Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/500

 480 ITALY [HISTORY. surviving republics had no rivals. They fought their duel out upon the Bosphorus, off Sardinia, and in the Morea, with various success. From the first great encounter, in 1355, Venice retired well-nigh exhausted, and Genoa was so crippled that she placed herself under the protection of the Visconti. The second and decisive battle was fought upon the Adriatic. The Genoese fleet under Luciano Doria defeated the Venetians off Pola in 1379, and sailed without opposition to Chioggia, which was stormed and taken. Thus the Venetians found themselves blockaded in their own. lagoons. Meanwhile a fleet was raised for their re lief by Carlo Zeno in the Levant, and the admiral Vittore Pisani, who had been imprisoned after the defeat at Pola, was released to lead their forlorn hope from the city side, The Genoese in their turn were now blockaded in Cbioggia, and forced by famine to surrender. The losses of men and money which the war of Chioggia, as it was called, entailed, though they did not immediately depress the spirit of the Genoese republic, signed her naval ruin. Dur ing this second struggle to the death with Genoa, the Venetians had been also at strife with the Carraresi of Padua and the Scaligers of Verona. In 1406, after the extinction of these princely houses they added Verona, Vicenza, and Padua to the territories they claimed on terra firma. Their career of conquest, and their new policy of forming Italian alliances and entering into the management of Italian affairs, were confirmed by the long dogeship of Francesco Foscari (1423-1457), who must rank with Al fonso, Cosimo de Medici, Francesco Sforza, and Nicholas V., as a joint-founder of confederated Italy. When Con stantinople fell in 1453, the old ties between Venice and the Eastern empire were broken, and she now entered on a wholly new phase of her history. Ranking as one of the five Italian powers, she was also destined to defend Western Christendom against the encroachments of the Turk in Europe. The By their settlement in Avignon, the popes relinquished papacy, their protectorate of Italian liberties, and lost their position as Italian potentates. Rienzi s revolution in Rome (1347-1354), and his establishment of a republic upon a fantastic basis, half classical half feudal, proved the temper of the times ; while the rise of dynastic families in the cities of the church, claiming the title of papal vicars, but acting in their own interests, weakened the authority of the Holy See. The predatory expeditions of Bertrand du Poiet and Robert of Geneva were as ineffective as the descents of the emperors; and, though the cardinal Albornoz con quered Rornagna and the March in 1364, the legates who resided in those districts were not long able to hold them against their despots. At last Gregory XI. returned to Rome; and Urban VI., elected in 1378, put a final end to the Avignonian exile. Still the Great Schism, which now distracted Western Christendom, so enfeebled the papacy, and kept the Roman pontiffs so engaged in ecclesiastical disputes, that they had neither power nor leisure to occupy themselves seriously with their temporal affairs. The threatening presence of the two princely houses of Orsini and Colonna, alike dangerous as friends or foes, rendered Rome an unsafe residence. Even when the schism was nominally terminated in 1415 by the council of Constance, the next two popes held but a precarious grasp upon their Italian domains. Martin V. (1417-1431) resided princi pally at Florence. Eugenius IV. (1431-1447) followed his example. And what Martin managed to regain Eugenius lost. At the same time, the change&quot; which had now come over Italian politics, the desire on all sides for a settlement, and the growing conviction that a federation was necessary, proved advantageous to the popes as sove reigns. They gradually entered into the spirit of their age, assumed the style of despots, and made use of the human istic movement, then at its height, to place themselves in a new relation to Italy. The election of Nicholas V. in 1447 determined this revolution in the papacy, and opened a period of temporal splendour, which ended with the estab lishment of the popes as sovereigns. Thomas of Sarzana was a distinguished humanist. Humbly born, he had been tutor in the house of the Albizzi, and afterwards librarian of the Medici at Florence, where he imbibed the politics together with the culture of the Renaissance. Soon after assuming the tiara, he found himself without a rival in the church; for the schism ended by Felix V. s resignation in 1449. Nicholas fixed his residence in Rome, which he began to rebuild and to fortify, determining to render the Eternal City once more a capital worthy of its high place in Europe. The Romans were flattered ; and, though his reign was disturbed by republican conspiracy, Nicholas V. was able before his death in 1455 to secure the modern status of the pontiff as a splendid patron and a wealthy temporal potentate. Italy was now for a brief space independent. The C&amp;lt; humanistic movement had created a common culture, a com- ra mon language, and sense of common nationality. The five t great powers, with their satellites dukes of Savoy and Urbino, marquises of Ferrara and Mantua, republics of Bologna, Perugia, Siena were constituted. All political institutions tended toward despotism. The Medici became yearly more indispensable to Florence, the Bentivogli more autocratic in Bologna, the Baglioni in Perugia ; and even Siena was ruled by the Petrucci. But this despotism was of a mild type. The princes were Italians ; they shared the common enthusiasms of the nation for art, learning, literature, and science; they studied how to mask their tyranny with arts agreeable to the multitude. When Italy had reached this point, Constantinople was taken by the Turks. On all sides it was felt that the Italian alliance must be tightened; and one of the last, best acts of Nicholas V. s pontificate was the appeal in 1453 to the five great powers in federation. As regards their common opposition to the Turk, this appeal led to nothing ; but it marked the growth of a new Italian consciousness. Between 1453 and 1492 Italy continued to be prosper ous and tranquil. Nearly all wars during this period were undertaken either to check the growing power of Venice or to farther the ambition of the papacy. Having become despots, the popes sought to establish their relatives in principalities. The word nepotism acquired new signifi cance in the reigns of Sixtus IV. and Innocent VIII. Though the country was convulsed by no great struggle, these forty years witnessed a truly appalling increase of political crime. To be a prince was tantamount to being. the mark of secret conspiracy and assassination. Among the most noteworthy examples of such attempts may be mentioned the revolt of the barons against Ferdinand I. of Naples (1464), the murder of Galeazzo Maria Sforza at Milan (1476), and the plot of the Pazzi to destroy the Medici (1478). After Cosimo de Medici s death in 1464, the presidency of the Florentine republic passed to his son Piero, who left it in 1469 to his sons Lorenzo and Giuliano. These youths assumed the style of princes, and it was against their lives that the Pazzi, with the sanction of Sixtus IV., aimed their blow. Giuliano was murdered. Lorenzo escaped, to tighten his grasp upon the city, which now loved him and was proud of him. During the follow ing fourteen years of his brilliant career, he made himself absolute master of Florence, and so modified her institu tions that the Medici were henceforth necessary to the state. Apprehending the importance of Italian federation, Lorenzo, by his personal tact and prudent leadership of the republic, secured peace and a common intelligence between the five powers. His own family was fortified by the