Luscombe D., Riley-Smith J. The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 4: c. 1024-c. 1198, Part 2

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

The western empire, 1125–1197 421

of the agrarian and urban economies of twelfth-century Germany made such

assets far more valuable to landowners than ever before.

Henry VI may have contemplated incorporating the Sicilian kingdom into

the empire; in Germany in 1195 he styled himself ‘by the grace of God emperor

and always Augustus of the Romans and of the kingdom of Sicily and Apulia’.

As we have seen, he certainly desired to abolish royal election in favour of a

hereditary empire, and it is possible that the crusade planned for 1197 and 1198

was intended to conquer the Byzantine empire on the way to Jerusalem so that

one Roman emperor would reign both in the west and the east. The imperial

chancery continued to proclaim, in language which the emperor himself could

read, the honour and glory of the Roman empire which he and his predecessors

were committed to defend and to improve. However, the stability of Staufen

rule was suddenly undermined by Henry VI’s unexpected death in Septem-

ber 1197 in his thirty-second year. In Germany a small but inﬂuential party

of princes instigated by Archbishop Adolf I of Cologne’s ambition to wrest

the leading voice in royal elections from the see of Mainz rejected the Staufen

succession apparently secured by Frederick II’s election in 1196 and offered the

crown to Duke Bernhard IV of Saxony and to Duke Berthold V of Z

ahringen

who in turn prudently declined it, and then to Henry the Lion’s second surviv-

ing son Otto of Brunswick, count of Poitou, who accepted. But the majority

of inﬂuential princes had already decided to elect Henry VI’s brother Duke

Philip of Swabia in lieu of the infant Frederick II who was absent in Sicily

and thereupon, as the Cologne annalist reported, ‘A great war and exceedingly

fearful dissension arose amongst the German princes about the empire’,

jus-

tifying the sorrowful epitaph for Henry VI by Vincent of Prague’s continuator:

‘Upon the emperor’s death, justice and peace in the empire also perished.’

MGH Constitutiones i,no.367,p.516.

Chronica regia Coloniensis for 1198.

Gerlac of Milevsko, ‘Chronicon’ for 1198.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

chapter 15(a)

NORTHERN AND CENTRAL ITALY

IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY

Giovanni Tabacco

the kingdom of italy and the papal states in the

time of lothar ii and conrad iii

The Salian dynasty died out in 1125 and Lothar of Supplinburg, duke of Sax-

ony, came to the throne, in accordance with the wishes of both the German

episcopate and Pope Honorius II. However the election in Germany of an

anti-king in 1128,inthe person of Conrad of the Swabian Staufen, involved

Italy, for Conrad sought support there against Lothar, succeeding in having

himself crowned with all solemnity by Archbishop Anselm of Milan, then in

disagreement with Honorius II for ecclesiastical reasons. As a member of the

house of Swabia Conrad considered himself heir, through kinship, to the allo-

dial patrimonia which had belonged to Henry V. He also claimed lands which

Henry had occupied in Italy as heir to Matilda of Canossa, a claim destined to

give rise to conﬂicts with the Roman church, to which Matilda had given her

possessions before the agreement drawn up with Henry V in 1111.Neither the

coronation in Italy nor his claims to Matilda’s estates strengthened Conrad’s

cause during these years and in 1130 he returned to Germany, where he engaged

in a fruitless quarrel with Lothar.

Honorius II died in the same year, giving rise to a papal schism between

Innocent II and Anacletus II. This schism reﬂected disagreement among the

cardinals, although by this time they had all moved towards the idea of a

reforming pontiﬁcate, and disagreement between the two families which had

now become the most powerful in Rome, the Frangipani, who supported

Innocent, and the Pierleoni, who upheld Anacletus. Anacletus prevailed in the

city itself and Innocent took refuge in France, where a council pronounced in

his favour, in part because of the eloquence of Bernard of Clairvaux. Lothar

then overcame his own irresolution and descended into Italy in support of

Pope Innocent. He stayed in Lombardy, divided between the hostility of Milan

and Crema and the allegiance of Pavia, Cremona, Piacenza and other cities.

