Page:The National Idea in Italian Literature.djvu/15

 nam extendit modo Pisa laudem admirabilem, quam olim recepit Roma vincendo Carthaginem."

And he calls upon not only Pisa, but all Italy, to weep for the fallen hero, Ugo Visconti. A few years later (about 1114), the author of the Liber Maiolichinus—the poem on the conquest of the Balearic Islands from the Saracens—conceives of the enterprise as a national one in which the Commune of Pisa is, as it were, the representative of the Italian nation. The poem begins with Pisa, "Pisani populi vires et bellica facta," and ends with the name of Italy 1).

This—somewhat vague—sense of Italian nationality becomes, for a moment, more explicit in the latter part of the twelfth century, during the heroic contest carried on by the Lombard League against the mightiest of mediaeval German Caesars, Frederick Barbarossa. There is sufficient evidence that, above and beyond their respective cities or communes, these Italian burghers recognised—however dimly—the conception of a common Italian native land. A contemporary chronicler, Romoaldus of Salerno, tells us that, when the representatives of the Lombard communes met Pope Alexander III at Ferrara in 1177 (the year after their great victory at Legnano), they claimed to speak in the name of all Italy, universa Italia, and to have fought pro honore et libertate Italiae. They will receive peace from the Emperor gladly, but only salvo Italiae honore: "We freely grant him what Italy owes him of old, and deny him not his ancient jurisdiction; but our liberty, 3