It is, therefore, in the state of moral feeling among the
Italians of those times that we must seek for the real
explanation of what seems most mysterious in the life and
writings of this remarkable man. As this is a subject which
suggests many interesting considerations, both political and
metaphysical, we shall make no apology for discussing it at some
length.

During the gloomy and disastrous centuries which followed the
downfall of the Roman Empire, Italy had preserved, in a far
greater degree than any other part of Western Europe, the traces
of ancient civilisation. The night which descended upon her was
the night of an Arctic summer. The dawn began to reappear before
the last reflection of the preceding sunset had faded from the
horizon. It was in the time of the French Merovingians and of the
Saxon Heptarchy that ignorance and ferocity seemed to have done
their worst. Yet even then the Neapolitan provinces, recognising
the authority of the Eastern Empire, preserved something of
Eastern knowledge and refinement. Rome, protected by the sacred
character of her Pontiffs, enjoyed at least comparative security
and repose, Even in those regions where the sanguinary Lombards
had fixed their monarchy, there was incomparably more of wealth,
of information, of physical comfort, and of social order, than
could be found in Gaul, Britain, or Germany.

That which most distinguished Italy from the neighbouring
countries was the importance which the population of the towns,
at a very early period, began to acquire. Some cities had been
founded in wild and remote situations, by fugitives who had