422

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Northern and central Italy in the twelfth century 423

Accompanied by Innocent, he pushed on to Rome where he was crowned

emperor in 1133, while much of the city remained in the hands of Anacletus, who

was supported by the Norman Roger II of Sicily and Apulia. The understanding

between Lothar and Innocent also involved the problem of the allodial lands

which had belonged to Matilda. The emperor recognized the rights of the

church of Rome to these properties, but obtained the usufruct against the

payment of an annuity and was recognized by Matilda’s vassals.

In the years following Lothar’s return to Germany the Tuscan march and the

allodial lands of Matilda were placed under the supervision of the emperor’s

representatives, until in 1136 Lothar, entreated by Pope Innocent to take action

against the menacing power of Roger II, once more crossed into Italy. He

took upon himself the function of judge and arbiter in the disputes between

the Lombard cities and found against Cremona and Milan, which had been

reconciled with Innocent II. In a diet held at Roncaglia, in the middle of the

Po valley, he promulgated a feudal law to regulate relations between client

vassals and their lords, stressing the rights of the latter over their vassals and

the obligations of these lords towards the empire. After having thus exercised

his power as king of northern Italy with remarkable authority, he organized

the expedition agreed upon with the pope against Roger II, under his own

command and that of the duke of Bavaria, his son-in-law Henry the Proud,

of the powerful house of Welf. The invasion of the kingdom took place in

1137, but led to dissension between papacy and empire, over the legal problems

of southern Italy and the abbey of Monte Cassino. Above all Innocent II was

concerned at Henry the Proud’s power in Germany and Italy; Henry was duke

of both Saxony and Bavaria, and he had been granted the Tuscan march as

well as the usufruct of the allodial lands of Matilda.

The expedition into southern Italy was interrupted. Lothar returned to

Germany, where he died at the end of 1137, after having designated Henry the

Proud his successor. Nevertheless, papal concern about Henry’s power, com-

bined with that of the German electors, led to the choice of Conrad of Swabia,

who years earlier had been anti-king in both Germany and Italy. The subse-

quent break between Conrad III and Henry, who was formally stripped of his

German duchies, and the sudden death of Henry himself, made it possible for

the king to maintain his position in Germany and to reclaim it in Italy, by virtue

of the inheritance which had come to him from Henry V of Franconia and the

allodial lands of Matilda. He was still not in effective control of the kingdom,

however. The Tuscan march entrusted by the king to Ulric of Attemo was not a

success, as Ulric acted autonomously, allying himself with ﬁrst one then another

of the city communes. Nor was the march of Verona, entrusted to Herman,

margrave of Baden. Conrad III, deeply involved as he was in the problems of

Germany, never went to Italy after succeeding Lothar to the German throne,

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

424 giovanni tabacco

although he seriously entertained the idea of an Italian campaign, either to ob-

tain the imperial crown or oppose Roger II of Sicily as an ally of the Byzantine

empire. The arduous and unfortunate crusade against the Muslims in the east

kept him far from the European theatre during 1147 and 1148.Onhis return

to Germany he made preparations for the Italian expedition, but death struck

him down in February 1152 before his plan could be put into effect.

If German control over the kingdom of Italy declined rapidly after the time

of Lothar III, this was even more the case in the regions which were theoretically

papal – from the regions of Ferrara and Ravenna to Lazio. Political forces sprang

into action everywhere from the Alps to the borders of the Norman kingdom

in the south, in the form of innumerable noble dynasties and city communes.

The hegemony of the city of Milan over Lombardy increased both at the

economic and the commercial level as well as in the military and political

sphere, through control of communications. The wars it waged against Como

in the north, in the lake region, and Pavia, the old capital of the kingdom,

almost at the conﬂuence of the Ticino and the Po to the south, and above

all against powerful Cremona in the south-east, made clear the extent of its

ascendancy over a region, by this time divided into communal republics, that

stretched from the lakes in the foothills of the Alps to the middle of the Po. The

government of each of the cities in this region, hinged on the institution of the

consul, took precedence over the rural lordships with their dynastic structure,

whether episcopal, monastic or canonical, which in their turn, dispersed as

they were throughout the countryside, were superimposed on rural groupings

in the process of communal organization. City government often cooperated

with the remaining temporal powers of the resident bishop. The supremacy of

Milan over its neighbouring city communes, sometimes, as in the case of Lodi,

bitterly contested, created a wider territorial coordination with an extended

ﬁeld of action.

