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Italy: A Short History
Italy: A Short History succeeds and replaces the long-established and highly successful Short History of Italy, edited by Professors Hearder and D. P. Waley. It presents a clear and concise account of the principal developments in Italian history from the Ice Age to the present day, intended both for student of Italian history and culture and the general reader with an interest in Italian affairs. Professor Hearder's account centres on the main political developments, placed in their appropriate economic and social context, and shows how these were related to the great moments of artistic and cultural endeavour. Professor Hearder traces the prehistoric and classical history of the peninsula, the growth and decline of the Roman Empire and the expansion in power and authority of the medieval papacy. He shows how the remarkable cultural achievements of the Renaissance emerged from the horror of the Plague, and how the spread of humanism and the development of printing made Italy the cultural heart of Europe. There then followed, however, a long period of domination from without, culminating in the brief episode of Napoleonic rule. This was only ended with the emergence of the great nineteenth-century movement for national renewal, inspired by the contrasting figures of Mazzini, Cavour and Garibaldi. The newly-democratic Italian kingdom survived the First World War, only to be taken over by the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. Professor Hearder examines the travails and contradictions of the Fascist period, and concludes his account with an optimistic assessment of the future prospects of the Republic, capable of contributing much to the rejuvenated Europe of 1992 and beyond.
285 pages, Paperback
First published November 30, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 7, 2019
One of the most concise and comprehensive overviews of Italian history that I’ve read so far. It manages to be economical to the fullest extent without failing to address everything important. At times, the parallels which Hearder draws between Italian and (almost exclusively) British politics can be a bit tedious, especially when you’re not quite interested or for that matter well-read in the latter. It is nevertheless understandable for the book seems to be primarily aimed at British students, and can be overlooked with ease.
July 26, 2019
This is a great overview of Italian history and provides a well-written, basic historical framework for anyone preparing to visit the country.
The Etruscan civilization
The remains of the Etruscan civilization date back to the Iron age or to about 800 BC and are located mainly in an area centered between Rome and Florence, which is why this area is called Tuscany. The wealth of the Etruscans was based upon the large amount of metal deposits in the area, such as iron, copper, lead & tin. The Etruscans were engineers; they drained the land, built good roads, were sea-faring and traded with Carthage. They extracted and smelted iron for some 400 years, from the 7th century BC onwards.
Rome
Long before the Etruscan civilization had reached its peak, a Latin people were living on the seven hills of Rome. One legend is that Rome was founded by the Trojan, Aeneas who escaped from Troy, which is the basis of The Aeneid, written by Virgil around 19 BC.
Another legend, written by Livy (59 BC to 17 AD), tells of the infants Romulus and Remus being nurtured by a she-wolf. Romulus subsequently killed Remus and founded Rome, supposedly around 753 BC; however, the Etruscans ruled over Rome initially. Sometime around 510 BC, the Romans gained enough control to establish their Republic.
Around the 4th century BC, a Celtic people, the Gaul’s, sacked Rome and temporarily halted Roman expansion. To draw perspective, this was about this time that Aristotle was studying under Plato in Athens. At this time, about 40 different languages were spoken in Italy. All of these languages gave way to Latin in the course of two or three centuries.
Rome developed from being one force among many in the Italian peninsula to dominating the whole known world and this process took only about three or four centuries. Rome’s long wars with Carthage, the Punic Wars, started in 264 BC. Carthage was originally a Phoenician trading post that had used her favorable position at the narrowest point of the Mediterranean, opposite Sicily, to build up an empire.
Empires of Rome & Carthage
The three Punic wars taken together extended over a period of 42 years and the last one resulted in the annihilation of Carthage. The Carthaginians were led by Hannibal whose novel use of elephants produced some victories against the Romans. The alliance of Philip V of Macedon on the side of the Carthaginians was insignificant and in 149 BC Cato persuaded the Romans to raze Carthage to the ground. As a result, Rome acquired an extensive empire: the whole of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and a foothold in Spain. The Romans also defeated the Macedonians, destroying the monarchy that had once been Alexander the Great’s. The wealth of the Carthaginian and Hellenic worlds enriched Rome.
Roman Institutions
Slavery - The major difference in the society of Roman Italy and modern times is the institution of slavery. About 35% of the Roman population was enslaved. The author compares the widespread acceptance of Roman slavery to the situations of extreme polarizations in wealth existing today between modern employers and employees.
