[541] Leo estimates that as early as the reign of Louis the Pious the Church owned about one-third of the land of Italy. Cp. B. iii, cc. 1, 3, as to the process.
[542] Names derived from the German Welf (or Wölf) and Waiblingen; Italianised as Guelfo and Ghibellino. Waiblingen was the name of a castle in the diocese of Augsburg belonging to the Salian or Franconian emperors, the descendants of Conrad the Salic, Welf was a family name of the Dukes of Bavaria and Saxony, who constantly resisted the predominance of the emperors, both of the Franconian and the Hohenstaufen lines. The names seem to have become war-cries in Italy about the end of the twelfth century. In Florence they appear first in 1239. Villari, Two First Centuries, p. 181, note.
[543] Sismondi, Short History, p. 81.
[544] As to the relations of successive popes in the Dark Ages—each cancelling the acts of his predecessor—see Sismondi, Républiques, i, 142; Gregorovius, as last cited, and passim.
[545] Prof. Butler (Communes of Lombardy, p. 231), credits the Italians with having acquired, as a result of the perpetual wars of the cities, "a breadth of view and a vigour of mind unknown among the urban populations of other lands." How can "breadth of view" in politics be ascribed to communities whose unending strifes finally brought them all under despotism?
[546] Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, l. ii. The seven major arti were (1) the judges and notaries; (2) the dealers in French cloths; (3) the money-changers; (4) the wool traders; (5) the physicians and apothecaries; (6) the silk dealers and mercers; and (7) the furriers.
[547] Pignotti, Hist. of Tuscany, Eng. trans. iii, 260.
[548] H. Scherer, Allgemeine Geschichte des Welthandels, 1852, i, 337, 338.
[549] Cp. Symonds, Age of the Despots, ed. 1897, pp. 26-27.
[550] Villari, Two First Centuries, p. 310; Hallam, Introd. to Literature of Europe, ed. 1872, i, 8, 16, 19, 71, 77, 78. But see p. 74 as to the stimulus from Italy in the eleventh century. Cp. Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, B. viii, Kap. vii, § i (Bd. iv, 604-605), as to the primitive state of mental life in Rome in the twelfth century, and the resort of young nobles to Paris for education.