Italy in the Middle Ages

Well, I am certainly not the best person to answer anything Italy related. I can give some general information that you probably already know. (sorry)

Italy began the Middle Ages (476 AD) as the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths. It was the direct successor of the renmants of the West Roman Empire in all but name. The borders stretched from Sicily in the south, to Noricum in the north, and Bosniat in the east. Although there were some tensions with the native Romans, the German elite kept things pretty stable, adopting much of the Roman culture. This ended when Justinian I, under the guise of re-instating the mother of a deposed child (correct? I'm working from memory here.), sent his general Belasarius to re-incorporate Italia into the the real Roman Empire. This Gothic War was to last for many decades in the early to mid 6th century. Justinian was ultimately successful, but the war had badly damaged the infrastructure that was built during classic times. Rome had lost its many aquaducts that supplied the city with valuable clean water and within a few decades would shrink from perhaps 60-70,000 to around 30,000. In the late 6th century the Lombards, a small Germanic tribe who had acted as a mercenary force iduring invasion, took advantage of the power vacuum after Justinian's death and invaded Italy. They were unable to preform large-scale seiges on fortified cities (which were fast becoming smaller towns by then), but they were able to carve out small kingdoms throughout the Po Valley and Central Italy, minus the Tiber River....

Someone take if from there.

The independent city-states of northern Italy assumed their form partly by building on their urban Roman traditions of civil administration and partly by taking advantage of the abscence of a strong central power following the process of feudal disintegration in the 10th and 11th centuries. You could also add geographic location as a factor for certain trading and naval powers like Venice, Genoa, Pisa and Amalfi.

Despite attempts by the German Emperor to gain control of this ancestral Roman land, the city-states were able to remain independent in all things significant even during the reigns of strong Emperors like Otto I and Frederick Barbarossa. This had to do with the strength of the cities' internal organization, some could field comparatively large and well-trained militias, as well as their ability to join together should the threat be great enough, the Lombard League that opposed Barbarossa is an example of this.

In medieval Europe they consituted a unique form of political entity, the independent city-state republic. This type of political entity proved, as history makes evident, quite successful in the middle ages. Their downfall occured soon afterwards though, with the emergence of the so-called condottiere-model of military organization that prevailed in early modern Europe. The condottieres, mercenary generals, served many of the Italian city-states, eventually staging coup-de-etats in several. This ended the age of city-state republics and made northern Italy into a land of lordships governed by the descendants of these condottiere families, one notable exception is Florence, which fell under the influence not of a condottiere but a banker family, the Medici. The most famous condottiere family is probably the Visconti, who first gained control of Milan and then Genoa.

This state of affairs lasted, somewhat interrupted by Austrian and French interventions, until the age of the Italian unification where the whole peninsula was united under the king Vittori Emmanuel II.
    

Edited by Reginmund - 14-Sep-2006 at 08:49

Some of the German Emperors excerted more influence than others, so this is a fluctuating development. In any case the great lordships of Germany and the city-states of Italy were quite different both in size and shape.

Originally posted by Reginmund Some of the German Emperors excerted more influence than others, so this is a fluctuating development.

Originally posted by gcle2003 Hamburg, L�beck, Danzig vs Milan, Florence?   Or the Sicilies, the Papal states vs Bavaria, Saxony?

If the comparison pleases you, but they remain quite different both in culture and political structure.


Edited by Reginmund - 15-Sep-2006 at 12:33