Religion - The author writes of the parallels between ancient Roman religion and Catholic Christianity as follows:
“Roman religion, superficially so unlike the Christianity of later Catholic Italy, had many points in common with it. The many gods and goddesses of pagan Rome, each with his or her function of mercy or support to perform, were not so far removed from the saints of Christian Italy, and Latin writers often refer to Jupiter in much the same terms as Christians refer to their God. He is the ruler of the universe for whom rituals must be performed.” -Harry Hearder
As with the Catholic Pope, the early Romans had a high priest, the Pontifex Maximus, who was also an important state functionary. The largest buildings in Rome were temples in the same manner that ornate Catholic cathedrals dominate the religious landscape.
Spartacus - A social war was fought from 73-71 BC when a slave named Spartacus escaped from a school of gladiators in Capua and built up a force of runaway slaves on Mount Vesuvius. Spartacus initially defeated Roman forces sent against him and built his army to 70,000. However, Spartacus was eventually killed and the Romans crucified about 6,000 of his followers, lining them along the Appian Way from Capua to Rome.
Pompey, Caesar & Mark Antony - The drama of Rome is generally told with four principal protagonists: Pompey, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and Octavian. Pompey made his reputation in the war against Spartacus. He formed an unconstitutional Triumvirate with Caesar and Crassus to become dictator in 52 BC. Julius Caesar took command of legions in Gaul and used its conquest for his personal glorification. The Senate demanded Caesar to disband his army before returning to Rome, which he refused to do in 49 BC, crossing the Rubicon river and precipitating the conflict that led to his becoming dictator. In 44 BC, Caesar was assassinated by a group led by Marcus Brutus. Caesar’s supporter, Mark Antony, seized control, had Cicero murdered, and defeated Brutus. However, Antony became enthralled in a love affair with Cleopatra in Egypt and was himself defeated by Octavian, who had been adopted as a boy by Caesar.
Octavian Augustus - The tale of Mark Antony’s life and love affair with Cleopatra and their suicides were related in vivid narrative by the Greek historian Plutarch and reinforced a millennium and a half later by William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (first performed in 1607). The Senate named Octavian “Augustus” and he brought the world an exceptionally long period of peace. It was during the Augustan period that Virgil (70 BC – 19 BC) wrote The Aeneid, which was modeled after Homer’s (7th-8th century BC) Iliad and Odyssey. The Aeneid follows the Trojan refugee Aeneas as he struggles to reach Italy where his descendants, Romulus and Remus founded Rome.
Dante - Virgil would later appear in Dante’s (1265 – 1321) Divine Comedy as his guide through Hell and Purgatory. The poets Horace (65 BC – 8 BC) and Ovid (43 BC – 17/18 AD) were also prominent during the Augustan period; the former is considered the world’s first autobiographer and the latter is known especially for his work Metamorphoses, chronicling the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar.
Crucifixions - Augustus (Octavian) was succeeded by his stepson, Tiberius (14 AD – 37 AD) during whose reign Jesus of Nazareth was executed. The author writes of Jesus as follows:
“Jesus of Nazareth was suspected of leading a Jewish nationalist movement and executed by the Roman authorities. His novel ethical doctrine – that all human beings should love each other – was never to be put into practice but was to be an underlying influence in the culture of medieval Europe, although twisted into perverted forms, and used by the medieval Papacy in the establishment of its dominant role in Italian history.” -Harry Hearder
Pius? - Many subsequent emperors followed and it can be argued that Rome reached its peak under Trajan (AD 98-117) or his successor Hadrian (117-138), by which time the population of Rome had reached 1.5 million. No other city in the history of the world would be that large again until London in the 19th century. Hadrian’s successor, Antonius Pius (138-161) was given the name “Pius”, which is derived from Virgil, meaning “virtuous” or “God-fearing” and is the precursor of the title “pius” adopted by the medieval popes.
Constantine - It was not until 324, after years of appalling massacres of Christians, that Constantine (306-37) emerged as the ruler in Rome. Constantine recognized Christianity as a legitimate religion and founded a new capital at Constantinople. Constantine’s patronage of Christianity resulted in an impressive building of cathedrals and churches including the enormous basilicas of St. John Lateran and St. Peter in Rome.
The Fall of Rome
Alaric - The Visigoths reached Italy at the beginning of the 5th century under their leader Alaric. Alaric was, in a sense, a product of the Roman empire because he had been appointed by the Roman Emperor Theodosius (347-395) as leader of initially loyal Gothic auxiliaries. But Alaric eventually invaded Northern Greece and made an attack on Northern Italy, besieging Milan in 401 and sacking Rome in 410.
