source not of a common and lasting power, but of one struggle after another. The destinies of the South had in the meantime taken quite a different course to those of Northern and Central Italy; while the latter territory was governed by a municipal constitution, a strong feudal monarchy arose in the former. Bands of Normans, that had appeared since 1017, took advantage of the state of confusion arising from the struggles between Greeks, Lombards and Saracens. Thus, from being bold adventurers, by dint of force and cunning they gradually came to be rulers of the southern continent, under the guidance of the princes of the house of Hauteville. Quickly they became nationalised, and were no longer regarded as foreigners. They had brought with them from France the constitution of their country, and founded their state on the feudal system, which had never really taken root in the rest of Italy. Political considerations induced them to acknowledge the supremacy of the Church, a step which was the source of great danger to the State in later ages. But the support and consecration of the Pope gave their wars of conquest the stamp of crusades. The long struggle also in Sicily was in the nature of a crusade: Count Roger, in the course of thirty years of indefatigable energy (1061-1091), snatched the entire island from the power of the Mussulmans. Strong faith, together with valour and cunning, gained the Normans their victory. Count Roger, however, became very tolerant through being in constant contact with Greeks and Arabs, and, with his keen intellect, divining the real aims of the Court of Rome; he did not interfere with the worship of the Mohammedan population, soon received numerous Mussulmans into his army, and, it is said, even forbade their going over to the Christian faith. During the reign of Roger II., who united under his sway the island and the Norman portion of the mainland, and took the title of king (1130), Saracen soldiers, sailors and engineers were a strong support in the struggles against the barons and the Pope. At Palermo the Court itself assumed an oriental aspect. Roger, a great king and statesman, possessed at the same time an intellect that was eager for every 1 Amari, l. c., p. 396 ff. L kind of knowledge. Favoured by him, the arts and sciences of the Mohammedans flourished again, after the storms of the wars of conquest. Magnificent palaces and gardens sprang up according to the taste of the East; Arabian poets celebrated the King, and the splendour of his Court; the learned Edrisi composed his geographical work, the most important of the Middle Ages, in the execution of which the King took the keenest interest; and the Admiral Eugene translated the Optics of Ptolemy from Arabic into Latin. In the reigns of William the Bad and William the Good, the Mohammedan population diminished more and more; Frederick II. put down the last of the rebels among their number, and transferred them to the military colony at Lucera in Apulia, where they could adhere to their faith without hindrance. But for more than a century the Italians on the island had been in contact with a civilisation that was richly developed, and at that time superior to their own: hence it did not fail to exercise effectual and fruitful influence. Roger II. called himself at his coronation Siciliæ atque Italia rex; but, though one of the most powerful princes of his time, he did not attempt to change the kingdom of Sicily into a kingdom of Italy. He could not hope to be equal to the triple opposition of the Pope, the Communes, and the Emperor, and directed his designs against the South and East instead. Henry VI. united the Empire with the throne of Sicily, and the combination of these two procured for his son Frederick II. a position such as no ruler in Italy had enjoyed since Otto the Great. Added to this, he was no foreigner, but an Italian born, and had his residence in Italy itself. The opportunity of forming the whole country into one State seemed at last to have come, and Frederick wanted to take advantage of it. But it was too late. As usual the Papacy opposed him, hurled the ban of excommunication and the decree of deposition against the Emperor, and found allies in the Guelph communes and the small dynasties of Lombardy, in rebellious vassals in the kingdom of Sicily, and in the German princes. Frederick for his part meant in all earnest to destroy the secular power of the Pope, and to make Rome subject to himself in reality. The fresh and terrible struggle between Church and Empire that followed brought about the fall of the House of Hohenstaufen. And with that dynasty disappeared the last prospect of the revival of political unity, and Italy remained at the close of the Middle Ages in its old state of division. The causes which, after the eleventh century, brought about a fresh intellectual movement, were for the most part at work in the other countries of Europe as well as in Italy, and led, in the twelfth century, to a period of considerable culture, though differing from ours, to a Pre-Renaissance that already studied antiquity, but reproduced it in a form that was false and distorted, and transformed by contemporary ideas. But the Italians were in advance of the other nations in taking up scientific studies again with more vigour ; the beginnings of these we already find among them towards the middle of the eleventh century. One reason for this is, without doubt, as Giesebrecht pointed out, the continuance of a stronger classical tradition, the predilection with which men had cultivated grammatical studies, and had thus kept up at any rate a superficial knowledge of the authors. But, besides this, classical culture could not fail to be revived more easily and quickly, and to influence the ideas of the time, in the land in which