Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site
Main
Page This family-friendly site celebrates Italian culture for the enjoyment of children and
adults. Site-Overview
These
are links to my pages on Italy's various historical eras. Click on 'The History Guide' logo to go to their
list of online lectures on Ancient and Medieval Europe. Cover of the free e-book on Ancient Rome.
This is a textbook: 'Ancent Rome from the Earliest Times down to 476 A.D.'
by
Robert
F. Pennell from 1890. I had to edit the text due to the iffy quality of the public
domain edition. Sample page from the free e-book on Ancient Rome.
The book is 228 pages and the
only thing omitted from the original book is the index which is not
needed because you can search the e-book easily for any word using the
e-book Reader. I’ve added a small piece about the author at the
end of the book, and many graphic images to highlight various parts of
the text.
Interactive map of ancient Roman empire from a
history site. Click on the map to visit the site and learn
about ancient Rome. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius kept a diary that
is still in print today. Click on his image to read more about him
and his 'Meditations'. Living
in Italy today as compared to Roman times? Click here to visit my page on this, I hope, interesting topic. Pope John Paul II, accompanied by Rabbi Toaff,
Chief Rabbi of Italy, during his visit to the synagogue of Rome, April
13, 1986. Click on the image to link to a Jewish Italy site that has
many links both about the history of and the current Jewish communities
in Italy. While Italy houses the Vatican, the seat of the
Catholic church, and the vast majority of Italians are brought up in the
Catholic faith, there has been a vibrant Jewish community in Italy since
161 B.C. The Jewish community in Rome is the oldest community in
Europe and is one of the oldest continuous Jewish settlements in the
world! For histories of the Italian Jewish communities in
Rome, Venice, and four other Italian cities, click here. Cover of the free e-book of Plutarch's famous 'Lives'. Plutarch's
famous 'Lives', or the original title 'Parallel Lives' is a series of four single biographies and
twenty-three pairs of biographies of Greeks and Romans, originally written in Greek by Plutarch who lived from approximately 46 to 120
A.D.
Title page from the free e-book by Plutarch.
The book is a whopping 1719 pages. I've added no
graphics to the text to keep the file size small. Most offer the
book in volumes, and for a price, but I've put it all in one free book
so you can search it in it’s entirety with ease. I’ve added a
preface giving the newcomer an introduction to Plutarch and this
book. There is a very complete site dedicated to St.
Francis of Assisi on the web. Click on his image above to visit
it. There you can read many of his writings as well as about his
life and times. The above Medieval bridge (from roughly 1050) in
the Tuscan town of Borgo a Mozzano, as photographed by Federica Tronci,
has been dubbed 'The Devil's Bridge' because local lore has it the
builder had the Devil's help in building it. It
was the more martial Roman tribes who expanded their territory the
fastest and furthest starting in around 300 B.C..
They slowly took over the Greek and Etruscan regions, and every
other region between and beyond. The
Romans brought effective administration, means of quick and efficient
communication and travel, security, order, and an administrative
language for better communication between the various tribes of Europe,
North Africa, and the Near East. The
most contentious issues were the collection of taxes, and eventually
religious rebellion and corruption of the military and the political
rulers. The
administration of Rome went from: tribal
control to
a republic to
an empire under an emperor to
imperial incompetence and decadence, just as tribes from as far away
as Mongolia were attacking the empire.
But
as with all empires built with force, force was necessary to maintain
it. When the military became incompetent and corrupt, and when
the faltering economy made it difficult to pay the military’s wages,
the empire began to fall apart. Parts
fell away from rebellions, invasions, and extortions.
All this happened over hundreds of years of declining wealth and
worsening quality and security of life within the empire, but roughly by
the year 500, the empire was gone. Two
important things remained after the decline and dismemberment of the
Roman Empire: The
idea of a unified Italy of Italians remained a dream that would last
centuries but only come to fruition in 1861 with the formation of
the Kingdom of Italy. And
the idea of a unified, peaceful Europe remained a dream that would
last even longer, only coming to fruition in 1951 with the signing
of the Treaty of Rome forming the precursor of the European
Community. As
the Roman empire disintegrated, order was brought to the various regions
of Italy by people we would call tribal warlords, in a era we’ve named
The Dark Ages from the year 500 to 800.
They built up armies to protect their regions, and exacted
tributes to finance the peace and security they ensured. These
warlords, or their descendents, or conquering enemies, eventually: called
themselves Princes, built
castles as homes and military outposts, walls to defend towns, and
invested in military research to develop new weapons to defeat their
enemies and to increase their domains.
Tribes
from all over Asia and Europe were on the move, eager to pick off the
remains of the empire. These
times are considered the Early Middle Ages, roughly from the year 800
to 1000. Also
growing in strength during this time was the Catholic Church.
The reach of the Church throughout Europe, and it’s
“outposts” of monasteries, cathedrals and churches provided an
administrative base that easily replaced the crumbling Roman
administrations. As
Rome declined, the church grew, and as attempts at European unity failed
again and again, and foreign invaders renewed attacks on Europe, the
church grew stronger. This
is the era called the Later Middle Ages, roughly from the year 1000
to 1300. Religion
dominated this period of medieval society.
It
made church laws the laws of the land.
It
collected taxes. It
raised armies. It
demanded allegiances and tributes. The
Church declared war on the growing Muslim faith and commanded
invasion after invasion of the Holy Lands, ostensibly to “liberate”
Jerusalem, but really to rob the wealthy Muslims of anything that could
be carried away to enrich the Papacy, the Princes and the soldiers
themselves. Religious
pilgrimages were required of the faithful.
The old Roman roads were used to visit the growing shrines and
churches, each boasting an “original” relic from the Near East,
often stolen during a crusade, but just as often faked.
Frauds from this era are still being uncovered today. There
were a few voices to challenge the violence and corruption of the
church, the most famous being St. Francis of Assisi.
The Italian San Francesco shunned the greed and possessions of
the Church and encouraged a return to faith and mysticism.
Other future saints followed his example.
Tensions
within the Church eventually lead to a division of the authority of the
Roman Pope between the Western Church and the Byzantine Church. Territory, wealth, administration, and the control of
religious doctrine was split. And
a Holy Roman Empire lived briefly in Western Europe from just
before the millennium until a few generations after the millennium (962
to 1250 A.D.). But
starting in 1309, when the Papacy was forcibly moved to Avignon,
France, and continuing at least until 1378 when a so-called anti-Pope
was installed in Rome, the power of the Papacy declined most markedly. As
the Middle Ages progressed, Princes formed Kingdoms and created
dynasties to ensure the continuity of their realms.
Kingdoms established burocracies based on feudalism that
functioned even during the perilous succession periods.
And
city-states grew rich from trade, especially those with access to
ports, like Venice, Genoa, Pisa (Florence).
The growing trade required bankers, accountants, interpreters,
craftsmen, salesmen, distributors…in short, a middle class.
This
growing counter-balance to the power of the evermore corrupt church
dominated the end of the Middle Ages, and pushed Italy ahead of
Europe into the Renaissance.
Dante Alighieri was right there.
He is a late Middle Ages writer that is considered the bridge
with the Renaissance. He
lived from 1265-1321. Petrarch
wrote during this transitional period, and is considered the father of
humanism, the main philosophy of the Renaissance. Next Section: The Renaissance
Italian
History
Ancient
History
The
Middle Ages