Attila - In 429 the Vandals arrived in Africa, depriving Rome of her source of corn. The Goths settled in Italy and begin to accustom themselves to civilization, settling mainly within the borders of the Empire. In 434, the Huns, who were Mongols, emerged in the person of Attila and collected a large army containing Vandals, Franks and Huns, conquering large swaths of Southeastern Europe. The Vandals sacked Rome in 455, but their conquest was never very permanent. In spite of the invasions by Goths, Huns and Vandals, the Roman Senate and emperor survived for some time.
Theodoric - In 476, the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by a mixed group of Teutonic invaders. Some historians see this as a continuous war of Italian independence against the German peoples, which has lasted for more than 1,500 years and is not yet finished. From about 400 to 1000, more than half of Italy was under a single king who was not Italian. One such king was Theodoric, who ruled combined Gothic realms from the Atlantic to the Adriatic. Theodoric was an Arian Christian (the sect who argued that God the Father must have existed before the Son and to that extent the two could not be identical) and maintained a Roman legal administration that oversaw a flourishing scholarly culture and building program.
Justinian - During the reign of the Eastern Emperor, Justinian, in Constantinople (527-65), a reconquest of Rome was attempted and ended Gothic rule in Italy. Justinian also reconquered the Vandal kingdom of Africa and proceeded to re-establish imperial authority in Rome. However, in the last decades of the 6th century, conditions in Italy deteriorated and barbarian invasions continued.
The Papacy & Lombard’s
The early claims of the Papacy to temporal power can be traced to the middle of the 5th century. Leo I (the Great, 440-61) is considered the founder of Catholicism because he rejected the claim of the Patriarch of Constantinople to be head of the church. A forged document known as the Donation of Constantine claimed that Constantine gifted the Western Empire to the Papacy and it was not exposed as a forgery for a thousand years. Pope Gregory I was elected pope in 590 and he set the pattern which Catholic services and ritual were to follow throughout history. Gregory sent Augustine to Britain to convert the English, not knowing they had already encountered Christianity through missionaries from Ireland.
In 568 the Lombard’s invaded Italy and by the end of the 6th century Roman cities were being ruled by Lombard dukes. As the modern name “Lombardy” suggests, the part of Italy most intensely settled by the Lombard’s was around Milan and Verona. Many Romans were enslaved by the Lombard’s, but the Lombard conquest of Italy was never a complete one. The Lombard’s built many churches. All the while Byzantine Italy still survived in Rome, Venice, Naples and the far South.
The Franks
Pepin - In 754-756 the Franks invaded Italy under Pepin and deprived the Lombard’s of much of their territory. Pepin’s arrival provided a foundation for the Papal States. In 756, “The Donation of Pepin” proclaimed the Pope to be the heir of the Roman emperors.
Charlemagne - Charlemagne became king of the Franks in 774 and confirmed the Donation of Pepin, but nevertheless controlled the Papal States as part of his Carolingian dynasty which had been founded initially by Charles Martel. In 800, Charlemagne had to restore pope Leo III (795-816) who had been driven out by popular riot. As a result, the pope crowned Charlemagne emperor in St. Peter’s, beginning the start of the Holy Roman Empire. A tradition was established between the Frankish (Carolingian) rulers and the papacy for coronation of the emperors with the underlying sense of restoration of a universal Roman empire. (Before the Carolingian dynasty the Franks had been ruled by the Merovingian dynasty, which has lasted from the middle of the 5th century until 751).
The Frankish Fetish to be Rome - The continual expeditions of German/French peoples into Italy has continued for century after century. The author labels the more contemporary Italian clashes with Germany as “latter-day barbarian invasions”. The author makes the very illuminating point that these Germanic invasions had much less to do with loot and much more to do with the imponderable and mystical significance of the Roman Empire.
Frankish Empire
The Muslims & Normans
In 827, the Muslims arrived in Sicily; they took Palermo in 831 and Messina in 842. Constantinople fell to them in 878. They would rule Sicily for two and a half centuries, building hundreds of mosques. The Sicilian population would come to constitute an extraordinary ethnic mixture in which Greeks and Arabs predominated.
At this time there was much warfare in Italy and many divided principalities, most of German and French origin, but also Lombard’s, Byzantines, Arabs and Normans, the later who conquered Sicily in 1072-91. The Normans had also defeated Pope Leo IX in 1053 (yes, this supposed representative of Christian love actually maintained standing armies and conducted battles). The Normans constituted a small, undisputed ruling class who came from the North and brought with them their beautiful, astringent, Romanesque architecture.
