ESTABLISHMENT OF CITY-STATES
Charles of Angaweński, brother of Louis IX of France. defeated the heirs of Frederick II in southern Italy and received Naples and Sicily as a reward from the Pope. His tough rule eventually led to an uprising on Easter Monday 1282 r.. a rebellion later called the Sicilian Vespers, because approx 2000 occupation troops were murdered in Palermo at the sound of bells calling for disagreement. For the next twenty years, the French were at war with Peter of Aragon. who occupied Sicily and then planned for southern Italy.
As far as the empire was on the defensive, the state of the papacy was much worse. Knowing, that the military and financial power of the Pope is meager, King Philip of France sent his troops, to occupy his summer residence, exposing the old man to humiliation. Boniface died within a few weeks: his French successor. Clement V. soon he moved the seat of the papacy to Avignon
The declining power of the great powers was accompanied by the growing autonomy of cities. W 1300 r. from central Italy to the northern tip of the peninsula stretched a wide strip of about three hundred practically independent city-states. By the middle of the century, Europe's population had been decimated by the Black Death — brought to the continent on a Genoese ship returning from the Black Sea — but the city-states survived., and developed a concept of citizenship completely different from the feudal relationship between the master and the vassal. At the end of the fourteenth century, richer and more influential states absorbed smaller centers, and four have come to the fore. They were: The knees (controlling the Ligurian coast), Florence (ruling over Tuscany). Milan, in whose sphere of influence was Lombardy and large areas of central Italy . and Venice. Smaller Principalities, such as Mantua or Ferrara, they supported mercenary armies and protected themselves from attacks by building impregnable palaces-fortresses.
The relentless struggle between the property classes prompted the citizens to assume the supreme power of one signore. to put an end to the bloodshed between warring clans. A despotic form of government has developed, sanctioned by official titles given by the emperor or pope, and in the fifteenth century, most of the city-states were already under princely sovereignty, not Republican. To the south of the divided peninsula was the Kingdom of Naples; The State of the Church stretched from Rome to present-day March. Umbria and Romagna; Siena. Florence. Modena, Mantua and Ferrara were independent states, like the Duchy of Milan and the maritime republics of Venice and Genoa, with such independent enclaves, like Lucca or Rimini.
Commercial, the secular city-states of the late medieval period became fertile ground for the Renaissance, when city entrepreneurs (such as the Medici) and the only ruler (tacy jak Federico da Montefeltro) they financed the works of architecture to their own glory, painting and sculpture. It was also a period, in which the Tuscan dialect - the language of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccia - became the literary language of Italy, to later take over as the official spoken language of the country.
In the mid-15th century. five most powerful countries - Naples, papacy, Milan and the republics of Venice and Florence - concluded an unwritten agreement to maintain the then balance of power. 0 however, how long this balance was maintained in the territory of the country, the history of each of the independent Italian states was entangled in the political activities of other European countries.