Link to Chronology
A revolution from above
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Nine
The Renaissance and the Reformation
Chapter I
The Transformation of Social Life From the Middle of the Fifteenth Century
3. Ideas and Manners
p536 ...In Italy the new orientation of ideas, manners, and artistic feeling began at the very moment when the economic development of the nation had reached its apogee. It was not contemporary with this development, but subsequent to it, and while the intellectual movement continued to progress the economic development was already beginning to decline. This intellectual development was the fine flower of the entire civilization that preceded it; the product of thought and beauty succeeding to the product of force. This development was not unlike that of ancient Greece in the days of Pericles: Athens in the 4th century, and Florence in the middle of the 15th century, shone with a glory which was no longer commensurate with their real strength; the dazzling radiance which they shed upon the world, before they made way for more vigorous successors, had the splendor but also the ephemeral quality of a sunset. At the very moment when the genius of Machiavelli, Guiccardini, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci was in flower, the discovery of the New World was diverting the current of European life from the Mediterranean.
I see what he means about Florence but how was Pericles's Athens in decline?
The case was very different to the north of the Alps. Here the Renaissance was not a sunset but a sunrise... it must not be believed that capitalism provoked the renaissance of thought which was contemporaneous with it. The one and the other were different symptoms of the same crisis of growth... What the discovery of the New World was for capitalism, the Italian Renaissance was for the intellectual movement...
p537 ...The relaxation of morals in the 15th century, and the predominance of temporal interests, were no less striking in Northern Europe than in Italy... The Low Countries, under the Dukes of Burgundy, between France and England, the one exhausted by war and the other a prey to civil discord, were enjoying a period of peace and prosperity, and they afforded a spectacle which presented curious analogies with that of Italy. One might have observed, at the court, in the society of the great nobles, and among the government officials and the capitalists, whether landowners or merchants, a kind of life whose principal features were precisely those which are commonly attributed to the early Renaissance in Tuscany and Lombardy: a general relaxation of morality, a love of luxury and social festivities, a demand for elegance and comfort in private dwellings, a pronounced taste for fine clothing, and for the nobler pleasures of art, and the general diffusion of education and good breeding. Here... we see that the aristocracy of birth, like the aristocracy of wealth, was living a social life of a kind that no longer had anything in common with the conventional cortesia of the Middle Ages... it is enough to recall the adorable landscapes which assuredly contributed to the success of the Belgian school of painting in the 15th century in order to realize that the discovery of Nature at this period was by no means a purely Italian discovery. The same may be said of the discovery of the individual...
p539 This worldliness of manners and of thought in and about the court of Burgundy was also to be observed, though in a less degree, in France and England... What were the first books to be printed? When Caxton established his printing-press in London, his customers, who consisted for the most part of noblemen, but also included a city haberdasher, asked him to produce translations from the French and Latin. He himself translated the Aenid... The printing-press did not create the taste for reading, for that already existed, but it hastened its diffusion... the great difference between the 15th century and the age of Charlemagne and the Middle Ages was that the culture which men of the 15th century acquired by reading was purely secular. The Church had no part in it...
p540 We cannot doubt that in all these people [Edward IV, Richard III, Louis XI, the Dukes of Burgundy and others] there was an insatiable thirst for learning: an awakening -- unconscious, I believe, but none the less an awakening [what??!] -- of curiosity, eager to see beyond the two narrow frontiers within which the traditions of caste and religion had hitherto imprisoned it...