In eastern Lombardy, from Bergamo to Mantua, between the region of

Milanese predominance and the marches of Verona, the autonomy of the

communes over the cities and their surrounding rural areas coexisted with the

temporal power of the bishops. Brescia took on a particular prominence, for

there the political rivalry between the city and the bishop was complicated by

the preaching of Arnold of Brescia, who was in rebellion against ecclesiastical

authority. The power of the counts in the territory of Brescia and Mantua

died with the passing of Countess Matilda and in the district of Bergamo

was transformed into a seigneurial power exercised in conjunction with the

inherited estates of the various branches of the Giselbertini counts.

Similarly, the march of Verona saw the authority of the marquesses weaken

in favour of that of the city, the powerful churches and the families descended

from the counts. The counts of Vicenza, Padua and Treviso, and in the Verona

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Northern and central Italy in the twelfth century 425

region the counts of San Bonifacio and those of Gandolﬁngi took on the char-

acter of noble dynasties prevailing over certain regions of old districts which

had had a public tradition. In the southern part of the territory of Padua

and the neighbouring lands of Ferrara, the dominion of the Este developed.

The name belongs to an eastern and independent branch of the great family

of the marquesses of Obertenghi, of Ligurian origin but present particularly

in the north-west Apennines through both their inherited estates and their

jurisdictional powers. The ecclesiastical entities also preserved full legal and

military force where their holdings were especially dense: in particular the

bishopric, cathedral chapter and monastery of San Zeno at Verona, the bish-

opric of Vicenza, the bishopric and cathedral chapter of Padua, the bishopric of

Tr eviso, which was endowed with an exceptionally powerful apparatus of vas-

sals and ofﬁcials, and the bishopric of Belluno. The cities, meanwhile, increased

their autonomy, in the midst of all these very conspicuous seigneuries, both

ecclesiastical and secular and interwoven both with them and with the lesser

nobility, although often in conﬂict with them. Verona in particular emerged,

distinguished by its economic power, for there a rich merchant class operated

in conjunction with the military caste.

To the north and east of the Veneto the ecclesiastical principalities of

Tr ento and Aquileia maintained and indeed consolidated their positions in

the Trentino and Friuli respectively, supported by an apparatus of vassals and

ofﬁcials. The bishopric of Trento remained under the inﬂuence of the German

crown, while the patriarchate of Aquileia was under that of both Germany

and the pope. In the Lagoon of Venice, Venice itself, governed completely

independently by its doge with his lifetime rule and by its merchant princes,

allied with the Byzantine empire and opposed to the aspirations of the Norman

kingdom of the south, monopolized trade between the Adriatic and Europe,

strengthening its own political presence on the Istrian and Dalmatian coasts and

defending itself against the kingdom of Hungary’s penetration into Dalmatia

and its interference in the lives of the Italian coastal cities on the opposite side

of the Adriatic.

A political fabric analagous in its composition to that of eastern Lombardy

and the Verona march, with a similar tendency to develop from a predomi-

nantly urban area into territorially based principalities with feudal structures,

was found to the west of the preponderantly Milan-inﬂuenced region, corre-

sponding to present-day Piedmont: from the Ticino to the western Alps. North

of the Po, the communes of Novara and Vercelli and – more timidly – Ivrea

coexisted with the powerful dominion of the bishops, based upon the cities.

Within the territory of Novara, the counts of Biandrate were also vigorously

active, and in that of Ivrea, the many branches of the family of the counts

of Canavese. They were descendants of families who originally held title to

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

426 giovanni tabacco

public districts, but their vigour was by this time largely the result of the castles

and vassals subjected to them in the rural world. On the Po, the commune of

Turin asserted its autonomy at the expense of the temporal power of the bishop

resident in that city. Similarly, to the south of the Po, the ﬂourishing commune

of Asti, then expanding commercially particularly in its relations with France,

coexisted with the great territorial dominion of the bishop. From 1135,itfelt

threatened by the expansionism of the Marquess William V of Montferrat,

who had become the most noteworthy among the numerous representatives of

the great Aleramici family. In the tenth century this family had held a march

which extended from Savona, on the shores of the Ligurian Sea, all the way to

the Po, but the march was subsequently broken up into several marquisates,

whose fortunes were changing and various.

