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Italy in the High Middle Ages 1150–1309
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
The Europe of the High Middle Ages (1150-1309) was principally divided between the Latin-speaking peoples and the Germanic peoples. Although the latter had once invaded and momentarily subjected the Latins, the attraction of the latter’s originally Mediterranean culture had conquered the invaders. The universal language of western Europe had become Latin. Despite the importance of the Germanic peoples, there is no doubt that Latin and its derivatives so dominated the cultural life of Europe that, if one were obliged to find a single adjective with which to qualify the word ‘Europe’ for this period, one would choose ‘Latin,’ and describe the whole as ‘Latin Europe.’
France and Italy led Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This may seem strange. Their cultural and military preeminence and their capacity to influence other parts of western Europe seem odd when their internal constitutions are examined. During the twelfth century French law spread far beyond her frontiers, yet France herself boasted no monarchy or state comparable to that of Plantagenet England, Norman southern Italy, or even the declining German Empire. The typical Italian state that produced Europe’s common law (ius commune) and published its most elaborate statutes was an urban republic, tiny when compared to the states of Spain, to England, and to Germany’s provinces, not to speak of Empire.
But the size of political units was not the principal criterion of inventiveness or importance in this period. In Spite of the Hohenstaufen revival, the German Empire had been irreparably weakened by the alliance of the Roman Church, the German nobility and the Italian towns.
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- Copyright © 1999 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Mundy, John H., Europe in the Middle Ages 1150–1309. (London: Longman, 1973)Google Scholar is taken as the norm for defining the dates of this period.
2 John H. Mundy, Europe in the High Middle Ages 1150–1309, p. 42.
3 Ibid., p. 59.
4 Ibid., p. 65. Genoese factories or depots were established at Antioch, Tortosa, Arsuf, Caesarea, Acre, Apamea, Laodicea, Beirut, Tyre and Jaffa. They had colonies in the Aegean islands of Lemnos, Mytilene, Enos and Chios; they had the strongest position at Cyprus, while in the Black Sea, which became their distinctive sphere, the Genoese built up a colonial empire. Owing to the jealousy of Milan, Genoese merchants were largely shut out from enterprise in Lombardy and Germany; consequently, they were quick to carry their trade to the fairs of Provence, Champagne and the Low Countries. See East, W. Gordon, An Historical Geography of Europe (London: Methuen, 1967, p 312)Google Scholar.
5 Genoa was the first of the Mediterranean cities to begin, by means of its galleys and by way of ‘the Great Sea of Darkness,’ organized voyages with the Channel ports of Bruges and London. See W. Gordon East, An Historical Geography, p. 312.
6 John H. Mundy, Europe in the High Middle Ages, pp. 158–9.
7 Ibid., p. 158. Around 1300 the merchants of Lucca had consulates in Paris, London, Bruges, Rome, Naples, Venice, Genoa, Avignon and Montpellier.
8 Ibid, p., 52. Lucca's merchants and financiers vied with those of Florence. The Bonsignori and the Ricciardi Company of Lucca may be regarded as Europe's most powerful international merchant‐banking enterprises of the later thirteenth century, according to Keuper, R., Bankers to the Crown: The Ricciardi of Lucca and Edward I (Princeton, 1973)Google Scholar and Blomquist, Thomas W. and Mazzaaoui, Maureen F., eds. The “Other Tuscany”: Essays in the History of Lucca, Pisa and Siena during the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications of Western Michigan University, 1994, p. 9Google Scholar).
9 Peter Lombard (C. 1100–1160), a thoroughly Gallicized Italian, became bishop of Paris in 1159. His Four Books of Sentences (1155–58) became the principal theological work taught in medieval schools and universities.
10 The Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II (1212–50), at home in Latin, Byzantine, Arabic, Norman, French and Lombard culture, was a dynamic pioneer of every creative intellectual movement. It was in his court, as Dante believed, that Italian speech was first systematically developed in literary forms. Major Italian poetry came to life under his patronage. He also sponsored translations of Arabic philosophical treatises (particularly those going back to Aristotle) and Arabic mathematical treatises. He enlarged Salerno's medical school, as well as establishing a zoological collection. But his principal learned foundation was the University of Naples (1224), the first state university in Christian Europe, to which he entrusted a virtual monopoly of learning in many fields. See Grant, Michael, The Civilization of Europe (New York: Mentor+Plume Books, 1970, pp. 140–41.)Google Scholar
11 John H. Mundy, op. cit, p. 51 attributes this phrase to the French jurist Dubois without indicating the source.
12 Historia orientalis 67, in Douai 1596, P. 124.
13 John H. Mundy, op. cit., p. 120. Paris was northern Europe's greatest city. Capital of the Latin west's intellectual life and of her most prepotent state, her population rose to about 80,000 in 1328.
14 Ibid., pp. 128–30.
15 Ibid., p. 157.
16 Larner, John, Italy in the Age of Dante and Petrarch 1216–1380 (London/New York: Longman, 1991 4th Impression, pp. 1–2Google Scholar
17 Ibid., p. 2.
18 Ibid.
19 Memoriale 15 in Monumenta Germaniae Historia. Staatschriften I, i, p. 107.
20 Osborne, Harold, ed. The Oxford Companion to Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 596Google Scholar.
21 Rachum, Ham, The Renaissance: An Illustrated Encyclopedia (London: Octopus Books, 1979), p. 256Google Scholar.