p541 ...The "New Learning," as the English called it, was a direct return to antiquity, provoked, of course, by the example of the humanists, but not subordinated to them. It is true that there had been humanists in the North, and especially poets, like Pierre Gilles and the author of the Basia, Jean Second, while the Certamen poeticum Haftianum of Amsterdam was in the direct line of descent. Longolium of Malines belonged to the same school. But not so the great writers: neither Roechlin in Germany, nor Colet [John?] and More in England, nor the greatest of all, Erasmus. The literature of antiquity influenced them less by its form than by enfranchising their thought. It enfranchised it from the scholastic tradition, not only by means of the classic tongue, which they immediately adopted, but by the new standpoint which it gave them. The Miles Christianus of Erasmus might be described as their programme. And what do we find in it? The secular spirit!... religion is envisioned as an exhortation to morality, addressed to the honest man. The ideal is no longer asceticism, but the life of the citizen, with all its duties... hence... a whole plan of reforms, with a view to the future, and especially pedagogic reforms, which would replace the schools of the clergy by new schools, in which children should be educated in the cult of belles lettres, and in which "politesse" would have its place in a training which was to prepare the pupil no for the cloister, but for life. The Adagia of Erasmus, which appeared in 1500, exercised a pedagogical influence comparable only to that of Rousseau's Emile. For the first time... it was seen that the function of the school was to impart intellectual culture. One may say that the whole organization of education to this day is based on the conception of education evolved by these northern humanists. For them, the object of education was the free development of the personality... More, like Erasmus, was opposed to monasticism, asceticism, the celibacy of priests, and the worship of relics; and both, if the truth be told, tended to transform Christianity into a philosophia evangelica... in the North the spirit of the Renaissance was revolutionary, but it was purely theoretical... It made war upon the Church. It spared the State, hoping that the progress of enlightenment would win acceptation [?] for its opinions.
p543 In return, all the social authorities made much of the humanists, just as they made much of the philosophers before the French Revolution... In their optimism they believed that the world might be changed. Vives wanted the Utopia to be placed in the hands of schoolboys, together with the Colloquia. If governments, and even popes and kings, applauded these books, as did all the high officials also, it was because they were careful to avoid political discussion. Their attitude was precisely that of Voltaire. In order that enlightenment should triumph, they had need of a strong government, an authority superior to the parties, more powerful than the Church. Like all intellectuals, they were, though they did not confess it, in favor of the "intelligent despot." The revolution of which they dreamed was to be carried out from above, because they expected that it would be the work essentially of science and reason. No doubt they wanted to extend its benefits to all men, but it must begin at the top, and as for the means by which it was to be brought about, they relied on the social aristocracy, hoping for the final constitution of an intellectual aristocracy...
p544 Everywhere... [but Spain], during the twenty years which elapsed between the end of the 15th century and the appearance of Protestantism, it seemed as though a new world was on the point of birth. All that was strong and youthful and vigorous revolted against the past. Never, perhaps, have the social authorities so unanimously supported an intellectual movement... All were moving and straining in the same direction: authority, society, fashion, the politicians, the women, the artists, the humanists. There was a boundless confidence abroad, a feverish joy. The mind was liberated from authority, was free to wander under the heavens; the monopoly of knowledge was abolished, and it was now the possession of the whole community. And the knowledge that was derived from antiquity was all the more seductive, inasmuch as it went hand in hand with beauty, and was, so to speak, almost identical with beauty.
This would be more convincing if we hadn't just read about the Hussite Wars in Bohemia, almost exactly a century before. I'm sure Pirenne is correct about how Erasmus and his friends felt, but notice that you will not find the common man in the list above of social factions all straining in the same direction.
Continued next time.
Link to Chronology
The bourgeoisie at war with itself
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
In the preface, the author's son, Jacques, mentions that his father started writing in March of 1917 and always recorded the date in the margin of his manuscript. Unfortunately, I don't have access to those marginal dates, so I can only guess where, in time, he was as he wrote this. But I think it's very likely he would have been in 1918 by this point, and it's not impossible that he was writing this in March, so close enough to exactly one hundred years ago to claim that meaningless distinction.
The Indigo Girls' Emily Saliers wrote the following lines in her song Virginia Woolf,
If you need to know that you weathered the storm
Of cruel mortality
A hundred years later I'm sitting here living proof
I couldn't have said it any better.
