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Italy: A History
Here, from New York Times bestselling historian Vincent Cronin, is the extraordinary story of Italy - from the birth of the Roman Empire to the rise of the city-states through the Renaissance and the making of modern Italy.
266 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 24, 2015
137 people are currently reading
167 people want to read
About the author
Vincent Cronin
58 books40 followersVincent Archibald Patrick Cronin FRSL (24 May 1924 – 25 January 2011) was a British historical, cultural, and biographical writer, best known for his biographies of Louis XIV, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Catherine the Great, and Napoleon, as well as for his books on the Renaissance.
Cronin was born in Tredegar, Monmouthshire, to Scottish doctor and novelist, A. J. Cronin, and May Gibson, but moved to London at the age of two. He was educated at Ampleforth College, Harvard University, the Sorbonne, and Trinity College, Oxford, from which he graduated with honours in 1947, earning a degree in Literae Humaniores. During the Second World War, he served as a lieutenant in the British Army.
In 1949, he married Chantal de Rolland, and they had five children. The Cronins were long-time residents of London, Marbella, and Dragey, in Avranches, Normandy, where they lived at the Manoir de Brion.
Cronin was a recipient of the Richard Hillary Award, the W.H. Heinemann Award (1955), and the Rockefeller Foundation Award (1958). He also contributed to the Revue des Deux Mondes, was the first General Editor of the Companion Guides series, and was on the Council of the Royal Society of Literature.
He died at his home in Marbella on 25 January 2011.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent...
Cronin was born in Tredegar, Monmouthshire, to Scottish doctor and novelist, A. J. Cronin, and May Gibson, but moved to London at the age of two. He was educated at Ampleforth College, Harvard University, the Sorbonne, and Trinity College, Oxford, from which he graduated with honours in 1947, earning a degree in Literae Humaniores. During the Second World War, he served as a lieutenant in the British Army.
In 1949, he married Chantal de Rolland, and they had five children. The Cronins were long-time residents of London, Marbella, and Dragey, in Avranches, Normandy, where they lived at the Manoir de Brion.
Cronin was a recipient of the Richard Hillary Award, the W.H. Heinemann Award (1955), and the Rockefeller Foundation Award (1958). He also contributed to the Revue des Deux Mondes, was the first General Editor of the Companion Guides series, and was on the Council of the Royal Society of Literature.
He died at his home in Marbella on 25 January 2011.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent...
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 5, 2022
Readable, concise history of Italy full of interesting facts and told in a sensible, plain way. A good overall starter.
April 6, 2017
Quick, Informative Read
A relatively short, quick read of the basics of Italy's history. Easy to digest, interesting, and informative. I will feel more informed when I visit there in a couple of weeks.
A relatively short, quick read of the basics of Italy's history. Easy to digest, interesting, and informative. I will feel more informed when I visit there in a couple of weeks.
June 21, 2017
I wanted a complete overview of Italy's history that wasn't too detailed, long, or boring. I found it in this book, the chapters were succinct and held enough of an overview for me to go search online about any topic or event that I was especially interested in, or to keep reading if I was content with the amount of detail presented. I am glad I read this!
December 28, 2018
This 150-page book is the history of Italy from 1000 BC to present time. Clearly, it could only touch on the high points. Normally, I like to get into more detail about people and how they live through historical changes. However, when I saw this book and the length, I bought it right up. I am interested in Italy, but not so much to really get into it. This book fit my desire better than I expected. Cronin was able to thoroughly cover major events and people who participated in them. He didn’t skip any significant parts of the lineal progression, and I learned a great deal about Italy and Europe in general.
Started: 2018.12.27 - finished: 2018.12.05
Started: 2018.12.27 - finished: 2018.12.05
March 26, 2025
This is a simply-written, straightforward history of Italy, that would be very suitable for anyone travelling to Italy to find out about the background, sources and continuities of culture and history in Italy today. It is not a scholarly book, but does offer an excellent overview nonetheless of the long span of Italian history, from prehistory to the present era. It is fact-filled about trends and also presents fascinating portraits of famous Italian historical and cultural figures.
This book can fill in the gaps in most people's knowledge of Italian history and culture, for example, how the peninsula was occupied, divided, re-divided, and finally freed from foreign domination, and how and why the Roman Empire ended up disintegrating and falling prey to invaders, leading to the approximately 1,000 years of the Dark Ages. What struck me most, though, was how resilient and resourceful the Italian people were throughout their history, despite living on a mostly mountainous peninsula, where only about 25% of the land is arable. Yet the Italians not only thrived but have also given the world innumerable achievements, from philosophy to mathematics, from architecture to literature. I would recommend this book to anyone who wishes to get an overview of the span of Italian history, including its astounding cultural achievement - such as anyone planning to travel to Italy.
Here are the quotes:
From Part One: ¨Rome and the Making of Italy¨
¨...Sicily is only ninety miles from Africa, and [southern tip of the mainland] is the same distance from Greece."
