The Free
Communes in Italy
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History of Italy)
This development
of mercantile activity by the maritime cities (which also favoured
the accumulation of capital as a necessary condition for economic
enterprises, apart from often being an instrument of political
influence) was accompanied, over the period spanning the first
and second millennium AD, by a slow but sure social, economic
and cultural growth in the rest of Italy. A new religious spirit
can be seen in the initiatives of various, rulers, as in the
case of Henry II, the last emperor from the House of Saxony
(1002-24). Agriculture, crafts and commerce prospered, the latter
two in particular becoming the foundations of an urban economy
that was to produce the Free Communes so characteristic of a
large part of Central-Northern Italy.
Notwithstanding
their formal subjection to the emperor, his Italian feudal lords
(and with them, though often in opposition, the newly emerging
urban middle-classes, the religious and military aristocracy
and the administrative bureaucracy) were particularly attached
to the personal and caste privileges they had gradually acquired.
Thus it was not surprising that they rebelled, led by Arduin,
marquis of Ivrea, who was elected king of Italy (1002-14), against
the excessive demands of the bishops and counts and the imperial
attempts to re-establish supremacy.
The particular
interest of the German imperial dynasties (Saxons and Franks)
in Italy and the Church of Rome's constant assertions of independence,
combined with identical claims for supremacy, inevitably led
to conflict between emperor and pope. The ensuing investiture
contest was to last for over sixty years (1059-1122) before
being settled, in favour of the church, by the Concordat of
Worms.
With the
replacement of the Swabian House of Hohenstaufen over that of
Bavaria at the head of the empire, the Italian Free Communes
formed the Lombard League and, supported by the pope, defeated
the new Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick I Barbarossa at
the Battle of Legnano (1176). This was soon claimed as a symbol
of refound national unity in the face of foreign intervention
but can more realistically be seen as a particular reaction
of Italian society of that period against the sovereignty of
the emperor.
An echo
of this conflict was to occur in the following century with
the tragic end of the House of Hohenstaufen, following the deaths
of Manfred, Frederick II's illegitimate son, at Benevento (1266)
and then of Conradin (1268). These events marked the decline
of the Ghibelline idea of imperial and lay supremacy against
the consolidation of the church's temporal power and the prevailing
Guelf ideal of papal authority over the State.
The resolution
of differences between lay and religious ideals, realized with
a further request for help from foreign powers, was a choice
that was very soon to damage Italian liberty. The pope's request
to the Angevins for assistance against the last of the
Hohenstaufen only laid Italy open to new foreign occupations
and the division of her territory among the early European nations.
The Angevins were to remain in Southern Italy for almost two
centuries (1266-1442), only initially encountering the obstacle
of the war following the Sicilian Vespers Revolt (1282-1302)
with the island consequently passing to the House of Aragon.
In 1287 the capital of the Kingdom of Sicily was transferred
to Naples, while the strongly fiscal and centralizing policy
of the new rulers led to the surrounding territory being sacrificed
to the capital, traces of which can still be seen today in the
social and economic imbalance of Southern Italy.
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