Crusades & Inquisitions
The Crusades - In 1095 Pope Urban II summoned the First Crusade, which moved primarily from France and Germany and which succeeded in taking Jerusalem but indulged in appalling massacres. The second crusade (1147-9) was organized by monarchs and murdered ten thousand Jews in the Rhine Valley. The kings of England and France went on the Third Crusade (1189-92). The fourth Crusade (1202-1204) opened the way to great opportunities for Venice because the sack and acquisition of Constantinople brought immense wealth and empire. At the time of the 4th Crusade, Venice and Florence were the two richest cities in Europe and Genoa was also growing rapidly.
Frederick II - Frederick II, the German emperor and patron of the Teutonic Knights was half Norman and made Sicily his base. He was crowned by Pope Honorius III in 1220, uniting his imperial German title with his Sicilian one. But the pope excommunicated Frederick when he failed to keep his oath to organize a crusade. Frederick subsequently took an army to the Holy Lands, in defiance of the Papacy, and made himself king of Jerusalem.
St. Francis of Assisi - A near contemporary of Frederick was St. Francis of Assisi. Unlike the much broader movement of monasticism, which pre-dated Christianity, the Franciscans stressed God’s love of man, rather than man’s fear of God. The Franciscan movement did not get involved in the brutalities of the Inquisition to the extent the Dominican movement did. Francis took the teaching of Christ literally (as few had done before or have since) and preached poverty and the corrupting influence of riches. Francis gave his possessions to the poor and started to preach fundamentalist communism. Francis saw all elements of creation as his brothers and sisters and seems to synthesize pantheism or humanism. Conversely, St. Dominic, a Spaniard, worked more vehemently against heresy in the Inquisition.
Catholicism’s Paranoia of Communism - In modern times, the Catholic Church and the Papacy would come to view communistic teaching with fear and horror, ultimately siding with fascism against it in WW II. The pope excommunicated many communists but never Hitler. Hitler died a member of the Catholic church that baptized him. The Papacy embraced a process of destroying other Christian communities which did not accept their strict orthodoxy. The term “crusade” was employed not only for war against the infidel, but also for campaigns against anyone the pope declared to be a heretic.
St. Thomas Aquinas - St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) joined the Dominicans and influenced the whole direction of Christian thought with his Summa Theologica, which reconciled belief in God with Aristotle’s reason. Dante (1265-1321) was much influenced by Aquinas and he was the first to write in a vernacular that expanded the Italian language.
Struggling Against Chaos and Division
Italy was dominated by city-states that endured under the influences of various kings, foreign powers and popes; but in the 14th century there began a transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and the rise of modern capitalism.
Italian City-States
Much impetus for change was about; such as the occurrence of the Black Death and the discovery of America, which deprived the Mediterranean of its central position in the world. Whereas scholarship had previously been a monopoly of the Church, laymen began to gain education and there was a revival of classical learning (the learning of Greece and Rome).
Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453 and Italy remained divided into independent principalities ruled by powerful monarchs who nationalized their churches. Machiavelli (1469-1527) took the secular spirit to its extreme in writing The Prince, which justified ignoring moral values to retain power. In many ways, Machiavelli laid a foundation for the fascists that would follow. Roused by the Machiavellian notion to jettison all scruples in the pursuit of power, French, Spanish, German and Austrian monarchs battled over Italy and the Italian city-states fought each other as satellites of foreign monarchs.
Italy was less affected by the Reformation as was Germany, France and Britain. Italy along with Spain, became one of the two main centers of the Counter-Reformation. Pope Paul III (1534-49) issued the order creating the Inquisition in Rome and the subsequent and fanatical Paul IV stepped up Inquisition activity. People were tortured and an index of prohibited books was published. Italy and Spain favored papal supremacy within the Church and the pope was declared the supreme authority. This formed the basis for Pius IX later proclaiming the Doctrine of Papal Infallibility in 1870. People were burned and tortured. One of the more famous was Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) who lost his faith in Christianity and was burnt in Rome. Galileo (1564-1642) ran afoul of the Church by accepting the Copernican belief that the earth moved around the sun and was forced to renounce publicly what he knew to be fact.
