LECTURE XXX.

Of the history of Italy and Sicily from the year 1308, to the commencement of the papacy of Leo X. in the year 1513.

THE consideration of that political combination, which comprehended the two principal governments of Europe, those of France and England, having been prosecuted to the sixteenth century, I return, as before, to the examination of that other combination of states, which was composed of Italy and the German empire; and shall first analyse the political changes of the Italian peninsula and the adjacent island of Sicily, which occurred within the same period of time. This lecture shall accordingly continue the review of the histo

ries of Italy and Sicily from the commencement of the fourteenth century, where it was before suspended, to the pontificate of Leo X, which began early in the sixteenth.

The portion of history which I propose to examine on the present occasion, is extremely interesting in various views, as it displays the noblest efforts of the commercial industry of Italy, as it exhibits the revival of literature and the finer arts, and more especially as it presents to us the first tendencies of that adjustment of independent governments in the relations of international policy, which was afterwards perfected into a system of general equilibrium comprehending all the nations of Europe. This last is however the only consideration, of which I now propose to treat. The commercial history of Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the restoration of the refinements of literature and art, which distinguished this period of its annals, belong to other parts of my general subject, and shall be reviewed in other lectures; but the mutual relation of that combination of Italy and the German empire, which is now to be considered, had for its grand result this generation of a federative or international policy, which was first formed among the numerous governments of Italy, and was then extended through Europe by various ramifications of political interests, connecting these

governments with the other countries of the west. My present subject is therefore limited to an examination of the political history of Italy with the adjacent island of Sicily in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and I expect to be able to prove, that (a) all its arrangements directly tended to the formation, or to the extension, of a system of political equilibrium.

It has been remarked in the sixth lecture, that the existence of the singular authority exercised by the papal see, required that the country in which it should be established, should be so divided between rival powers, that none should be found capable of repressing the pretensions of the ecclesiastical principality. Some kind of balance of political interests was therefore generally the condition of Italy from the commencement of the kingdom of the Lombards, when the peninsula was divided between that people and the subjects of the eastern empire, and the papal power first began to assert its importance. When the Lombards had been overthrown by Charlemagne, and a new empire comprehending the papacy was erected in the west, the balance of Italian interests still continued to be maintained by the same division of the country and when the imperial dignity had been transferred from France to Germany,

* Vol. 1. p. 307.

and this other power was pressing hard upon the independence of the pontiff, a special support was provided by the establishment of the Normans in the south of Italy, by which the papal see was enabled to maintain its faction of the Guelfs against the imperial faction of the Ghibelins. Though such a struggle was very different from that regulated system of equilibrium among numerous governments, which constitutes what is denominated a balance of power, it was yet preparatory to the formation of such a system, as it tended to dispose its several governments to seek occasional support in their mutual connections; these connections however were temporary and variable, and did not give being to those intimate and settled relations, which are essential to the balancing system.

The two powers, which thus maintained the great strife of the Italian factions, were at length successively removed from the field of contention, when the factions had been sufficiently matured, and were able to continue the conflict without support. The authority of the empire was first annihilated, and the papal see was then removed beyond the Alps; and though the latter was restored to Italy after the lapse of sixty-eight years, yet (b) the great schism, which was begun two years afterwards, and was concluded only in the year 1429, continued to pa