OTHER MARITIME CITIES
[589-1229 A.D.]
The first magistrate of the republics of Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi bore likewise the title of doge. These three cities, forgotten by the Greek emperors, and receiving no aid from them, still held by the ties of commerce to Greece. The inhabitants had devoted themselves with ardour to navigation; they trafficked in the Levant, and covered southern Italy with its rich merchandise. The country situated beyond the Tiber had been exposed to fewer invasions than upper Italy. It had not, however, entirely escaped. A Lombard chief entered it in 589, and founded the great duchy of Benevento, which comprehended nearly the whole southern part of the peninsula. This dukedom maintained itself independent of the kingdom of the Lombards at Pavia, and had not been involved in its fall. It defended itself with valour against Charlemagne and his successors, who attempted its conquest; but in 839, at the end of a civil war, it was divided into the three principalities of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua. The Saracens had established colonies, in the year 828, in Sicily, which till then had been subject to the Greek Empire; these Saracens, a few years afterwards, passed into southern Italy. The three republics of Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi preserved their independence by exciting enmity between the Lombards and Saracens, who equally menaced them; but these barbarians soon sank into the languor produced by the charms of a southern climate. It seemed as if they had no longer courage to risk a life to which so many enjoyments were attached. When they fought, it was with effeminacy; and they hastened the termination of every war to plunge again into the voluptuous ease from which it had roused them. The citizens of the republics had the advantage over them of walls and defiles; and without being braver than the Lombards, maintained their independence against them for six centuries.
[936-1195 A.D.]
The republic of Pisa, which vainly sought to save from ruin these first Italian republics of the Middle Ages, was a city which navigation and commerce had enriched. Genoa, which soon became its rival, had escaped the pillage of these northern conquerors, and had preserved a constant intercourse with Constantinople and with Syria, from whence the citizens brought the rich merchandise which they afterwards dispersed throughout Lombardy. The Pisans and Genoese, invigorated by a seafaring life, were accustomed to defend with the sword the merchandise which they conveyed from one extremity to the other of the Mediterranean. They were often in conflict with the Saracens, like them addicted to maritime commerce, to which these last frequently added piracy. The Saracens pillaged Genoa in the year 936. In 1004 they entered a suburb of Pisa, and again invested that city in the year 1011. Their colonies in Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Isles constantly menaced Italy. The Pisans, seconded by the Genoese, in their turn attacked Sardinia, in the year 1015; but completed the conquest only in 1050. They established colonies there, and divided it into fiefs between the most illustrious families of Pisa and Genoa. They also conquered the Balearic Isles from the Saracens, between the years 1114 and 1116.[e] The Pisan fleet of three hundred sail, commanded by the archbishop Pietro Moriconi, attacked the Balearic Isles, where as many as twenty thousand Christians were said to be held captive by the Moslems, and returned loaded with spoil and with a multitude of Christian and Moslem prisoners. The former were set at liberty or ransomed, and among the latter was the last descendant of the reigning dynasty. The chief eunuch, who had governed Majorca, perished in the siege. Immediately afterwards the fourteen years’ war with Genoa broke out. The two republics contested the dominion of the sea, and both claimed supreme power over the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. A papal edict awarding the supremacy of Corsica to the Pisan church proved sufficient cause for the war, which went on from 1118 to 1132. Then Innocent II transferred the supremacy over part of Corsica to the Genoese church, and compensated Pisa by grants in Sardinia and elsewhere. Accordingly, to gratify the pope and the emperor Lothair II, the Pisans entered the Neapolitan territory to combat the Normans. They aided in the vigorous defence of the city of Naples, and twice attacked and pillaged Amalfi, in 1135 and 1137, with such effect that the town never regained its prosperity. It has been said that the copy of the Pandects then taken by the Pisans from Amalfi was the first known to them, but in fact they were already acquainted with those laws. The war with Genoa never came to a real end. Even after the retaking of Jerusalem by the Moslems (1187), the Pisans and Genoese again met in conflict in the East, and performed many deeds of valour. They were always ready to come to blows, and gave still more signal proofs of their enmity during the Sicilian war in behalf of the emperor Henry VI. There could be no lasting peace between these rival powers until the one or the other should be crushed.[l]
When, towards the end of the eleventh century, the western world took up the dispute with the Saracens for the sepulchre of Jesus Christ, Venice, Pisa, and Genoa had already reached a high point of commercial power; these three cities had more vessels on the Mediterranean than the whole of Christendom besides. They seconded the crusaders with enthusiasm. They provisioned them when arrived off the coast of Syria, and kept up their communication with the West. The Venetians assert that they sent a fleet of two hundred vessels, in the year 1099, to second the First Crusade. The Pisans affirm that their archbishop Daimbert, who was afterwards patriarch of Jerusalem, passed into the East with one hundred and twenty vessels. The Genoese claim only twenty-eight galleys and six vessels; but all concurred with equal zeal in the conquest of the Holy Land; and the three maritime republics obtained important privileges, which they preserved as long as the kingdom of Jerusalem lasted.[e]