¨[Italy has] ... few metals and little coal or petroleum.¨
¨...the Apennines, Italy's main spinal ridge...[no] important river [except] the Po.¨
¨The first inhabitants...are the Etruscans...¨
¨The came from the eastern Mediterranean...[possibly] Asia Minor.¨
¨The Etruscans used bronze extensively...¨
¨In the seventh century B.C., the Etruscans began to expand southward..."
¨...they founded the city of Capua...came into contact with...colonies founded by various Greek city-states.¨
¨...Cumae...Here, and in other Greek colonies, civilization was more advanced than in Tuscany."
¨...fine temples; Pythagoras...in Crotone...in ...Agrigentum...philosopher and poet Empedocles...¨
¨...by 800, there were ...communities on the outer hills [of Rome].¨
¨...the date of Rome's foundation - 753 B.C. - is ...legendary.¨
¨...early [Roman king] ...Numa Pompilius.¨
¨...the pater, or...paterfamilias."
¨The paterfamilias was a priest in his ... house and conducted family rites."
¨...Rome ...imposed no tribute [on its allies]. ...allies [remained] free and [exercised] ...local autonomy.¨
¨Rome, in about 265 B.C. ...[completed] the conquest of Italy...[the city of Rome then contained about 1 million inhabitants].
¨Rome ...no written constitution...but ...held that sovereign power rested with ¨the senate and the Roman people.¨
¨The earliest Roman poet, Livius Andronicus, was of Greek birth..."
¨Rome [had no battleships but] ...Carthage had [about 120].¨
¨[In 254 B.C....Rome] captured Panormus (now Palermo), the Punic headquarters in Sicily."
¨...Romans ...knew nothing of seamanship before [the war yet] ... won six of the seven naval battles.¨
¨...praetor (a magistrate ranking below consul)...."
¨Scipio retired ...wrote his memoirs in Greek.¨
¨[After] ... the Second Punic War...the Roman federation of Italy...[was ] the dominant power in the Mediterranean.¨
From Part Two: ¨From Republic to Principate¨
¨This growth of empire increased the prosperity of Italians, ...a wider market for their chief products, wine and oil."
¨...in 133 B.C., [Tiberius Gracchus] ...had himself elected one of Rome's ten tribunes. [Tribunes were] ...magistrates...the guardians of Roman citizenry...their persons were inviolable.¨
¨...Caesar´s [military] motto was celeritas- speed.¨
¨...Caesar...set the pattern for a new system of government...whereby power was ...divided between the senate and a single man...the princeps, or chief citizen, representing the people's interests.¨
¨...the entire military force of Rome took their oath solely to Augustus...¨
¨...the old warlike virtues...degenerated into vicarious enjoyment of cruel gladiatorial shows and mock sea battles.¨
¨Romans cleared...the reed-choked canals in Egypt...set the savage Spaniards to mining and weaving, but aqueducts and bridges everywhere, established a postal system, and policed [their empire] ... so effectively that a man might travel safely from York to Jerusalem, or from Trier, Germany, to Cairo, with gold on his person.¨
From Part Three: ¨The Empire and Its Decline¨
¨Stoicism teaches that ¨virtue alone brings happiness¨...¨
¨Romans...first-class lawyers...¨
¨Intellectual unproductiveness...[and] growing technological backwardness.¨
¨The senate [declined] ... to the position of a municipal council for Rome under the supervision of the emperor´s prefect.¨
¨Diocletian issued an edict of prices...¨
¨...it did not end inflation.¨
¨...Constantine...deferred his baptism to just before his death, in the belief that baptism ...washes out all the sins that have preceded it.¨
¨[Constantine abolished] ...the ...penalties for celibacy, [forbid] .... frivolous divorce, and [ended] ...gladiatorial games.¨
¨In 321, Sunday became a...holiday.¨
¨Theodosius...reigned from 379 to 395...the last emperor to...control ...the whole empire. After his death in 395, the ...empire fell apart, one based in Rome, the other in Constantinople...soon reached a state of mutual antagonism. In the West, the emperor became a puppet ... of the master of the army, usually a German.¨
¨...the Basilica of Saint Peter that Constantine erected in 330 on the Vatican hill [was built above the tomb of Saint Peter]."