The Aleramici had also penetrated the march of Turin, dissolved in 1091

on the death of Countess Adelaide. In it a branch of the family was by this

date building up what came to be known as the marquisate of Saluzzo. On

this side of the Alps there remained in the possession of the descendants of

Adelaide of Turin and her husband Odo, count of Maurienne in Burgundy –

the line afterwards known as Savoy – only the valleys of Aosta and Susa.

From the plains of Piedmont and the Ligurian coast, across the mountainous

band of the Ligurian Alps and Ligurian Apennines there lay, in the Obertenga

march from west to east, a succession of Aleramici marquisates. But on the

coast, the city-communes of Albenga, Savona and Genoa were now acting

with remarkable freedom, in spite of some disagreements among themselves.

These conﬂicts arose from the attempt by Genoa, which originally belonged

to the march of the Obertenga, to control both the cities and the nobles

who for the most part bore the titles of counts or marquesses, throughout

the whole coastal region. The city needed to create a secure hinterland for its

economic life and commercial expansion on the seas, an expansion which also

gave rise to conﬂict with Pisa over the control of Corsica. Genoa’s prestige and

inﬂuence were increased by its being raised to the seat of an archbishopric with

the consequent diminution of the ecclesiastical province of Milan, following

the papal and royal schisms and the related dispute between Innocent II and the

archbishop of Milan.

Thus, throughout the whole of north-west Italy the relationship between

episcopal and dynastic seigneuries and city-republics was becoming clear, with

ruling families prevailing in the harsh and economically backward areas and

cities on the plain and along the coast. The same pattern occurs south of the

middle course of the Po and along the Emilian Way, where the cities of Piacenza,

Parma, Reggio and Modena asserted their own communal governments in the

face of the temporal authority of the bishops and the nobility in the rural

areas. Among the latter should be numbered, at least as regards the territories

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Northern and central Italy in the twelfth century 427

of Reggio and Modena, the numerous vassals, clients of the Countess Matilda,

who were now claimed by the German kings and by the papacy. In the high

valleys of the Tuscan–Emilian Apennines but also continuing on as far as the

sea and the plain, various branches of the Obertenghi held sway; foremost

among them the Malaspina.

Similar complexities are also to be found in the Tuscan march, again related

to the degree of economic development. Pisa, seat of an archbishopric from

1092, held ﬁrst place on the Tyrrhenian coast as a city-commune with a complex

network of ties between clergy and laity. In the north it came into conﬂict with

Lucca, the old capital of the march, and in Corsica with Genoa; it penetrated

Sardinia, using the Tyrrhenian Sea as a base from which it spread both its com-

mercial and military activities throughout a large part of the Mediterranean –

even, in conjunction with the crusades, to the Orient. Inland, economic and

political supremacy in Tuscany was held by the commune of Florence, alter-

nately the ally and adversary of other city-communes such as Pisa, Lucca and

Pistoia, as far as Siena and the predominantly episcopal city of Arezzo. At the

same time Florence was in competition – as were the other cities – with vari-

ous noble dynasties. These dynasties were rooted in regions which were harsh

and wild in terms of both landscape and population, from the slopes of the

Apennines to the areas of transition between one urban district and the next.

From north to south, the Guidi counts in the Romagna Apennines and the

Casentino were succeeded by the Ubaldini of the Mugello, the Alberti counts

of Prato, the Ubertini of the upper Valdarno, the Berardenghi, Ardengheschi

and Scialenghi in Sienese territory and, ﬁnally, the powerful Aldobrandeschi

counts of southern Tuscany.

