CHAPTER II.

ITALIAN HISTORY.


The special Difficulties of this Subject--Apparent Confusion--Want of
leading Motive--The Papacy--The Empire--The Republics--The Despots--The
People--The Dismemberment of Italy--Two main Topics--The Rise of the
Communes--Gothic Kingdom--Lombards--Franks--Germans--The Bishops--The
Consuls--The Podestàs--Civil Wars--Despots--The Balance of Power--The
Five Italian States--The Italians fail to achieve National Unity--The
Causes of this Failure--Conditions under which it might have been
achieved--A Republic--A Kingdom--A Confederation--A Tyranny--The Part
played by the Papacy.


After a first glance into Italian history the student recoils
as from a chaos of inscrutable confusion. To fix the moment of
transition from ancient to modern civilization seems impossible. There
is no formation of a new people, as in the case of Germany or France or
England, to serve as starting-point. Differ as the Italian races do in
their original type; Gauls, Ligurians, Etruscans, Umbrians, Latins,
Iapygians, Greeks have been fused together beneath the stress of Roman
rule into a nation that survives political mutations and the disasters
of barbarian invasions. Goths, Lombards, and Franks blend successively
with the masses of this complex population, and lose the outlines of
their several personalities. The western Empire melts imperceptibly
away. The Roman Church grows no less imperceptibly, and forms the Holy
Roman Empire as the equivalent of its own spiritual greatness in the