CONTINUED IN COMMENT SECTION BELOW
The Etruscan civilization
The remains of the Etruscan civilization date back to the Iron age or to about 800 BC and are located mainly in an area centered between Rome and Florence, which is why this area is called Tuscany. The wealth of the Etruscans was based upon the large amount of metal deposits in the area, such as iron, copper, lead & tin. The Etruscans were engineers; they drained the land, built good roads, were sea-faring and traded with Carthage. They extracted and smelted iron for some 400 years, from the 7th century BC onwards.
Rome
Long before the Etruscan civilization had reached its peak, a Latin people were living on the seven hills of Rome. One legend is that Rome was founded by the Trojan, Aeneas who escaped from Troy, which is the basis of The Aeneid, written by Virgil around 19 BC.
Another legend, written by Livy (59 BC to 17 AD), tells of the infants Romulus and Remus being nurtured by a she-wolf. Romulus subsequently killed Remus and founded Rome, supposedly around 753 BC; however, the Etruscans ruled over Rome initially. Sometime around 510 BC, the Romans gained enough control to establish their Republic.
Around the 4th century BC, a Celtic people, the Gaul’s, sacked Rome and temporarily halted Roman expansion. To draw perspective, this was about this time that Aristotle was studying under Plato in Athens. At this time, about 40 different languages were spoken in Italy. All of these languages gave way to Latin in the course of two or three centuries.
Rome developed from being one force among many in the Italian peninsula to dominating the whole known world and this process took only about three or four centuries. Rome’s long wars with Carthage, the Punic Wars, started in 264 BC. Carthage was originally a Phoenician trading post that had used her favorable position at the narrowest point of the Mediterranean, opposite Sicily, to build up an empire.
Empires of Rome & Carthage
The three Punic wars taken together extended over a period of 42 years and the last one resulted in the annihilation of Carthage. The Carthaginians were led by Hannibal whose novel use of elephants produced some victories against the Romans. The alliance of Philip V of Macedon on the side of the Carthaginians was insignificant and in 149 BC Cato persuaded the Romans to raze Carthage to the ground. As a result, Rome acquired an extensive empire: the whole of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and a foothold in Spain. The Romans also defeated the Macedonians, destroying the monarchy that had once been Alexander the Great’s. The wealth of the Carthaginian and Hellenic worlds enriched Rome.
Roman Institutions
Slavery - The major difference in the society of Roman Italy and modern times is the institution of slavery. About 35% of the Roman population was enslaved. The author compares the widespread acceptance of Roman slavery to the situations of extreme polarizations in wealth existing today between modern employers and employees.
Religion - The author writes of the parallels between ancient Roman religion and Catholic Christianity as follows:
“Roman religion, superficially so unlike the Christianity of later Catholic Italy, had many points in common with it. The many gods and goddesses of pagan Rome, each with his or her function of mercy or support to perform, were not so far removed from the saints of Christian Italy, and Latin writers often refer to Jupiter in much the same terms as Christians refer to their God. He is the ruler of the universe for whom rituals must be performed.” -Harry Hearder
As with the Catholic Pope, the early Romans had a high priest, the Pontifex Maximus, who was also an important state functionary. The largest buildings in Rome were temples in the same manner that ornate Catholic cathedrals dominate the religious landscape.
Spartacus - A social war was fought from 73-71 BC when a slave named Spartacus escaped from a school of gladiators in Capua and built up a force of runaway slaves on Mount Vesuvius. Spartacus initially defeated Roman forces sent against him and built his army to 70,000. However, Spartacus was eventually killed and the Romans crucified about 6,000 of his followers, lining them along the Appian Way from Capua to Rome.
Pompey, Caesar & Mark Antony - The drama of Rome is generally told with four principal protagonists: Pompey, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and Octavian. Pompey made his reputation in the war against Spartacus. He formed an unconstitutional Triumvirate with Caesar and Crassus to become dictator in 52 BC. Julius Caesar took command of legions in Gaul and used its conquest for his personal glorification. The Senate demanded Caesar to disband his army before returning to Rome, which he refused to do in 49 BC, crossing the Rubicon river and precipitating the conflict that led to his becoming dictator. In 44 BC, Caesar was assassinated by a group led by Marcus Brutus. Caesar’s supporter, Mark Antony, seized control, had Cicero murdered, and defeated Brutus. However, Antony became enthralled in a love affair with Cleopatra in Egypt and was himself defeated by Octavian, who had been adopted as a boy by Caesar.