Even the lands which were theoretically papal witnessed the coexistence of

a number of heterogeneous political entities, mostly autonomous and in com-

petition with each other. In Bologna, in full economic and cultural expansion

as a centre for legal studies, the authority of the counts waned to the advan-

tage of the commune and its expansion along the Emilian Way, giving rise to

conﬂict with Modena to the west and Imola to the east, as well as with the

emperor Lothar. Bologna attracted into its political sphere the famous abbey

of Nonantola and certain elements from among the client vassals of the late

Countess Matilda. Further to the north, the commune of Ferrara, its autonomy

consolidated after the death of Matilda and operating in collaboration with

the bishop of the city, found itself in conﬂict with the claims of the archbishop

of Ravenna and the papacy, who claimed – although also in mutual disagree-

ment – ultimate temporal jurisdiction over the whole territory of Ferrara and

Romagna as well. The commune of Ravenna, under the hegemony of urban

military families owing their origin in part to ancient links with the admin-

istration and bearing ducal names, operated for the most part in agreement

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

428 giovanni tabacco

with the prevailing power of the archbishop, but at the same time took an

extremely lively share, by means of both law and force, in the activities of the

other cities of Romagna. The presence of noble families, often bearing the titles

of counts and holding an independent position within the life of the episcopal

and communal cities of Romagna and the surrounding countryside, is to be

found again in an analogous fashion in the march of Ancona and the duchy

of Spoleto. There march and duchy were elements within the imperial frame-

work, but functioning fairly weakly when faced with the usual interweaving

of local aristocracy and city.

In Lazio, the papal schism, which lasted from 1130 to 1139, jeopardized the

gradual political recovery which the reforming papacy was bringing about vis-

a-vis the noble families and the city-states from the borders of the duchy of

Spoleto all the way to Terracina. With the end of the schism, the process of

recovery was resumed, as can be clearly seen in the case of Tivoli, which yielded

to Innocent II in 1143.But the most serious problem for the papal domination

was to be the city of Rome itself, which just then, deluded by the insufﬁently

severe conditions imposed upon Tivoli by Innocent at its paciﬁcation, rose in

its turn against the pope and organized its own senate. From 1147, during the

pontiﬁcate of Eugenius III, political activity in the city also took on a religious

hue, thanks to Arnold of Brescia. The high-sounding letters addressed to the

German king Conrad III, who aspired to the emperor’s crown, bear witness

to the high conceit in which the Romans then held the universal signiﬁcance

of their city. But the king acted prudently and the Roman commune was

compelled to become reconciled with Eugenius. These developments in Rome

were the most striking indication of the changes which were taking place

throughout central and northern Italy to the advantage of the city-states.

from the coming of barbarossa to the peace of costanza

After the death of Conrad III in 1152, his nephew Frederick of Swabia was

chosen to succeed him to the throne. He was descended, on his mother’s side,

from the house of Welf and was thus in a position to conciliate the two great

rival lineages. Among Frederick’s ﬁrst actions was the allotment of the Tuscan

march, the duchy of Spoleto and the allodial lands which had belonged to

the Countess Matilda, to Welf VI, his maternal uncle. This meant that the

house of Welf was granted political dominance, under royal aegis, in central

Italy. Meanwhile, requests for the king’s immediate presence came from the

people of Rome and from Eugenius III, who were competing to offer him the

imperial crown, and from Lombardy, where the predominance of the Milanese

limited the independence of the other cities and led to disputes, particularly in

Lodi. It seemed, after so many absences and misadventures, that the royal and

Northern and central Italy in the twelfth century 429

imperial authority of the German monarchs was now becoming no more than

an element in the political games played among the local powers in Italy, which

all tried to make use of the empire in their quarrels. And since, in this closely

played game, Milan was emerging as the centre of attraction and organization

in northern Italy, the centrifugal forces, faced with its predominance, saw in

the new king, who had a high opinion of his own dignity in Germany and

had succeeded in balancing noble forces, a reference point around which their

own interests crystallized.

Among these essentially centrifugal forces, there were also some dynasties

with extensive ﬁelds of action; in the ﬁrst place, the Aleramica marquisate

of Montterrat and the counts of Biandrate. The marquess of Montferrat,

William V, a close relative of Barbarossa, and Count Guido of Biandrate,

his brother-in-law, were constantly with the king in 1154, when he visited Italy

for the ﬁrst time. They contributed towards inclining him against the cities of

Chieri and Asti, which opposed the territorial ambitions of the Biandrate and

the Montferrats and were consequently proscribed by the empire and ruined.

