nor did the new Empire surrender its paramount rights over the peninsula
at large. The Italian kingdom, transferred to the Franks in 800, was the
kingdom founded by the Lombards; while the outlying and unconquered
districts were placed beneath the protectorate of the power which had
guided their emancipation. Thus the dualism introduced into Italy by
Theodoric's veneration for Rome, and confirmed by the failure of the
Lombard conquest, was ratified in the settlement whereby the Pope gave a
new Empire to Western Christendom. Venice, Pisa, Genoa, and the maritime
Republics of the south, excluded from the kingdom, were left to pursue
their own course of independence; and this is the chief among many
reasons why they rose so early into prominence. Rome consolidated her
ancient patrimonies and extended her rectorship in the center, while the
Frankish kings, who succeeded each other through eight reigns, developed
the Regno upon feudal principles by parceling the land among their
Counts. New marches were formed, traversing the previous Lombard fabric
and introducing divisions that decentralized the kingdom. Thus the great
vassals of Ivrea, Verona, Tuscany, and Spoleto raised themselves against
Pavia. The monarchs, placed between the Papacy and their ambitious
nobles, were unable to consolidate the realm; and when Berengar, the
last independent sovereign strove to enforce the declining authority of
Pavia, he was met with the resistance and the hatred of the nation.

The kingdom Berengar attempted to maintain against his vassals and the
Church was virtually abrogated by Otho I., whom the Lombard nobles
summoned into Italy in 951. When he reappeared in 961, he was crowned
Emperor at Rome, and assumed the title of the King of Italy. Thus the
Regno was merged in the Empire, and Pavia ceased to be a capital.
Henceforth the two great potentates in the peninsula were an unarmed
Pontiff and an absent Emperor. The subsequent history of the Italians
shows how they succeeded in reducing both these powers to the condition