Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/490

 470 ITALY [HISTORY. Heribert, the archbishop of Milan, invited Conrad, the Franconian king of Germany, into Italy, and crowned him with the iron crown of the kingdom. Heribert The intervention of this man, Heribert, compels us to and the t urn a closer glance upon the cities of North Italy. It is ll1 here, at the present epoch and for the next two centuries, that the pith and nerve of the Italian nation must be sought ; and among the burghs of Lombardy, Milan, the eldest daughter of ancient Rome, assumes the lead. In Milan we hear for the first time the word Comune. In Milan the citizens first form themselves into a Parlamento. In Milan the archbishop organizes the hitherto voiceless, defenceless population into a community capable of express ing its needs, and an army ready to maintain its rights. To Heribert is attributed the invention of the Carroccio, which played so singular and important a part in the war fare 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 hai a city and a church to fight for. That Heribert s device proved effectual i i raising the spirit of his burghers, and consolidating them into a formidable band of warriors, is shown by the fact that it was speedily adopted in all the fres cities. It must not, however, be supposed that at this epoch the liberties of the burghs were fully developed. The mass of the people remained unrepresented in the government ; and even if the consuls existed in the clays of Heribert, they were but humble legal officers, transacting business for their constituents in the courts of the bishop and his viscount. It still needed nearly a century of struggle to render the burghers inde pendent of lordship, with a fully organized commune, self- governed in its several assemblies. While making these reservations, it is at the same time right to observe that certain Italian communities were more advanced upon the path of independence than others. This is specially the case with the maritime ports. Not to mention Venice, which his not yet entered the Italian community, and remains a Greek free city, Genoa and Pisa were rapidly rising into ill-defined autonomy. Their command of fleets gave them incontestable advantages, as when, for instance, Otto IE. employed tin Pisans in 980 against the Greeks in Lower Italy, and the Pisans and Genoese together attacked the Saracens of Sardinia in 1017. Still, speaking generally, the age of independence for the burghs had only begun when Heribert from Milan undertook the earliest organiza tion of a force that was to become paramount in peace and war. Rome. Next to Milan, and from the point of view of general politics even more than Milan, Rome now claims attention. The destinies of Italy depended upon the character which the see of St Peter should assume. Even the liberties of her republics in the north hung on the issue of a contest which in tin llth and 12th centuries shook Europe to its furthest boundaries. So fatally were the internal affairs of that magnificent but unhappy country bound up with concerns which brought the forces of the civilized world into play. Her ancient prestige, her geographical position, and the intellectual primacy of her most noble children rendered Italy the battleground of principles that set all Christendom in motion, and by the clash of which she found herself for ever afterwards divided. During the reign of Conrad II., the party of the counts of Tusculum revived in Rome ; and Crescentius, claiming the title of con sul in the imperial city, sought once more to control the election of the popes. When Henry III., the son of Con rad, entered Italy in 1046, he found three popes in Rome. These he abolished, and, taking the appointment into his own hands, gave German bishops to the see. The policy thus initiated Upon the precedent laid down by Otto the Great was a remedy for pressing evils. It saved Rome from becoming a duchy in the hands of the Tusculan house. But it neither raised the prestige of the papacy, nor could it satisfy the Italians, who rightly regarded the Roman see as theirs. These German popes were short-lived and inefficient. Their appointment, according to notions which defined themselves within the church at this epoch, was simoniacal; and during the long minority of Henry IV., who succeeded his father in 1056, the terrible Tuscan monk, Hildebrand of Soana, forged weapons which he used with deadly effect against the presumption of the empire. The condition of the church seemed desperate, unless it could be purged of crying scandals of the subjection of the papacy to the great Roman nobles, of its subordination to the German emperor, and of its internal demoralization. It was Hildebrand s policy throughout three papacies, dur ing which he controlled the counsels of the Vatican, and before he himself assumed the tiara, to prepare the mind of Italy and Europe for a mighty change. His programme included these three points : (1) the celibacy of the clergy; (2) the abolition of ecclesiastical appointments made by the secular authority ; (3) the vesting of the papal election in the hands of the Roman clergy and people, presided over by the curia of cardinals. How Hildebrand paved the way for these reforms during the pontificates of Nicholas II. and Alexander II., how he succeeded in raising the papal office from the depths of degradation and subjection to illimitable sway over the minds of men in Europe, and how his warfare with the empire established on a solid basis the still doubtful independence of the Italian burghs, renewing the long neglected protectorate of the Italian race, and be queathing to his successors a national policy which had been forgotten by the popes since his great predecessor Gregory II., forms a chapter in European history which must now be interrupted. We have to follow the fortunes of unexpected allies, upon whom in no small measure his success depended. In order to maintain some thread of continuity through No the perplexed and tangled vicissitudes of the Italian race, cm it has been necessary to disregard those provinces which 2, , did not immediately contribute to the formation of its his- gj c tory. For this reason we have left the whole of the south up to the present point unnoticed. Sicily in the hands of the Mussulmans, the Theme of Lombardy abandoned to the weak suzerainty of the Greek catapans, the Lombard duchy of Benevento slowly falling to pieces, and the maritime re publics of Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi extending their in fluence by commerce in the Mediterranean, were in effect detached from the Italian regno, beyond the jurisdiction of Rome, included in no parcel of Italy proper. But now the moment had arrived when this vast group of provinces, forming the future kingdom of the Two Sicilies, was about to enter definitely and decisively within the bounds of the Italian community. Some Norman adventurers, on pil grimage to St Michael s shrine on Monte Gargano, lent their swords in 1017 to the Lombard cities of Apulia against the Greeks. Twelve years later we find the Nor mans settled at Aversa under their Count Rainulf. From this station as a centre the little band of adventurers, playing the Greeks off against the Lombards, and the Lombards against the Greeks, spread their power in all di rections, until they made themselves the most considerable force in southern Italy. William of Hauteville was pro claimed count of Apulia, His half-brother, Robert Wis- kard or Guiscard, after defeating the papal troops at Civitella in 1053, received from Leo IX. the investiture of all present and future conquests in Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, which he agreed to hold as fiefs of the Holy See. Nicholas II. ratified this grant, and confirmed the title of