The king formally conferred upon the marquess rights and supremacy over

Asti and the neighbouring fortress of Annone in the heart of the region over

which William wished to exert his supremacy. As regards Count Guido, he had

been in Germany even before Frederick’s descent into Italy and had obtained

conﬁrmation of a large number of holdings he possessed in northern Pied-

mont, in particular between the Rivers Sesia and Ticino, as well as revenues

from seigneurial income and rights of a public nature. But it should be men-

tioned that if the Marquess William was acting in a geographical region that

was relatively backward in comparison to powerful Milan and was thus freer

in his political and military movements and in furthering the anti-Milanese

policies of the king, Count Guido was, on the other hand, operating on the

margins and within the large area under Milanese domination. He therefore

maintained an uncertain balance between adherence to the king and the re-

spect demanded by that great urban centre, the major driving force behind

Lombard activity. One can say that Guido most clearly represented the state in

which the more evolved parts of the kingdom of Italy found themselves, eco-

nomically and politically, uncertain. They were divided between the defence

of local interests, the lure of an ancient urban centre, with its basic structures

strengthened and renewed and well aware of its real function as a regional

fulcrum, and the opposite appeal of a prince, foreign to the very distinctive

culture of Italy, but cloaked in a royal title and with imperial expectations, sur-

rounded by the noblest representatives of the aristocracy of his kingdoms and

supported by an armed force which moved with him; consecrated in Germany

and reconsecrated in Italy, at Pavia and Rome, as the legitimate and supreme

guarantor of justice among his subjects.

430 giovanni tabacco

At the end of 1154,inagreat diet of the Italian kingdom held at Roncaglia,

Frederick promulgated a feudal law, following the example of Lothar III in

1136.Fiefs illegitimately transferred to vassals were returned to the lord and

the rules for hereditary transmission were to be rigorously respected. It was an

attempt to integrate the itinerant forces of the king, restoring the efﬁciency of

a politico-military organization operating throughout the length and breadth

of the kingdom, by means of a hierarchy of allegiances involving the nobles,

ecclesiastics and their vassals. The question of the cities seemed equally basic,

but in the royal policies it was considered apart, fundamentally in terms of

general submission and respect for the hierarchy of the nobility, and of a

balance between the cities themselves. The coronation at Rome, on the other

hand, was an urgent matter and it was performed in 1155 by the new Pope

Adrian IV, in compliance with an agreement drawn up two years earlier at

Costanza between the representatives of Frederick and Eugenius III for mutual

protection against the dynamism of the Normans and Byzantines in Italy and

the agressiveness of Rome and her senate. The most illustrious victim of this

agreement was Arnold of Brescia, who fell into the hands of Frederick, was

handed over to the representatives of Adrian IV and put to death.

The exiguousness of the military forces available to Frederick when he ﬁrst

entered Italy did not prevent him from taking punitive and destructive action

against the cities of Chieri, Asti, Tortona and Spoleto, but did not allow him

to take action against the Norman south. For this reason, Adrian IV, after

the emperor’s return to Germany, reached the Concordat of Benevento with

William I of Sicily in 1156.In1158, under the auspices of the pope, there was

a rapprochement between King William and the Byzantine emperor Manuel

Komnenos. These were changes prompted by the absence of the Germans and

it was this same absence which allowed Milan to prevail once again over Lodi,

ﬁght Pavia, foster the rebuilding of Tortona and prevent William of Montferrat

from opposing the enterprise of Asti, notwithstanding the charter issued in his

favour by the king in 1154.Barbarossa’s second entry into Italy took place in the

summer of 1158, with military forces considerably greater than those employed

four years earlier and subsequently augmented by contingents sent by the great

Italian lords of numerous cities. At the end of a month-long siege, Milan sur-

rendered. At the succeeding diet of Roncaglia, a catalogue of royal rights was

drawn up, with the aid of the greatest jurists of Bologna. The list went from the

appointment of magistrates, both in the cities and the provinces, to the collec-

tion of taxes on roads, water, ports, markets, coinage, the contributions levied to

provide for the transfer of the king and his army to Italy and ﬁnes for infractions

of laws. All the rights of the sovereign were declared imprescriptible, with no re-

gard, therefore, being paid to the time-honoured customs of Italy, except where

their precise content was explicitly granted in royal conﬁrmatory charters.