¨Why did ...[Rome fall]?¨
¨...Ammianus Marcellinus, the last of the great Roman historian, by birth a Greek, ...wrote [about] ...the period 353 to 378. ...attributed the decline to moral degeneration. Court society [stopped honoring traditional] values...officers ...unfit for their posts; soldiers...soft; ...officials...corrupt.¨
¨...[the] point when there was no more money to equip the army adequately...may be said to mark the fall of the Roman Empire.¨
¨...the Roman Empire never knew representative government, any more than...the rest of antiquity.¨
From Part Four: ¨The Dark Ages¨
¨...fewer and fewer ...soldiers came from Italy; they were recruited now from the north. By the third century, barbarus ,,, the ordinary Latin word for soldier.¨
¨...Boethius [wrote] ....¨The Consolation of Philosophy¨ [in prison].¨
¨Boethius ...[wrote] ¨in every adversity the worst kind of unhappiness is to have been happy.¨"
¨Boethius....the nature of true happiness. ...consists in the contempt for all earthly things and in looking to God as the summum bonum (the highest good).¨
¨Boethius´s book ...the most widely-read work of literature during ...the Dark Ages.¨
¨Justinian...the greatest of the Eastern emperors.¨
¨...the Lombards ...a Germanic people [said to be from] ....Scandinavia.¨
From Part Five: ¨Rise of the City-States¨
¨The pope...frequently ...challenged by the emperor.¨
¨...both pope and emperor sought allies among the ...city-states.¨
¨...Francis never became a priest.¨
¨After Francis's death, a memorial church ...built in Assisi ...decorated by Giotto...a painter and architect from Florence.¨
¨In...the ¨Summa Theologica¨ Aquinas ...a complete structure of Christian theology based on human reason enlightened by divine revelation. ...God ...the source of all truth. ...Aristotle´s [rather than Plato's] system...as the basis of Christian philosophy.¨
¨...Dante tried to systematize Italian life, present and past, in a ...great epic poem.¨
¨Venice...an oligarchy...concentrated on increasing its already vast wealth. Twice a year, its ¨
Flanders galleys¨ [sailed] with a cargo of spices, sugar, pepper and other Eastern products...to Bruges. ...they returned with wood and furs from Scandinavia, English wool, Flemish cloth and French wines.¨
From Part Six: ¨The Early Renaissance¨
¨Florence...chief sources of wealth were woolen cloth, silk, and banking. ...invented the modern banking system: ...a network of branches and agents extending from London to Lubeck...and official bankers to the pope.¨
¨..in Florence...a new class of men with the leisure, education, and money to indulge a liking for books.¨
¨Between 1400 and 1440, dozens of ...works of Latin literature, and then of Greek literature, were found, mainly by Florentines.¨
¨Virtus ...the single-most-important element in the classical ideal evolved in Florence ...[became] the dynamism behind the city's future achievements.¨
¨...the Florentines [were impressed by] ...the ancients´ strong civic sense - public spiritedness - ...seen in Socrates´s fighting barefoot through the winter campaign at Potidaea, Cicero´s ...back from retirement to try to save the republic from Caesar, and Pericles´s adorning Athens with public buildings.¨
¨...the third element selected by the Florentines for practical application...versatility.¨
¨...the Florentines ...recalled from exile Cosimo de´ Medici a banker...shrewd, well-educated, and humane, whose policy was peace.¨
¨...he commissioned the church of San Spirito from ...Brunelleschi, who ...used ancient Roman techniques to construct a huge dome for Florence's cathedral.¨
¨...he commissioned from his friend Donatello an unusual statue [David].¨
¨...Cosimo requested Donatello to portray David in the nude as the Greeks had depicted their heroes and gods. ...the first nude statue in the round since the days of ancient Rome, a bronze of great..intrinsic beauty that was...to become one of the most influential works in the history of art.¨
¨...his grandson Lorenzo...the Magnificent...brimful of energy, talent, and warmth...people hardly noticed his homeliness...¨
¨Lorenzo...friendly with his grandfather´s protege, .Marsilio Ficino, a priest of...giant intelligence. Both hero-worshiped Plato, ...they decided to found a society of Platonists, calling it the Academy...¨
¨They evolved a theory of foreshadowing...[pagans had dimly seen some of the supernatural truths to be revealed later by Jesus Christ].¨
¨...the Medici...connoisseurs and patrons of art.¨
¨..the Tuscan, Leonardo Fibonacci...first replaced Roman numerals with the less cumbersome Arabic numerals..."
¨...another Florentine, Amerigo Vespucci, a former employee of the Medici bank, continued Columbus's explorations and gave his own name to the new continents.¨
¨...paintings in which ....perspective - another Florentine invention -people and objects appeared almost three-dimensional.¨
¨...the Florentines prided themselves on reincarnating the greatness of the past.¨
¨...Leonardo da Vinci...the Florentine style of painting and his own brilliant inventions.¨
¨...their most promising artist, Michelangelo..[relocated] to Rome, which ...succeeded Foreonce as the center of Italy.¨
From Part Seven: ¨The Later Renaissance¨
¨In 1506, [Pope] Julius ordered the old [Saint Peter´s] ...demolished...a vast new basilica designed by Donato Bramante.¨
..the undertaking was so enormous that it would take more than a century to complete.¨
¨...Michelangelo four years to fresco the vast ceiling [of the Sistine Chapel] 133 by forty-three feet.¨
¨...Julius called in a second [genius]: twenty-five-year-old Raphael, [from Urbino], trained in Florence.¨
¨Julius ...succeeded by Lorenzo de´ Medici´s son Giovanni, ...took the name Leo X.¨
¨...[Leo] attended...Machiavelli's cynical [play] ¨Mandragola" in which one of the characters is a wholly amoral priest.¨
¨...in 1516, Leo instituted the indulgence in Germany to aid [the enormously expensive construction of] Saint Peter´s."