Octavian Augustus - The tale of Mark Antony’s life and love affair with Cleopatra and their suicides were related in vivid narrative by the Greek historian Plutarch and reinforced a millennium and a half later by William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (first performed in 1607). The Senate named Octavian “Augustus” and he brought the world an exceptionally long period of peace. It was during the Augustan period that Virgil (70 BC – 19 BC) wrote The Aeneid, which was modeled after Homer’s (7th-8th century BC) Iliad and Odyssey. The Aeneid follows the Trojan refugee Aeneas as he struggles to reach Italy where his descendants, Romulus and Remus founded Rome.
Dante - Virgil would later appear in Dante’s (1265 – 1321) Divine Comedy as his guide through Hell and Purgatory. The poets Horace (65 BC – 8 BC) and Ovid (43 BC – 17/18 AD) were also prominent during the Augustan period; the former is considered the world’s first autobiographer and the latter is known especially for his work Metamorphoses, chronicling the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar.
Crucifixions - Augustus (Octavian) was succeeded by his stepson, Tiberius (14 AD – 37 AD) during whose reign Jesus of Nazareth was executed. The author writes of Jesus as follows:
“Jesus of Nazareth was suspected of leading a Jewish nationalist movement and executed by the Roman authorities. His novel ethical doctrine – that all human beings should love each other – was never to be put into practice but was to be an underlying influence in the culture of medieval Europe, although twisted into perverted forms, and used by the medieval Papacy in the establishment of its dominant role in Italian history.” -Harry Hearder
Pius? - Many subsequent emperors followed and it can be argued that Rome reached its peak under Trajan (AD 98-117) or his successor Hadrian (117-138), by which time the population of Rome had reached 1.5 million. No other city in the history of the world would be that large again until London in the 19th century. Hadrian’s successor, Antonius Pius (138-161) was given the name “Pius”, which is derived from Virgil, meaning “virtuous” or “God-fearing” and is the precursor of the title “pius” adopted by the medieval popes.
Constantine - It was not until 324, after years of appalling massacres of Christians, that Constantine (306-37) emerged as the ruler in Rome. Constantine recognized Christianity as a legitimate religion and founded a new capital at Constantinople. Constantine’s patronage of Christianity resulted in an impressive building of cathedrals and churches including the enormous basilicas of St. John Lateran and St. Peter in Rome.
The Fall of Rome
Alaric - The Visigoths reached Italy at the beginning of the 5th century under their leader Alaric. Alaric was, in a sense, a product of the Roman empire because he had been appointed by the Roman Emperor Theodosius (347-395) as leader of initially loyal Gothic auxiliaries. But Alaric eventually invaded Northern Greece and made an attack on Northern Italy, besieging Milan in 401 and sacking Rome in 410.
Attila - In 429 the Vandals arrived in Africa, depriving Rome of her source of corn. The Goths settled in Italy and begin to accustom themselves to civilization, settling mainly within the borders of the Empire. In 434, the Huns, who were Mongols, emerged in the person of Attila and collected a large army containing Vandals, Franks and Huns, conquering large swaths of Southeastern Europe. The Vandals sacked Rome in 455, but their conquest was never very permanent. In spite of the invasions by Goths, Huns and Vandals, the Roman Senate and emperor survived for some time.
Theodoric - In 476, the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by a mixed group of Teutonic invaders. Some historians see this as a continuous war of Italian independence against the German peoples, which has lasted for more than 1,500 years and is not yet finished. From about 400 to 1000, more than half of Italy was under a single king who was not Italian. One such king was Theodoric, who ruled combined Gothic realms from the Atlantic to the Adriatic. Theodoric was an Arian Christian (the sect who argued that God the Father must have existed before the Son and to that extent the two could not be identical) and maintained a Roman legal administration that oversaw a flourishing scholarly culture and building program.
Justinian - During the reign of the Eastern Emperor, Justinian, in Constantinople (527-65), a reconquest of Rome was attempted and ended Gothic rule in Italy. Justinian also reconquered the Vandal kingdom of Africa and proceeded to re-establish imperial authority in Rome. However, in the last decades of the 6th century, conditions in Italy deteriorated and barbarian invasions continued.
The Papacy & Lombard’s
The early claims of the Papacy to temporal power can be traced to the middle of the 5th century. Leo I (the Great, 440-61) is considered the founder of Catholicism because he rejected the claim of the Patriarch of Constantinople to be head of the church. A forged document known as the Donation of Constantine claimed that Constantine gifted the Western Empire to the Papacy and it was not exposed as a forgery for a thousand years. Pope Gregory I was elected pope in 590 and he set the pattern which Catholic services and ritual were to follow throughout history. Gregory sent Augustine to Britain to convert the English, not knowing they had already encountered Christianity through missionaries from Ireland.