Book Eight
The European Crisis
(1300-1450)
The Avignon Papacy, the Great Schism, and the Hundred Years War
Chapter I
General Characteristics of the Period
1. Social and Economic Tendencies
p379 Nothing more involved and bewildering and more full of contrasts can be imagined than the period extending from the beginning of the 14th to about the middle of the 15th century. The whole of European society, from the depths to the surface, was as though in a state of fermentation... A spirit of restlessness was abroad, affecting men's minds as well as their policies; even religion was not immune; it was a restlessness that almost amounted to mental confusion. The world was suffering and struggling, but it was hardly advancing. For the only thing of which it was clearly conscious was the fact that all was not well with it. It longed to escape from its ills, but it did not know how... In their fundamental characteristics the Church, the State, and the social and economic constitution remained, throughout these hundred and fifty years, what they had been at the close of the 13th century. The same may be said of science. Gothic architecture and the Scholastic philosophy still had enough vitality to produce interesting work, but the period of masterpieces was past. Everywhere the world was in labor, but it produced only abortive births. There was a definite feeling abroad that it was waiting for a spiritual renewal...
p380 What is really new about this period... is its revolutionary tendencies. They were nowhere triumphant, but they were felt in every department of life. The State and the Church were not more secure against them than was society. All the traditional authorities were criticized and assailed: the popes and kings no less than the landowners and the capitalists. The great masses of the people, who had hitherto endured or supported the power of the State, were now rebelling against it...
p381 Venice in the South and Bruges in the North remained the two busiest commercial centers: Venice as the point of contact between East and West, and Bruges the connecting link between the trade of the North and that of Italy...
In Italy a true system of capitalism was evolving, though it was hampered by the more and more restricted economic demands of the cities.
The towns engaged in the Flemish weaving industry in the North, and Florence in the South, were still, as in the 13th century, the two great centers of industry and the export trade. Cotton was only beginning to make its appearance. No technical progress was manifested. Machinery and methods were still very much what they were in the days of ancient Egypt...
...larger ships were built, and they made longer voyages...
p382 The bill of exchange with acceptance made its appearance in the first half of the 14th century. Pegolotti wrote the Practica della Mercatura. Book-keeping by double entry seems to date back to 1394... [these developments] betray a tendency toward the development of capitalism and the improvement of trade and commerce, yet... we shall readily perceive that one of... [the period's] most obvious characteristics was its hostility to capitalism, except in Italy.
The explanation of this must be sought in the evolution of the bourgeoisie; that is to say, of the class responsible for the entire commercial and industrial activity in Europe. Apart from very rare exceptions... [Venice] from the end of the 13th century, the preponderance of the patricians in the cities was replaced, more or less completely, by that of the handicrafts, trades and professions.
...from being under the control of the great merchants... [the municipal economy] came under that of the small producers, and that henceforth the spirit which inspired it underwent a corresponding change.
I'm probably going to quote too much in this section, but I do find it fascinating.
In the beginning, the guilds or trade fraternities were free associations of artisans following the same calling, who combined for the defense of their common interests. As far as their aims were concerned, they could quite accurately be compared with the voluntary syndicates or trade unions of our own days; their most important function was to regulate competition. Every newcomer, under penalty of ostracism, had to affiliate himself to a guild... [To avoid] conflicts between the syndicated confraternities and those recalcitrant workers who refused to sacrifice their liberty... [it was necessary] to transform... [the trade organizations] from voluntary into obligatory syndicates recognized by the communal authority. The oldest examples of this transformation date back to the 12th century; by the beginning of the 14th century it was general... all over Europe. Henceforth, in every city, each trade was the monopoly of a privileged group of masters...
p383 Everywhere the trade corporation had its chiefs... who were clothed with official authority; everywhere it drew up professional regulations and saw to it that they were observed; everywhere it enjoyed the right of assembly; everywhere it constituted a moral personality, having a treasury and common premises, and everywhere the hierarchy of its members was the same...