¨In 1520, Leo excommunicated Luther.¨
¨[Luther] ...urged a return to the simplicity of the early Church...¨
¨The Christian religion, Machiavelli believed, had sapped Italian virility and he...was really looking to a pre-Christian past for the impetus and techniques to drive out the foreigner [Frenchmen and Spaniards].¨
¨...as Spain's political power increased, the reactionary values of Spain began to become dominant in Rome.¨
¨[Although the power of the state was complete in Venice] ...because of its mercantile traditions, there was a long ...tradition of tolerance.¨
¨...the Venetians perfected a policy of survival through diplomacy.¨
¨...the Florentine sculptor and architect Jacopo Sansovino...settled in Venice...¨
¨...Titian, one of Venice´s leading artists...¨
¨...the Renaissance style...[imprinted ] on the Venetian Republic...Andrea Palladio of Vicenza.¨
¨The best of Palladio's churches is San Giorgio Maggiore...¨
¨Paolo Veronese excelled at these pictorial cornucopias...¨
¨Giorgione's ¨Sleeping Venus¨ introduced to European paining ... the reclining figure...[and] a new mood: the harmony between human beauty and landscape.¨
¨A rugged mountaineer from the Dolomites, Titian..."
¨The Venetians ...also had a religious side that appears in the pictures of Titian´s contemporary, Jacopo Tintoretto.¨
¨The most famous of the scientists ... at Padua is Galileo Galilei.¨
¨In public experiments on the leaning tower, Galileo established ...the velocity of falling bodies...independent of their mass or weight...went on to formulate the principle of inertia, ...bodies preserve their state of rest or motion indefinitely if not affected by external conditions.¨
¨[Galileo] ...established the physical unity of the universe and the methodological unity of science.¨
¨Galileo's discoveries and ...condemnation mark the decline of the Renaissance In Italy.¨
¨...the ...Roman Inquisition...a denial of the Renaissance spirit of free inquiry.¨
¨When Dominican friar, mathematician, poet, and astronomer Giordano Bruno of Naples taught pantheism and a plurality of worlds in an infinite universe, he was burned at the stake by the Roman Inquisition....¨
¨...another Dominican friar and visionary southerner, Tommaso Campanella, paid with twenty-seven years of solitary confinement in political and inquisitorial prisons for this scheme for the moral redemption of mankind in a communistic ¨The City of the Sun.¨
¨Venice...developed an exceedingly-elaborate system of censorship.¨
¨...a Servite monk, Paolo Sarpi...made important discoveries in optics and was also a brilliant theologian and canon lawyer.¨
¨In Rome... In 1562, ...the composer Giovanni da Palestrina´s fame was at its peak...¨
¨...taxation increased and the population fell.¨
¨The Renaissance...yielded to the Counter-Reformation - a [ironically since] ...Italians had shown no disposition to embrace Luther's doctrines.¨
¨The emperor Charles V installed an official depot [in Florence in 1537], Cosimo I, of the Medici family...¨
¨In 1569, Cosimo received from Pius V the title Grand Duke of Tuscany, ...creating a regime that was to last until the extinction of the Medicean line in the eighteenth century.¨
¨In Naples, everything was heavily taxed for the benefit of the nobles...¨
¨Sicily...particularly unfortunate in suffering the ...Spanish Inquisition, even more severe than the Italian systems. ... as in Naples, trade and industry declined. Deforestation, erosion, and malaria ravaged ...land...and ... people.¨
¨...economic decline ...struck Italy in the second half of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth extended...to Venice.¨
¨...the country that most felt the influence of the Italian Renaissance was England.¨
From Part Eight: ¨Decadence¨
¨In 1701, the Habsburgs in Spain died out and were replaced ... by French Bourbon rules.¨
¨For nearly [250 years] ... Italy, for the most part, was enslaved to foreign rule.¨
¨...250 years...characterized by crushing taxation...Italian people wretched and sometimes starving, especially in the kingdom of Naples, where the rule of viceroys reached a [height] of corruption; by strict censorship that curtailed original thinking...
¨...regionalism ...caused Italians to think ...in local terms.¨
¨...the 150 years when Spain dominated the peninsula represent the lowest point of Italian fortunes.¨
¨...the most effective of these minor enlightened despots...found in Tuscany."