it had sprung up, and in which the ruins of its mighty monuments appealed to the imagination of new generations more powerfully than anywhere else. Another point in which the Italy of that day differed from the other Western countries, was the greater diffusion of culture, the benefits of which were shared not only by the clergy, but also to a certain extent by the laity. Ratherius of Verona mentions private schools as well as the schools attached to cathedrals and convents, and documents contain the names of teachers without any clerical title. The German Wippo, in his panegyric on Henry III., exhorts the Emperor to urge, in Germany also, the nobles to send their sons to school, and to have them imbued with literary culture and with a knowledge of the laws, as had formerly been the case in Rome, and as was still customary among the Italians: Hoc servant Itali post prima crepundia cuncti, It is true that the results of this important difference do not show themselves till later; at the beginning, literary activity is in Italy, too, to be found only among the clergy, and it is chiefly the monasteries that are the true seats of learning. The venerable old abbey of Monte Cassino, founded in 529 by S. Benedict, as one of the chief centres for the monastic life of the West, destroyed in 589 by the Lombards, rebuilt in 718, again destroyed by the Saracens in 884, and restored about 950, developed a great artistic and literary activity under the rule of the excellent abbot, Desiderius (from 1057), who afterwards became Pope Victor III. The monastery and church were splendidly renovated with old Roman marble pillars, Greek mosaics, and valuable bronze doors. Manuscripts were carefully copied and adorned with miniatures. The monks, Alphanus, who became later Archbishop of Salerno (1057-1085), and Gaiferius, treated religious subjects in the metres of ancient lyrical poetry, and with a perfection of form and purity of language that deserve the greatest admiration for those times; in Alphanus there are imitations of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Juvenal. Another monk, Amatus of Salerno, wrote (about the year 1080) the history of the Norman conquest, which has been lost in the Latin original, and is preserved only in an Old French translation. Constantinus Afer of Carthage, who, having in the course of long travels in the East, become master of the learning of the Arabians, fled about the year 1077 from persecutions in his country and entered the monastery of Monte Cassino. He translated medical works from Arabic and Greek into Latin, and in this way, considerably furthered, as it seems, the beginnings of the medical school at Salerno. Pandulphus of Padua composed a large number of works on astronomical subjects. Finally the favourite studies of the Italians, grammar and rhetoric, are represented by Alberic, a man of unusual versatility, who also wrote theological works, verses in classical form, and popular rhythms, treatises on music and astronomy. In his "Rationes Dictandi," and in the "Breviarium de Dictamine," he evolved for the first time the new theory for handling artistically the epistolary style, with its five divisions of the Salutatio, Captatio benevolentia, Narratio, Petitio, and Conclusio, which remained for centuries the basis of the precepts in the epistolary guides. His familiarity with the writers of antiquity is seen especially in another little book, the "Flores Rhetorici;" or, "Dictaminum Radii," which contains the rules for composition and style, and takes examples from Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Terence, Persius, Lucan, Cicero, and Sallust. A similar period of scientific activity began in Lombardy simultaneously with that in Southern Italy. Parma was renowned as a seat for the study of the liberal arts, and the schools of Milan were also in high repute. To these parts belongs Anselm the "Perapetician," as he called himself in the "Rhetorimachia," the only one of his works that has been preserved. This treatise gives us several details concerning his life. Born near Pavia, of noble family, he was a pupil of the "philosopher" Drogo, who taught in Parma, became member of the clergy of Milan, went later to the court of the Emperor Henry III. in Germany, and entered his chapel. He shows acquaintance with philosophy and theology, with jurisprudence and grammar; but his chief study was rhetoric. He had written a compendium of this science, entitled “De materia artis," which has been lost, and it was as an exemplification of the rules laid down in this work that the "Rhetorimachia" was intended to serve. This book was dedicated to the Emperor Henry, and composed between 1046 and 1056.1 It is an imaginary rhetorical confutation in three books; the author pretends that he is attacked in a pamphlet by his cousin Rotilandus, and shows all the rhetorical errors that occur in this imaginary treatise, defends himself and the clergy of Milan, and hurls back at his accuser the charges of immorality. Thus he finds an opportunity of showing his dialectical skill; he makes use of subtle argumentations and sophisms, and adopts a style of diction which is heavy, twisted, and frequently obscure, but correct, and which often passes over into rhythm and rhyme. His learning is drawn principally from the Rhetoric "ad Herennium," and from Cicero's "De Inventione." The book is filled with a strong consciousness of the author's own worth, with deep confidence in the power and dignity of the art with which he feels himself imbued, and with a proud enthusiasm for learning. Characteristic is the very idea of making himself the object of the apologetic work, and of thus 1 E. Dümmler, "Anselm der Peripatetiker nebst anderen Beiträgen zur Literaturgeschischte Italiens im 11. Jahrhundert." Halle, 1872. |