p384 Generally speaking, we must envisage the master as the head and proprietor of a workshop, in which were employed, under his orders, one or two journeymen, and an apprentice. In him we have the most perfect type of the artisan -- that is to say, the small producer working in his own home. The raw material which he elaborated was his own property, and he sold the finished product at his own exclusive profit. The consumers on whom his livelihood depended were the burgesses of the city and the peasants of the surrounding countryside... If he was to live at all he had to be protected against competition; not only the external competition of the foreigner, but also the local competition of his fellow craftsmen. To prevent such competition was the first object of the corporation. In order to assure the independence of the masters it restricted their liberty, subjecting it to curious regulations. The economic subordination of each member guaranteed the security of all... He was forbidden to sell his wares at a price below the tariff fixed by the regulations; he was forbidden to work by artificial light; he must not use tools of unusual form, or modify the traditional technique, or employ more journeymen or apprentices than his neighbors, or allow his wife to work, or his children as were not of age; and lastly -- and this prohibition was absolute -- he must not advertise his wares or praise them to the detriment of those produced by others. Thus each worker was given his place in the sun, but it was a place very strictly delimited, and it was quite impossible for him to emerge from it. [Footnote: Capitalism is not in itself opposed to the tendencies of human nature, but its restriction is. Economic liberty is spontaneous. The trade corporation suppresses liberty because it threatens the majority. It presupposes, of course, that this majority exercises political power.] But no one ever dreamed of doing so. For when a man's livelihood is secure his desires are moderate. The corporation provided the petite bourgeoisie with a framework admirably adapted to its character. Without a doubt, it had never been so happy and contented as under their regime. For this class, but for this class alone, they had solved the social problem. By safeguarding it against competition they also protected it against the intervention of capitalism. Until the French Revolution the craftsmen and petty manufacturers were obstinately faithful to the corporations that so well safeguarded their interests. Few economic institutions have been so tenacious.
Living in an age when these safeguards have all been removed, when local manufacturing -- both on this scale and even on the capitalist scale -- has been almost entirely replaced by a Ricardoan dependence on distant inexpensive sources of goods, I have to say that this regime served more than just the petite bourgeoisie. In our day it is the lower classes you are suffering the most from unrestricted trade.
p385 The first half of the 14th century was the period when the handicrafts attained their apogee... A sort of industrial Malthusianism began to make its appearance, which surrendered the local market to a small number of masters, and the absence of competition among them simply meant that the consumer was exploited... in the cities themselves, in the ranks of the bourgeoisie, what complaints and protests were heard! What indignant reproaches were bandied about between the different trades, each condemning in the others the excesses of the monopoly which it felt to be justified in its own case alone! At the same time, the original spirit of fraternity was replaced, among the craftsmen, by an increasing opposition of interests between the masters and the journeymen, who were more and more reduced to the status of mere wage-earners. Riots broke out; there were strikes... from the beginning of the 15th century the abuses of the system were so evident that there were those who demanded the abolition of the corporations and the liberty of handicrafts.
p386 The situation was much more serious in those cities that were the centers of the textile industry... The kind of trade organization which was suitable for craftsmen... was obviously unable to satisfy the needs of workers engaged in mass production for an unrestricted market. It could not possibly afford protection against the influence of capital to the weavers, fullers and clothworkers, master or journeymen who crowded the lanes and alleys of Gand, Bruge, and Ypres. or the vicoli on the banks of the Arno. Here the artisan was necessarily subordinated to the rich merchant who provided him with wool, and to whom the manufactured product was delivered after the various manipulations which it had to undergo... in this case the employer himself was merely a wage-earner employing other wage-earners. Further, the workers in the cloth trade... numbered hundreds or even thousands... [This trade subject to the uncertainty of international affairs and wars.] Even in normal times there were incessant disputes as to wages... Thus, the condition of the workers in the cloth industry in those cities where the industry provided the basis of a considerable export trade was very like that of the modern proletariat. And they were an organized proletariat...