¨...the Habsburg emperor appointed his third son, Leopold, to rule the duchy [of Tuscany]. ...Leopold (...reigned from 1765 to 1790) broke up the big estates, abolished feudal servitude, and made all citizens equal [with] ...respect to taxation. He was the first European to abolish torture and the death penalty. ...he even abolished the Inquisition. ...all this he did by a series of decrees, without any backing from his people...still sunk in apathy after centuries of subjection.¨
¨Leopold acted not in the interests of the Tuscans...but ...to promote efficiency and because he saw the Church as a threat to this own absolute power. ... he was a brother of Queen Marie Antoinette.¨
¨the ...popes...[of] the eighteenth century...[fought] against the European sovereigns ...bent on destroying ancient privileges, notably the immunity of clerics from taxation.¨
¨[James Boswell] ... was the first of many ... englishmen who were to conceive that Italians might yet be free...¨
¨[But] ...in 1768, Genoa sold Corsica to King Louis XV of France; French troops subdued the island...¨
¨[In Italy the nobility] ...comprised only about 2 percent of the population, but most of the wealth belonged to them. Since the decline of Italy´s ports, they were now landowners, not overseas traders.¨
This book can fill in the gaps in most people's knowledge of Italian history and culture, for example, how the peninsula was occupied, divided, re-divided, and finally freed from foreign domination, and how and why the Roman Empire ended up disintegrating and falling prey to invaders, leading to the approximately 1,000 years of the Dark Ages. What struck me most, though, was how resilient and resourceful the Italian people were throughout their history, despite living on a mostly mountainous peninsula, where only about 25% of the land is arable. Yet the Italians not only thrived but have also given the world innumerable achievements, from philosophy to mathematics, from architecture to literature. I would recommend this book to anyone who wishes to get an overview of the span of Italian history, including its astounding cultural achievement - such as anyone planning to travel to Italy.
Here are the quotes:
From Part One: ¨Rome and the Making of Italy¨
¨...Sicily is only ninety miles from Africa, and [southern tip of the mainland] is the same distance from Greece."
¨[Italy has] ... few metals and little coal or petroleum.¨
¨...the Apennines, Italy's main spinal ridge...[no] important river [except] the Po.¨
¨The first inhabitants...are the Etruscans...¨
¨The came from the eastern Mediterranean...[possibly] Asia Minor.¨
¨The Etruscans used bronze extensively...¨
¨In the seventh century B.C., the Etruscans began to expand southward..."
¨...they founded the city of Capua...came into contact with...colonies founded by various Greek city-states.¨
¨...Cumae...Here, and in other Greek colonies, civilization was more advanced than in Tuscany."
¨...fine temples; Pythagoras...in Crotone...in ...Agrigentum...philosopher and poet Empedocles...¨
¨...by 800, there were ...communities on the outer hills [of Rome].¨
¨...the date of Rome's foundation - 753 B.C. - is ...legendary.¨
¨...early [Roman king] ...Numa Pompilius.¨
¨...the pater, or...paterfamilias."
¨The paterfamilias was a priest in his ... house and conducted family rites."
¨...Rome ...imposed no tribute [on its allies]. ...allies [remained] free and [exercised] ...local autonomy.¨
¨Rome, in about 265 B.C. ...[completed] the conquest of Italy...[the city of Rome then contained about 1 million inhabitants].
¨Rome ...no written constitution...but ...held that sovereign power rested with ¨the senate and the Roman people.¨
¨The earliest Roman poet, Livius Andronicus, was of Greek birth..."
¨Rome [had no battleships but] ...Carthage had [about 120].¨
¨[In 254 B.C....Rome] captured Panormus (now Palermo), the Punic headquarters in Sicily."
¨...Romans ...knew nothing of seamanship before [the war yet] ... won six of the seven naval battles.¨
¨...praetor (a magistrate ranking below consul)...."
¨Scipio retired ...wrote his memoirs in Greek.¨
¨[After] ... the Second Punic War...the Roman federation of Italy...[was ] the dominant power in the Mediterranean.¨
From Part Two: ¨From Republic to Principate¨
¨This growth of empire increased the prosperity of Italians, ...a wider market for their chief products, wine and oil."
