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 to have earned their daily subsistence by the sword, having constantly mixed themselves up in the domestic quarrels then incessantly raging between the rulers and people of the southern states of Italy; till at length, chiefly through the aid of the Duke of Naples, whose cause they had espoused, they secured their first settlement in Italy. Within eight miles of his residence, he built and fortified for their use the town of Aversa, granting to them, also, a considerable tract of the fertile country in the vicinity, over which they were vested with complete control. Year by year numerous pilgrims from all parts of Europe, but especially from the north, found shelter under the independent standard of Aversa, and were quickly assimilated with the manners and language of the Gallic colony. But the Norman power soon extended far beyond the infant and limited colony of Aversa, and embraced the whole of the territory, which for centuries, and, indeed, until the last few years, was known as the kingdom of Naples. Within that territory, thirty miles from Naples, stood the commercially celebrated republic of Amalfi.

Although the port of Amalfi, from which the republic derived its name, is now an obscure place, no western harbour then contained a more enterprising maritime population. Its position, not unlike that of Tyre, afforded great facilities for carrying on an extensive sea-borne commerce. Hence it was that Amalfi, in its day, had a very extensive intercourse with all parts of the then known world, and was among the earliest of the Italian republics to hold in its hands the trade of the Mediterranean. Long before the Venetians and Genoese