own exile to Avignon. This involved the loss of the second great
authority to which Italy had been accustomed to look for the maintenance
of some sort of national coherence. Moreover, the Church, though
impotent to unite all Italy beneath her own sway, had power enough to
prevent the formation either by Milan or Venice or Naples of a
substantial kingdom. The result was a perpetually recurring process of
composition, dismemberment, and recomposition, under different forms, of
the scattered elements of Italian life. The Guelf and Ghibelline
parties, inherited from the wars of the thirteenth century, survived the
political interests which had given them birth, and proved an
insurmountable obstacle, long after they had ceased to have any real
significance, to the pacification of the country.[1] The only important
state which maintained an unbroken dynastic succession of however
disputed a nature at this period was the kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
The only great republics were Venice, Genoa, and Florence. Of these,
Genoa, after being reduced in power and prosperity by Venice, was
overshadowed by the successive lords of Milan; while Florence was
destined at the end of a long struggle to fall beneath a family of
despots. All the rest of Italy, especially to the north of the
Apennines, was the battle-field of tyrants, whose title was
illegitimate--based, that is to say, on no feudal principle, derived in
no regular manner from the Empire, but generally held as a gift or
extorted as a prize from the predominant parties in the great towns.

[1] So late as 1526 we find the burlesque poet Folengo exclaiming
(_Orlandino_, ii. 59)--

Chè se non fusser le gran parti in quella,
Dominerebbe il mondo Italia bella.