¨...in 133 B.C., [Tiberius Gracchus] ...had himself elected one of Rome's ten tribunes. [Tribunes were] ...magistrates...the guardians of Roman citizenry...their persons were inviolable.¨
¨...Caesar´s [military] motto was celeritas- speed.¨
¨...Caesar...set the pattern for a new system of government...whereby power was ...divided between the senate and a single man...the princeps, or chief citizen, representing the people's interests.¨
¨...the entire military force of Rome took their oath solely to Augustus...¨
¨...the old warlike virtues...degenerated into vicarious enjoyment of cruel gladiatorial shows and mock sea battles.¨
¨Romans cleared...the reed-choked canals in Egypt...set the savage Spaniards to mining and weaving, but aqueducts and bridges everywhere, established a postal system, and policed [their empire] ... so effectively that a man might travel safely from York to Jerusalem, or from Trier, Germany, to Cairo, with gold on his person.¨
From Part Three: ¨The Empire and Its Decline¨
¨Stoicism teaches that ¨virtue alone brings happiness¨...¨
¨Romans...first-class lawyers...¨
¨Intellectual unproductiveness...[and] growing technological backwardness.¨
¨The senate [declined] ... to the position of a municipal council for Rome under the supervision of the emperor´s prefect.¨
¨Diocletian issued an edict of prices...¨
¨...it did not end inflation.¨
¨...Constantine...deferred his baptism to just before his death, in the belief that baptism ...washes out all the sins that have preceded it.¨
¨[Constantine abolished] ...the ...penalties for celibacy, [forbid] .... frivolous divorce, and [ended] ...gladiatorial games.¨
¨In 321, Sunday became a...holiday.¨
¨Theodosius...reigned from 379 to 395...the last emperor to...control ...the whole empire. After his death in 395, the ...empire fell apart, one based in Rome, the other in Constantinople...soon reached a state of mutual antagonism. In the West, the emperor became a puppet ... of the master of the army, usually a German.¨
¨...the Basilica of Saint Peter that Constantine erected in 330 on the Vatican hill [was built above the tomb of Saint Peter]."
¨Why did ...[Rome fall]?¨
¨...Ammianus Marcellinus, the last of the great Roman historian, by birth a Greek, ...wrote [about] ...the period 353 to 378. ...attributed the decline to moral degeneration. Court society [stopped honoring traditional] values...officers ...unfit for their posts; soldiers...soft; ...officials...corrupt.¨
¨...[the] point when there was no more money to equip the army adequately...may be said to mark the fall of the Roman Empire.¨
¨...the Roman Empire never knew representative government, any more than...the rest of antiquity.¨
From Part Four: ¨The Dark Ages¨
¨...fewer and fewer ...soldiers came from Italy; they were recruited now from the north. By the third century, barbarus ,,, the ordinary Latin word for soldier.¨
¨...Boethius [wrote] ....¨The Consolation of Philosophy¨ [in prison].¨
¨Boethius ...[wrote] ¨in every adversity the worst kind of unhappiness is to have been happy.¨"
¨Boethius....the nature of true happiness. ...consists in the contempt for all earthly things and in looking to God as the summum bonum (the highest good).¨
¨Boethius´s book ...the most widely-read work of literature during ...the Dark Ages.¨
¨Justinian...the greatest of the Eastern emperors.¨
¨...the Lombards ...a Germanic people [said to be from] ....Scandinavia.¨
From Part Five: ¨Rise of the City-States¨
¨The pope...frequently ...challenged by the emperor.¨
¨...both pope and emperor sought allies among the ...city-states.¨
¨...Francis never became a priest.¨
¨After Francis's death, a memorial church ...built in Assisi ...decorated by Giotto...a painter and architect from Florence.¨
¨In...the ¨Summa Theologica¨ Aquinas ...a complete structure of Christian theology based on human reason enlightened by divine revelation. ...God ...the source of all truth. ...Aristotle´s [rather than Plato's] system...as the basis of Christian philosophy.¨
¨...Dante tried to systematize Italian life, present and past, in a ...great epic poem.¨
¨Venice...an oligarchy...concentrated on increasing its already vast wealth. Twice a year, its ¨
Flanders galleys¨ [sailed] with a cargo of spices, sugar, pepper and other Eastern products...to Bruges. ...they returned with wood and furs from Scandinavia, English wool, Flemish cloth and French wines.¨
From Part Six: ¨The Early Renaissance¨
¨Florence...chief sources of wealth were woolen cloth, silk, and banking. ...invented the modern banking system: ...a network of branches and agents extending from London to Lubeck...and official bankers to the pope.¨
¨..in Florence...a new class of men with the leisure, education, and money to indulge a liking for books.¨
¨Between 1400 and 1440, dozens of ...works of Latin literature, and then of Greek literature, were found, mainly by Florentines.¨
¨Virtus ...the single-most-important element in the classical ideal evolved in Florence ...[became] the dynamism behind the city's future achievements.¨
¨...the Florentines [were impressed by] ...the ancients´ strong civic sense - public spiritedness - ...seen in Socrates´s fighting barefoot through the winter campaign at Potidaea, Cicero´s ...back from retirement to try to save the republic from Caesar, and Pericles´s adorning Athens with public buildings.¨
¨...the third element selected by the Florentines for practical application...versatility.¨
¨...the Florentines ...recalled from exile Cosimo de´ Medici a banker...shrewd, well-educated, and humane, whose policy was peace.¨
¨...he commissioned the church of San Spirito from ...Brunelleschi, who ...used ancient Roman techniques to construct a huge dome for Florence's cathedral.¨
¨...he commissioned from his friend Donatello an unusual statue [David].¨
¨...Cosimo requested Donatello to portray David in the nude as the Greeks had depicted their heroes and gods. ...the first nude statue in the round since the days of ancient Rome, a bronze of great..intrinsic beauty that was...to become one of the most influential works in the history of art.¨
¨...his grandson Lorenzo...the Magnificent...brimful of energy, talent, and warmth...people hardly noticed his homeliness...¨
¨Lorenzo...friendly with his grandfather´s protege, .Marsilio Ficino, a priest of...giant intelligence. Both hero-worshiped Plato, ...they decided to found a society of Platonists, calling it the Academy...¨
¨They evolved a theory of foreshadowing...[pagans had dimly seen some of the supernatural truths to be revealed later by Jesus Christ].¨
¨...the Medici...connoisseurs and patrons of art.¨
¨..the Tuscan, Leonardo Fibonacci...first replaced Roman numerals with the less cumbersome Arabic numerals..."
