities were too evenly matched, and neither agreements nor force succeeded in unifying them. However, the sharp internal divisions within the cities and the need for presenting a unified front against outside enemies served to help bring on the end of many republican governments and to make easy the despots’ rise to power. Men weary of instability sought or accepted the rise of these despots or tyrants, who, though they ruled with the help of hired mercenaries (condottieri), nevertheless sought to win the respect and admiration of their people.
A marked expansion of the greater states at the expense of the lesser ones took place in this period, so that by 1494 only five great states and a few lesser ones remained of the scores of city-states that had dotted the map of Italy at the beginning of the Renaissance.
The duchy of Milan, the republics of Florence and Venice, the Papal States, and the kingdom of Naples were the most
important entities in the Italian Peninsula. Under the leadership of the House of Sforza, Milan became one of the richest states in Italy, and a center of art and learning.
Just as Milan dominated the Lombard Plain and the Alpine passes to northern Europe, so did Venice, built on lagoons, command the Adriatic Sea. Cut off from the mainland and the tangled feuds of Italian politics, Venice, through its geographical position, was the natural middleman in the trade between the East and Western Europe. Venice was ruled by an oligarchy of wealthy families who elected a doge (or life president) who in turn ruled with the aid of a senate and council of ten. By the treaty of 1454, signed with Milan, Venice’s claim to a mainland state in eastern Lombardy and around the head of the Adriatic was recognized.
The city of Florence retained the outward trappings of a republican form of government, but frequent revolutions, party feuds, and control by an oligarchy consisting of a small group of wealthy families conditioned its inhabitants to ac¬cept, beginning in 1434, the rule of the Medici. The republican form of government was retained, but in reality Cosimo de’ Medici and his successors ruled as despots. The high point was reached under Lorenzo the Magnificent (r. 1469-1492). Poet, patron of art and learning, statesman, and diplomat, Lorenzo raised the Medici prestige to its zenith.
The Papal States, stretching across central Italy and including Romagna, which extended up the eastern coast almost to the borders of Venezia, was nominally ruled by the pope. Actually, the territory was not centralized, and numerous petty despots set up governments which were virtually independent. Many of the Renaissance popes were as worldly as the Italian princes and maintained luxurious courts. Nicholas V (r. 1447-1455), who started the Vatican library, and Pius II (r. 1458-1464) did much to help revive Classi¬cal learning. The high point of the Renaissance was reached under Julius II (r. 1503-1513) and Leo X (r. 1513-1521).
The kingdom of Naples included all of Italy south of the Papal States and also at times the kingdom of Sicily.
Here, in contrast to most of the rest of Italy, feudalism still survived as a powerful force. Torn by dynastic struggles between the French family of Anjou and the Spanish family of Aragon, with little of the commerce and industry that characterized the north, the kingdom of Naples developed comparatively little during the Renaissance.
Renaissance Italy was sustained by and thrived upon a delicate balance of political and cultural forces successfully operating within a special context of European and global conditions. In the course of the 14th century and through the first half of the igth century, Italy was divided into a number of independent states (stati) whose diversified geographic status and historical development led to the crystallization of a political order which, in miniature, resembled the larger state of Europe itself. Both economic and cultural elements tended to cut across across the frontiers of the Italian stati and thus made for a unique community of material interests and spiritual values among Italians. Dynastic, institutional, and social factors, however, stood tenaciously in the way of converting that Italian community of culture into any kind of real political unity. As Machiavelli and a few other great minds of a later era of crisis were to point out, in that historic paradox lay both the splendor and the tragedy of Renaissance Italy. The downfall of the two great universal powers of the High Middle Ages, empire and papacy, created an opportunity for a succession of attempts from a variety of Italian quarters to impose sovereignty upon the rest of Italy.
For over a century (1305-1414) strenuous efforts were made from north, center, and south to realize some kind of Italian “unity” or at least to reduce the multiplicity of stati under a common political sovereignty. The most significant of these efforts were sponsored successively by Robert of Naples (1308-1343), Cola di Rienzi in Rome (1347-1354), Archbishop Giovanni Visconti from Milan (1349-1359), and Cardinal Egidio Albornoz from Rome (1352-1367). The last two great attempts from north and south respec¬tively were led by Gian Galeazzo Visconti of Milan (1385-1402) and King Ladislaus of Naples (1402-1414). In each case coalitions of other Italian forces banded under the ban¬ner of “the liberty of Italy” (la liberta d’ltalia) successfully resisted the imposition of a single rule. For a generation after the fall of Gian Galeazzo and Ladislaus a series of wars among the five greater Italian stati succeeded only in reveal¬ing the impossibility of establishing a single indigenous mastery over Italy and the grave dangers from without to which all the Italian states were being equally exposed.
In the middle of the 15th century, Italy faced two new overriding facts of international life. In the west, across the Alps, the long, dreary feudal-dynastic European struggles, particularly the Anglo-French conflict, were coming to an end. A consequent reorganization of the monarchies into national and imperial states was foreseen. From the point of view of Italy, renewed intervention in Italian politics by the greater continental states of France, Spain, and Austria had to be expected. More immediately ominous was the rise on Italy’s eastern Mediterranean and Adriatic flanks of the Ottoman Turkish power. The almost simultaneous fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the close of the Hundred Years’ War spelled also the end of an Italian era.