In 568 the Lombard’s invaded Italy and by the end of the 6th century Roman cities were being ruled by Lombard dukes. As the modern name “Lombardy” suggests, the part of Italy most intensely settled by the Lombard’s was around Milan and Verona. Many Romans were enslaved by the Lombard’s, but the Lombard conquest of Italy was never a complete one. The Lombard’s built many churches. All the while Byzantine Italy still survived in Rome, Venice, Naples and the far South.
The Franks
Pepin - In 754-756 the Franks invaded Italy under Pepin and deprived the Lombard’s of much of their territory. Pepin’s arrival provided a foundation for the Papal States. In 756, “The Donation of Pepin” proclaimed the Pope to be the heir of the Roman emperors.
Charlemagne - Charlemagne became king of the Franks in 774 and confirmed the Donation of Pepin, but nevertheless controlled the Papal States as part of his Carolingian dynasty which had been founded initially by Charles Martel. In 800, Charlemagne had to restore pope Leo III (795-816) who had been driven out by popular riot. As a result, the pope crowned Charlemagne emperor in St. Peter’s, beginning the start of the Holy Roman Empire. A tradition was established between the Frankish (Carolingian) rulers and the papacy for coronation of the emperors with the underlying sense of restoration of a universal Roman empire. (Before the Carolingian dynasty the Franks had been ruled by the Merovingian dynasty, which has lasted from the middle of the 5th century until 751).
The Frankish Fetish to be Rome - The continual expeditions of German/French peoples into Italy has continued for century after century. The author labels the more contemporary Italian clashes with Germany as “latter-day barbarian invasions”. The author makes the very illuminating point that these Germanic invasions had much less to do with loot and much more to do with the imponderable and mystical significance of the Roman Empire.
Frankish Empire
The Muslims & Normans
In 827, the Muslims arrived in Sicily; they took Palermo in 831 and Messina in 842. Constantinople fell to them in 878. They would rule Sicily for two and a half centuries, building hundreds of mosques. The Sicilian population would come to constitute an extraordinary ethnic mixture in which Greeks and Arabs predominated.
At this time there was much warfare in Italy and many divided principalities, most of German and French origin, but also Lombard’s, Byzantines, Arabs and Normans, the later who conquered Sicily in 1072-91. The Normans had also defeated Pope Leo IX in 1053 (yes, this supposed representative of Christian love actually maintained standing armies and conducted battles). The Normans constituted a small, undisputed ruling class who came from the North and brought with them their beautiful, astringent, Romanesque architecture.
Crusades & Inquisitions
The Crusades - In 1095 Pope Urban II summoned the First Crusade, which moved primarily from France and Germany and which succeeded in taking Jerusalem but indulged in appalling massacres. The second crusade (1147-9) was organized by monarchs and murdered ten thousand Jews in the Rhine Valley. The kings of England and France went on the Third Crusade (1189-92). The fourth Crusade (1202-1204) opened the way to great opportunities for Venice because the sack and acquisition of Constantinople brought immense wealth and empire. At the time of the 4th Crusade, Venice and Florence were the two richest cities in Europe and Genoa was also growing rapidly.
Frederick II - Frederick II, the German emperor and patron of the Teutonic Knights was half Norman and made Sicily his base. He was crowned by Pope Honorius III in 1220, uniting his imperial German title with his Sicilian one. But the pope excommunicated Frederick when he failed to keep his oath to organize a crusade. Frederick subsequently took an army to the Holy Lands, in defiance of the Papacy, and made himself king of Jerusalem.
St. Francis of Assisi - A near contemporary of Frederick was St. Francis of Assisi. Unlike the much broader movement of monasticism, which pre-dated Christianity, the Franciscans stressed God’s love of man, rather than man’s fear of God. The Franciscan movement did not get involved in the brutalities of the Inquisition to the extent the Dominican movement did. Francis took the teaching of Christ literally (as few had done before or have since) and preached poverty and the corrupting influence of riches. Francis gave his possessions to the poor and started to preach fundamentalist communism. Francis saw all elements of creation as his brothers and sisters and seems to synthesize pantheism or humanism. Conversely, St. Dominic, a Spaniard, worked more vehemently against heresy in the Inquisition.