p387 The political result of these [proletarian] corporative organizations was naturally to wrest the government of the cities from the patrician oligarchies who were in power in the 13th century. It was no longer possible for a few "lineages" of landowners and merchants, sitting in the city council, to do precisely what they chose in the matter of regulating trade and commerce, and assessing taxes... They did not surrender their position without resistance. Their government had been, in the full force of the term, a class government, and they obstinately clung to their privileged position. The whole of the 14th century was filled with the conflict of the grandi and the piccolo for the possession of the municipal power... [As was the case in the 19th century struggle over the parliamentary franchise] the masses, refused the right to manage their own affairs, persisted in their demands. The fundamental cause of the two crises was the same... what the patricians were defending against the claims of the handicrafts was the same preponderance which the property-owners' Parliaments of our own time defended so long and so obstinately against the demands of universal suffrage. The whole of the 14th century, like the whole of the 19th century, was shaken by the struggles of democracy... In those petty States, the cities of the Middle Ages, the conception of democracy was proportionately restricted; it was as narrow as the limits of the city... Society was too subdivided, subject to too many clashes, too localized to permit the emergence of the concept of general liberty. The city was a little enclosed world, living for itself, indifferent to the feelings and the interests of classes which were alien to it. The artisan was as strictly bourgeois as the patrician, and quite as exclusive in his feelings toward all those who did not inhabit his commune. He knew nothing of the leveling spirit of proselytism, as indifferent to local groups as it is to juridical classes, which the spectacle of the modern democracies has accustomed us to regard as inherent in any popular regime. Fundamentally, democracy as he conceived it was merely a democracy of privileged individuals, since the bourgeois itself... was a privileged class.
Is this notion of democracy really so very different? Pirenne was writing before national socialism and before the nativist politics of our time. The politics of the medieval city state looks like the same old human smallish-group dynamic we seem to be most comfortable with.
p388 However, the pure democratic regime was triumphant in only a few cities. In most cases some sort of compromise was arrived at. The patriciate, voluntarily, or under pressure from the mob, made way for the corporations, and constitutions came into force of which we may say... that they organized a sort of representation of interests. Once the opposing interests had achieved equilibrium, these constitutions... became congealed into fixity... These democracies of privileged petits bourgeois were characterized by egoism and protectionism. Urban politics became even more exclusive than before where... it was not compelled to reckon with the State. [Flanders and Italy.] It's aim was the achievement of complete political liberty, of the free city, as it already existed in Germany... Capital, encompassed by suspicion and fumbling legislation, could develop only beyond its control, in the domain of inter-urban trade. Here men still made their fortunes, though less frequently than in the previous century. The local patricate no longer played a part in the development of capitalism, and became a class of rentiers. By the side of the patriciate new men were making their appearance, who taxed their ingenuity to evade the regulations of protectionism... [to be covered in the following period.]
... from 1282 onwards the nobili were excluded from the government of Florence by the constitution... This was a government of merchants and manufacturers, a government of the popolo grasso. But the popolo minuto was socially oppressed. [Description of the back and forth revolutions in Florence during the 14th century.]
p389 The same sort of thing happened in the Flemish cities... The patriciate looked to France for support, and the battle of Courtrai was in reality a social victory for the artisans... Gand... where the weavers were in greater strength than anywhere else, was distinguished by sullen violence... For six years... they held their own against the prince, the nobles, and all "good folk who had anything to lose." From all parts of Europe the suffering proletarians fixed their gaze upon Gand... It was felt that they were threatening the entire social order, at Roosebeke (1382) the King of France inflicted upon them a terrible defeat... all their energy could achieve nothing. It was impossible for them to escape from the capitalism under which they suffered... The other trades turned against them. The fullers, who were even poorer, and whom they oppressed, made common cause with their enemies. The result... was to make the merchants and business men look to the princes for support, and to take steps to remove the industry from the cities to the countryside.