Far-sighted statesmen in each of the five great Italian stati soon clearly understood that the long Italian “civil war” which had dragged on among themselves for over a generation had become a dangerous luxury they could no
longer afford. Negotiations for peace were undertaken. Through the intervention of Cosimo de’ Medici of Florence and Pope Nicholas V, the Doge of Venice (Francesco Fos-cari) and the new Duke of Milan (Francesco Sforza) sealed the peace among themselves at Lodi in April 1454. The great Peace of Lodi was soon converted into a general Italian pacification, indeed an embryonic federation, through the adherence of the king of Naples, Alfonso of Aragon, and eventually through the admission of the lesser Italian stati. Under the presidency of the pope a “Holy League” (Santis-sima Lega) of Italian states arrested the conflicts within the Italian Peninsula and brought about a new, if very delicate, structure of peaceful coexistence. From a mere battle cry the liberta d’Italia had become an empirical political reality.
For forty years (1454-1494) Renaissance Italy enjoyed a general peace only occasionally broken by local disturbances. A flowering of the culture of the Renaissance as expressed in the arts and sciences, in humanism, and in philosophy coincided with this era of Italian peace. Until 1492 Lorenzo de’ Medici acted as a sort of arbiter of Italian politics and steered Italy clear of entangling alliances with foreign European powers which, he insisted, were now more than ever disposed toward asserting their “right” to intervene in its affairs. Within only two years of the death of Lorenzo fear, ambition, and egoism combined again to create a state of mutual suspicion in Italy among the rulers of states and, worse still, revived the tendency toward invoking foreign “redeemers.”
In 1494 Charles VIII of France assumed the mission of delivering Italy from its part-real, part-mythical troubles created by selfish princes and decried by the apocalyptic voice of Savonarola. Charles of France invaded Italy in 1494; this was followed by other invasions and a series of Italian disasters which lasted through two generations to 1559. In 1527 Rome was sacked, and by the Treaty of Barcelona in 1529 the pope and Emperor Charles V came to terms; in the same year, by the Treaty of Cambrai, France relinquished its claims in Italy to Spain.
Italy as the Pawn of Europe
The decline of Italy set in after 1530 when Spain became the dominant power in Italy. From then until 1796, Italy had no independent history of its own; it was a pawn for contending powers, and the theater for devastating wars fought largely by alien armies, from which the Italians gained nothing. Shifting trade routes and political strife weakened the states, and Italy ceased to be a determining factor in European history.
Though the temporal powers of the papacy varied in proportion to its actual political domain, it continued to gain ecclesiastical and spiritual power, especially in Italy. To counteract the effects of the Protestant Reformation, the Council of Trent formulated anew in 1562-1563 the tenets of Catholic doctrine, while the decisions of the Council in defining the essential features of Catholicism emphasized the impossibility of a union between Catholicism and Protestantism. The pope emerged with greater power in the Church, and Catholic power was restored in Italy, though weakened elsewhere.
With the waning of the Renaissance, Italian culture lost the predominant position which it had held for two cen¬turies. New national cultures had emerged in the countries of Western Europe, inspired and influenced by the heritage of the Renaissance. Now Italian culture came to be influenced by developments in other countries in the fields of philosophy, science, literature, and the arts. Thought in Italy became more restricted, disastrously affected by the condem¬nation of Galileo and the burning of Bruno.
Spanish control over much of the Italian Peninsula, con¬firmed by the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis (1559), was challenged by France during the reign of Louis XIV. Louis sought to take the place of Spain in Italy. But France was defeated by Austria in the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713), and Spanish rule in Italy was replaced by Aus¬trian as a result of the Treaty of Utrecht (1713). In 1713 also Victor Amadeus II of the House of Savoy, later Italy’s reigning dynasty, became king of Sicily. In 1720 he ex¬changed his island domain for Sardinia; and the Duchy of Savoy was thereafter included in what became known as the Kingdom of Sardinia.
In 1748 the War of the Austrian Succession was ended by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. By its terms, Italy was again redivided and Spanish and French demands were to some extent met. For almost the next fifty years Italy, on the whole, prospered, and Lombardy especially, which was ruled by Austria, made great advances.
The French Revolution had important effects on Italy, bringing new conditions and new ideas to the Italian Penin¬sula and its inhabitants. Inspired by France, numerous clubs and secret societies advocating reform sprang up, and every throne in Italy feared for its security.
In 1796 Napoleon, at the head of a French army, crossed the Alps, defeated the Sardinians, secured Nice and Savoy, disposed of five Austrian armies and occupied every fort in northern Italy. Some authorities believe that jai alai originated in the Basque region of northern Spain, whereas others think it was first played by the Maya or Aztecs in central America, and thence introduced to Spain by the conquistadors. As played in the Basque country, the game originally was called pelota, but because the playing of championship matches was a time for carnivals, the game soon became known as jai alai, which in the Basque tongue means “merry festival.” From Spain jai alai spread to France, Cairo, and eventually to Mexico City and Havana. The game was introduced into the United States early in the 20th century.