Catholicism’s Paranoia of Communism - In modern times, the Catholic Church and the Papacy would come to view communistic teaching with fear and horror, ultimately siding with fascism against it in WW II. The pope excommunicated many communists but never Hitler. Hitler died a member of the Catholic church that baptized him. The Papacy embraced a process of destroying other Christian communities which did not accept their strict orthodoxy. The term “crusade” was employed not only for war against the infidel, but also for campaigns against anyone the pope declared to be a heretic.
St. Thomas Aquinas - St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) joined the Dominicans and influenced the whole direction of Christian thought with his Summa Theologica, which reconciled belief in God with Aristotle’s reason. Dante (1265-1321) was much influenced by Aquinas and he was the first to write in a vernacular that expanded the Italian language.
Struggling Against Chaos and Division
Italy was dominated by city-states that endured under the influences of various kings, foreign powers and popes; but in the 14th century there began a transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and the rise of modern capitalism.
Italian City-States
Much impetus for change was about; such as the occurrence of the Black Death and the discovery of America, which deprived the Mediterranean of its central position in the world. Whereas scholarship had previously been a monopoly of the Church, laymen began to gain education and there was a revival of classical learning (the learning of Greece and Rome).
Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453 and Italy remained divided into independent principalities ruled by powerful monarchs who nationalized their churches. Machiavelli (1469-1527) took the secular spirit to its extreme in writing The Prince, which justified ignoring moral values to retain power. In many ways, Machiavelli laid a foundation for the fascists that would follow. Roused by the Machiavellian notion to jettison all scruples in the pursuit of power, French, Spanish, German and Austrian monarchs battled over Italy and the Italian city-states fought each other as satellites of foreign monarchs.
Italy was less affected by the Reformation as was Germany, France and Britain. Italy along with Spain, became one of the two main centers of the Counter-Reformation. Pope Paul III (1534-49) issued the order creating the Inquisition in Rome and the subsequent and fanatical Paul IV stepped up Inquisition activity. People were tortured and an index of prohibited books was published. Italy and Spain favored papal supremacy within the Church and the pope was declared the supreme authority. This formed the basis for Pius IX later proclaiming the Doctrine of Papal Infallibility in 1870. People were burned and tortured. One of the more famous was Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) who lost his faith in Christianity and was burnt in Rome. Galileo (1564-1642) ran afoul of the Church by accepting the Copernican belief that the earth moved around the sun and was forced to renounce publicly what he knew to be fact.
CONTINUED IN COMMENT SECTION BELOW
July 6, 2008
Most certainly a good foundation but perhaps a little too concise. More maps and a better explanation of conquering people, especially in Italy's prehistoric era, would have been helpful. I have forgotten so much of the ancient stories from junior high school. Once or twice I was struck with the same gut-wrenching feeling I felt having showed up for class unprepared for an exam.
February 28, 2023
Accomplished what I wanted by reading this book; that is to gain some general context for all of the history that I see regularly and the culture that I experience daily while living here in Italy. It does read.....kinda like a history book and I did select it based on it being a "short" history. Truly an incredible accomplishment when you consider covering the time before Greek settlement up until the year 2000. Felt like the focus of the book was on the leading politicians of the time. I think a great addition to this book could be a timeline depicting the major changes over time and space.
May 29, 2022
Good overview, especially the older history (as some said, interesting how short Italy's history as a unified country is). In the modern section, a little too much opinion from the author as opposed to just relating the facts. History is history even if it is written by the victors...
August 27, 2017
I really appreciated the chronology, but this book read like a very long bullet list. Too much packed in too short of a space.
October 18, 2018
Indeed a brief general history of Italy, which gives you an overall framework of understanding Italians and their cultural as well as social changes.
March 20, 2019
I read this in preparation for a trip to Italy. I was looking for something shorter and more concise but it was interesting.
August 18, 2010
This is a fascinating overview of the political, economic, geographic, social, and cultural history of Italy from the Ice Age to the present. All this in less than 300 pages! While I learned a great deal, I was particularly struck by the contrast between Italy's age old, and varied culture and its relatively youthful status as a unified country; first unified in 1861.
April 29, 2008
A wonderful,concise history from pre-historic Italy through the 20th C.
August 20, 2009
An overview of the history of Italy. Excellent if you want to refresh what you learned in Highschool.
May 25, 2016
The book does a great job of giving a concise history of the area now known as Italy. However, it is a pretty dry read, and I found more typos than I could keep track of.
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