¨...another Florentine, Amerigo Vespucci, a former employee of the Medici bank, continued Columbus's explorations and gave his own name to the new continents.¨
¨...paintings in which ....perspective - another Florentine invention -people and objects appeared almost three-dimensional.¨
¨...the Florentines prided themselves on reincarnating the greatness of the past.¨
¨...Leonardo da Vinci...the Florentine style of painting and his own brilliant inventions.¨
¨...their most promising artist, Michelangelo..[relocated] to Rome, which ...succeeded Foreonce as the center of Italy.¨
From Part Seven: ¨The Later Renaissance¨
¨In 1506, [Pope] Julius ordered the old [Saint Peter´s] ...demolished...a vast new basilica designed by Donato Bramante.¨
..the undertaking was so enormous that it would take more than a century to complete.¨
¨...Michelangelo four years to fresco the vast ceiling [of the Sistine Chapel] 133 by forty-three feet.¨
¨...Julius called in a second [genius]: twenty-five-year-old Raphael, [from Urbino], trained in Florence.¨
¨Julius ...succeeded by Lorenzo de´ Medici´s son Giovanni, ...took the name Leo X.¨
¨...[Leo] attended...Machiavelli's cynical [play] ¨Mandragola" in which one of the characters is a wholly amoral priest.¨
¨...in 1516, Leo instituted the indulgence in Germany to aid [the enormously expensive construction of] Saint Peter´s."
¨In 1520, Leo excommunicated Luther.¨
¨[Luther] ...urged a return to the simplicity of the early Church...¨
¨The Christian religion, Machiavelli believed, had sapped Italian virility and he...was really looking to a pre-Christian past for the impetus and techniques to drive out the foreigner [Frenchmen and Spaniards].¨
¨...as Spain's political power increased, the reactionary values of Spain began to become dominant in Rome.¨
¨[Although the power of the state was complete in Venice] ...because of its mercantile traditions, there was a long ...tradition of tolerance.¨
¨...the Venetians perfected a policy of survival through diplomacy.¨
¨...the Florentine sculptor and architect Jacopo Sansovino...settled in Venice...¨
¨...Titian, one of Venice´s leading artists...¨
¨...the Renaissance style...[imprinted ] on the Venetian Republic...Andrea Palladio of Vicenza.¨
¨The best of Palladio's churches is San Giorgio Maggiore...¨
¨Paolo Veronese excelled at these pictorial cornucopias...¨
¨Giorgione's ¨Sleeping Venus¨ introduced to European paining ... the reclining figure...[and] a new mood: the harmony between human beauty and landscape.¨
¨A rugged mountaineer from the Dolomites, Titian..."
