Introduction

Abstract

Land of St Francis and of Dante, fragmented among tumultuous republics and unstable tyrannies, the repeatedly invaded spiritual and commercial nerve-centre of the Latin West, medieval Italy presents a mass of striking detail which cries out to be fitted into an overall pattern satisfying and meaningful to the present age. For the other major states of western Europe such patterns exist, established in the main by German, French and English historians of the last century who saw the history of their respective countries largely in terms of their national monarchies. The history of medieval France and England was represented as the story of how the crown and the organs of central government gradually extended their power, overcoming anarchy and local particularism; in medieval Germany the elements were the same but the outcome was different, with the monarchy finally losing the game after a brilliant opening, the victim of adverse fortune and mistaken choices. At first sight the fate of medieval Italy would seem to be similar to that of Germany, for here too the monarchy was eventually eclipsed by the local city-states and principalities, but there is a significant difference. In Germany both the monarchy and the forces which defeated it were authentic products of German society; Italy, on the other hand, lost her national monarchy in the mid-tenth century, and it was German kings who fought the losing battle to maintain imperial authority in the peninsula.