Medieval communes
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Seven
The Hegemony of the Papacy and of France in the Thirteenth Century
Chapter II
The Papacy, Italy, and Germany
1. Italy
p305 ...Municipal life became as preponderant in Lombardy and Tuscany as it had been in antiquity, but while its material conditions were almost unchanged, its spirit was different. The Roman municipality had enjoyed only a local autonomy, subordinated to the formidable power of the State. [This was only true after Rome had conquered the peninsula.] The Italian city of the Middle Ages -- at least in the north and the center of the peninsula -- was a republic.
p306 From the 11th century onwards the mercantile and industrial class which was in process of formation took advantage... of the conflict between the pope and the Emperor to rebel against the bishops, and to wrest from them the administration of the cities. The first Italian communes were sworn by the "patarenes" [Footnote: The name of Patarious seems to be a mere corruption of Catharus.] in the midst of the turmoil of the War of Investitures: a time of mystical exaltation. Their origin was purely revolutionary, and from the time of their birth they contracted a habit of violence that was to characterize them to the end. By force or by agreement, the commune imposed itself, in each city, on the mass of the population, and its elective consuls, like the sheriffs of the Belgian cities, exercised both the judical and the administrative power. But as the bourgeoisie developed the social contrasts in its ranks were accentuated, and parties were formed in support of various conflicting interests... The party of the grandi were composed of the urban nobility, with whom were associated a good many enriched merchants; the party of the piccoli comprised the corporations or guilds of artisans of every kind, whose numbers multiplied as prosperity increased. The absence of a princely power, above the parties and capable of moderating their quarrels, gave the conflicts between the two groups, arising from questions of taxation and the organization of municipal power, a bitterness and severity unequaled elsewhere. From the middle of the 12th century civil war became a chronic epidemic. The grandi had the best of it; the piccoli were pitilessly massacred; if they surrendered they were driven out of the city; their houses or palaces were destroyed, and while waiting for the moment when they could avenge themselves they lived on the adjacent countryside, pillaging and harassing their compatriots.
As a general thing these exiles found protection and allies in a neighboring city. For while there was permanent warfare in the heart of the bourgeoisies, the mutual relations of the cities were also generally warlike. Constituting as they did so many independent economic centers, each of them thought only of itself, doing its utmost to force the peasants and population of the surrounding countryside to furnish its food supply... Thus the clash of interests was as violent outside the city as within it. Trade and industry were developed by means of battles... Each city imagined that its prosperity depended on the ruin of its rivals...
I'm skipping again the discussion of the interplay of the cities with the Hohenstaufens which lead to another battle of Guelf and Ghibelline -- differently defined in Italy to make things even more confusing.
And this state of city vs city sounds so much like Greece and early Rome. The main difference being the absence of kings.
p308 ...From the second half of the 12th century attempts were made to render... [the municipal government] independent of civil conflicts by confiding it to a podesta. The podesta was... a temporary prince elected by the commune, and in order to guarantee his impartiality and his independence of the parties it usually chose him from an alien commune... Almost always the podestas were obliged... to rely on the support of one of the hostile factions. In certain cities they succeeded, as early as the 13th century, in possessing themselves, either by cunning or by violence... of the supreme authority, and in founding the first of those tyrannies which were to play so considerable a part during the epoch of the Renaissance. I need only mention the Scaligers of Verona and the Visconti of Milan.
The political and social ferment of the Italian cities naturally influenced their religious life. There were simultaneous outbreaks of mysticism and heresy, which provided fresh aliment for the fever that consumed them. St Francisco of Assisi was the son of a merchant, and the Order of Franciscans found its true field of action in the bourgeoisies. Moreover, there were swarms of Cathars, Brothers of the Free Spirit, and Waldenses...