¨The Venetians ...also had a religious side that appears in the pictures of Titian´s contemporary, Jacopo Tintoretto.¨
¨The most famous of the scientists ... at Padua is Galileo Galilei.¨
¨In public experiments on the leaning tower, Galileo established ...the velocity of falling bodies...independent of their mass or weight...went on to formulate the principle of inertia, ...bodies preserve their state of rest or motion indefinitely if not affected by external conditions.¨
¨[Galileo] ...established the physical unity of the universe and the methodological unity of science.¨
¨Galileo's discoveries and ...condemnation mark the decline of the Renaissance In Italy.¨
¨...the ...Roman Inquisition...a denial of the Renaissance spirit of free inquiry.¨
¨When Dominican friar, mathematician, poet, and astronomer Giordano Bruno of Naples taught pantheism and a plurality of worlds in an infinite universe, he was burned at the stake by the Roman Inquisition....¨
¨...another Dominican friar and visionary southerner, Tommaso Campanella, paid with twenty-seven years of solitary confinement in political and inquisitorial prisons for this scheme for the moral redemption of mankind in a communistic ¨The City of the Sun.¨
¨Venice...developed an exceedingly-elaborate system of censorship.¨
¨...a Servite monk, Paolo Sarpi...made important discoveries in optics and was also a brilliant theologian and canon lawyer.¨
¨In Rome... In 1562, ...the composer Giovanni da Palestrina´s fame was at its peak...¨
¨...taxation increased and the population fell.¨
¨The Renaissance...yielded to the Counter-Reformation - a [ironically since] ...Italians had shown no disposition to embrace Luther's doctrines.¨
¨The emperor Charles V installed an official depot [in Florence in 1537], Cosimo I, of the Medici family...¨
¨In 1569, Cosimo received from Pius V the title Grand Duke of Tuscany, ...creating a regime that was to last until the extinction of the Medicean line in the eighteenth century.¨
¨In Naples, everything was heavily taxed for the benefit of the nobles...¨
¨Sicily...particularly unfortunate in suffering the ...Spanish Inquisition, even more severe than the Italian systems. ... as in Naples, trade and industry declined. Deforestation, erosion, and malaria ravaged ...land...and ... people.¨
¨...economic decline ...struck Italy in the second half of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth extended...to Venice.¨
¨...the country that most felt the influence of the Italian Renaissance was England.¨
From Part Eight: ¨Decadence¨
¨In 1701, the Habsburgs in Spain died out and were replaced ... by French Bourbon rules.¨
¨For nearly [250 years] ... Italy, for the most part, was enslaved to foreign rule.¨
¨...250 years...characterized by crushing taxation...Italian people wretched and sometimes starving, especially in the kingdom of Naples, where the rule of viceroys reached a [height] of corruption; by strict censorship that curtailed original thinking...
¨...regionalism ...caused Italians to think ...in local terms.¨
¨...the 150 years when Spain dominated the peninsula represent the lowest point of Italian fortunes.¨
¨...the most effective of these minor enlightened despots...found in Tuscany."
¨...the Habsburg emperor appointed his third son, Leopold, to rule the duchy [of Tuscany]. ...Leopold (...reigned from 1765 to 1790) broke up the big estates, abolished feudal servitude, and made all citizens equal [with] ...respect to taxation. He was the first European to abolish torture and the death penalty. ...he even abolished the Inquisition. ...all this he did by a series of decrees, without any backing from his people...still sunk in apathy after centuries of subjection.¨
¨Leopold acted not in the interests of the Tuscans...but ...to promote efficiency and because he saw the Church as a threat to this own absolute power. ... he was a brother of Queen Marie Antoinette.¨
¨the ...popes...[of] the eighteenth century...[fought] against the European sovereigns ...bent on destroying ancient privileges, notably the immunity of clerics from taxation.¨
¨[James Boswell] ... was the first of many ... englishmen who were to conceive that Italians might yet be free...¨
¨[But] ...in 1768, Genoa sold Corsica to King Louis XV of France; French troops subdued the island...¨
¨[In Italy the nobility] ...comprised only about 2 percent of the population, but most of the wealth belonged to them. Since the decline of Italy´s ports, they were now landowners, not overseas traders.¨
September 11, 2019
A clear and concise history of the country that should provide useful background information for our book group’s study of Italian literature. It would have been helpful if maps had been included in the book.
July 17, 2017
This is an excellent book.
The book provides the right amount of detail and overview to interest both the casual and serious history fan. It is entertaining, informative, and provides quality perspective into how Italy evolved into the nation it is today.
The book provides the right amount of detail and overview to interest both the casual and serious history fan. It is entertaining, informative, and provides quality perspective into how Italy evolved into the nation it is today.
April 7, 2021
A great summation of Italian history.
A fascinating short history, full of interesting facts written in a clear style. Easy to read and engrossing. I would recommend it as a starting point for anyone interested in this fascinating country.
A fascinating short history, full of interesting facts written in a clear style. Easy to read and engrossing. I would recommend it as a starting point for anyone interested in this fascinating country.
May 19, 2017
Not recommended
I was interested in the history. But found it boring and anti-climatic. The history jaws also depressing. Would not recommend reading it.
I was interested in the history. But found it boring and anti-climatic. The history jaws also depressing. Would not recommend reading it.
May 30, 2017
Informative
Good summary of Italian history I enjoyed the brief but informative summary of the long period of time this book covered.
Good summary of Italian history I enjoyed the brief but informative summary of the long period of time this book covered.
July 16, 2017
Concise, sometimes to the point of abruptness, but generally informative nonetheless. The author does seem to have an unusually sunny view of Napoleon....
March 5, 2020
Brilliant
I enjoyed this informative book very much. Easy to read and follow. Now I want to read more. History brought to life!
I enjoyed this informative book very much. Easy to read and follow. Now I want to read more. History brought to life!
October 14, 2016
Decent
Good story. Decent writing. Very succinct with lots of very helpful details. Not much depth, but a very good overview. Very helpful for the novice.
Good story. Decent writing. Very succinct with lots of very helpful details. Not much depth, but a very good overview. Very helpful for the novice.
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