It can hardly be doubted that they would have recruited the majority of their adherents among the workers engaged in production for export. As in Flanders. this trade was already highly developed in the Italy of the 13th century, and as in Flanders, it resulted in the formation of a veritable working-class proletariat. The weavers of Florence, the great cloth-producing center of Southern Europe, differed as widely as the weavers of Gand, Ypres or Douai from the usual type of urban artisan. Far from working on their own account, they were mere wage-earners, employed by the merchants. The nascent capitalism of the age subjected them to its influence, and its power, like its influence, increased in proportion as the merchants developed the export trade. By the first half of the 13th century the Florentine cloths were exported to all parts of the Orient [Near East?], and the merchants of the city were importing their wool from England. Such an active manufacture naturally presupposes a considerable degree of capitalistic development. The fortunes accumulated by the trade in merchandise were still further increased by financial transactions. In the course of the 13th century the money-changers (bankers) of Siena and Florence found their way into all parts of Western Europe, where they were known as Lombards... in England, the Low Countries, and France they advanced larger and larger sums to the cities, princes, and kings, and were employed as collectors, treasurers, and guardians of money... On the disappearance of... [the Sienese company of Bonsignori, in 1298] Florence became the chief money-market and banking center of Europe, and so remained until the 15th century... We know that it was in the form of Florentine florins, minted from 1252 onwards, and presently imitated by Venice (ducats), and then in France, that gold coins, abandoned since the Merovingian epoch, once more made their appearance in international trade, providing the instrument of exchange which had become indispensable to its progress...
p310 The social position of the Italian bankers and merchants brought them so closely into touch with the nobility that they were often confounded with it. This process took place all the more rapidly, inasmuch as the Italian nobility, instead of residing in the country... had its dwelling-houses in the city. By the end of the 12th century the nobles were already beginning to interest themselves in commercial operations, while the merchants... were often ennobled... under the influence of capital the line of demarcation between the juridical classes, which elsewhere remained so clearly drawn, in Italy grew fainter, almost to the point of disappearance, during the course of the 13th century. An aristocracy was formed for which social position was of greater importance than blood, while individual worth overcame the prejudice of birth.
Just like when the Medieval nobility was first forming.
He then goes into the Papal States which were a dead zone between Sicily in the south and these developing cities in the north.
p312 The Kingdom of Sicily, in the south of the peninsula, was another world. While it was as wealthy as Northern Italy, and while its life was feverish and exuberant, it was politically apathetic... In the 13th century (1275) it was estimated that the inhabitants numbered 1,200,000, a population greater than that of England... There is more than one point of similarity between the Frederick II [Hohenstaufen] of the 13th century and the Frederick II [the Great, Hohenzollern] of the 18th century, and this is easily explained, if we reflect that they could both do anything they liked with the people whom they governed... In the Europe of the 13th century the Kingdom of Sicily was something unique, with its expert and despotic constitution, borrowed from the Byzantine and Musulman worlds... Not until the modern era did the European States achieve so complete an administrative system...
2. Frederick II
p313 ...Lying, cruelty and perjury were his favorite weapons; in a later age they would be the favorite weapons of a Sforza or a Visconti, and to make the analogy more complete, he had their love of art and their respect for learning. He has been called the first modern man to ascend the throne, but this is not true unless we understand by a modern man "the pure despot who will stop for nothing in the search for power."
p314 This Frederick, whom the Popes were later to describe as the Beast of the Apocalypse, the servant of Satan, the prophet of the Antichrist, began his career under the auspices of Innocent III, and as an instrument of the Church...
...
p315 ...His treatment of the Church was inspired, not by a principle, but solely by his personal interests. Provided the Church did not hinder the realization of his policy he was ready to make it every concession... In reality the Popes made war against him for temporal rather than religious reasons. The quarrel... reveals itself... as a quarrel between two Italian powers...
...
p319 [After his death] As for the Kingdom of Sicily, the Pope hastened to retrieve it forever from that "generation of vipers," the Hohenstaufens. He decided to give it to France.
