However, even while the royal Italy was resolved in the municipalities, and the south took on its own monarchical face, and the force of unity represented in the north and a little also in the south by the kingdom, which was the creation of the ‘Germanic invaders; there were growing signs of moral unity, blossoming over the common Roman, Christian and Germanic background.
Not only was religious unity reconstituted, after the Saracens of Sicily were expelled or converted, after the Byzantine dominion ceased and the progress of their rite and their clergy stopped and Calabria and the Land of Otranto were brought closer to Rome; but common elements of culture also emerged, more truly proper and characteristic of the peoples of the peninsula. A Romanesque or vernacular language was being formed, which was the language spoken in general already in the century. X and now it was beginning to visibly sprinkle from the thin envelope of the Latin of the documents, no longer able to contain it. No less visible and significant, from the eleventh century onwards, an architectural flourishing that is expressed in similar forms, in every region, from Lombardy to Puglia. It is Romanesque art. And together, Roman law that powerfully returns, in the things themselves before and even more than in the studies. And it is not only the unconscious rebirth of Roman law, identified with life: but also the study of it. It had never been interrupted, even in the centers of Lombard law, Pavia or Benevento, as it was useful for the elaboration of Lombard law itself as well as that of church law. Now, after Pavia, after Benevento, after Ravenna and Rome and Pisa, Bologna advances with Irnerio, almost the founder of that studio. In short, the name, the image of Rome are getting bigger every day: Rome freedom, Rome greatness, Rome empire, Rome law and order. It had prepared the renovatio imperii of the tenth and eleventh centuries; now it accompanies the further progress of Italian society and the new political order. Faced with the papal party which tended to devalue profane Rome, imperial Rome, contrasting it with the Rome of martyrs and confessors, watered and fertilized by their blood, now the nascent laity, the cities, especially the major ones, also refer to the Profane Rome, to the city of Rome. According to TRAVELATIONARY.COM, there is news, in Rome and abroad, of a great interest in the ancient monuments and also in the history of the city, especially from its origins.
It is an almost general fact, in Roman-Germanic Europe and beyond, this re-emergence of Rome, after the phase of invasions, of the superimposition of the Germanic peoples to the Roman or Romanized ones, of the mixing of lineages: how could Rome provide the model and the example of the most conscious creative endeavor of a new civilization, which is now beginning. But it is made especially Italian. It is also explained, in Italy, as a reaction to the activity of the Germans, from Otto I onwards: political-military activity of kings and emperors; political-church of German bishops placed on Italian chairs. The struggle for investitures made this activity more frequent and intense; he put even more the citizenships adhering to the reform party against those bishops, imposed from above and not canonically elected to clergy and people. Therefore, a frequent collision which also excited, on both sides, the national spirit, gave some impulse to the nascent national conscience, that is to say it confronted Germans and Italians as such. During those church-political struggles, the Germans began to cling to the empire as a thing of their own and to see in the papacy an institution of Latins, of Italians. Rome, for its part, through Gregory and then the successor, identifies, in moments of struggle, the empire and the Germans, recalls in front of them the memory of the ancient Germans and of the ancient offenses, nourishes in the Italians the sense of their national individuality and common interests vis-à-vis others.
It is also worth noting, in this time, a movement, an exchange of various influences, a life of relationship that are becoming more and more intense within the peninsula. Something goes from Romagna to Tuscany. in terms of juridical institutes and judiciary. The Byzantine Mezzogiorno gives the north texts of law and various elements of culture: and the legend of the Pandects found in Amalfi and brought to Pisa, from which the study of Roman law would have risen, must have a meaning. The consuls, which a letter of Gregory VII found in Corsica, could be a Pisan import, as well as the beautiful polychrome churches that in the century. XII begin to rise in the two islands. If from Bologna the new school of law radiates already in the middle of the century. XII his action on a large part of Italy, including from the court of the Norman kings, in Palermo, literary and scientific influences spread. No less visible is the circulation of practical activities within the peninsula: they are Lombard knights who mix in the southern guerrilla of the century. XI; they are Pisans and Genoese who are their first settlements in the maritime cities of Sicily, an important base for trade with the East and North Africa or who promote the emergence of new castles and inhabited centers in Sardinia. Of course, the political revolution is accompanied by a freer movement of activities and interests, a freer movement of men and of activities from one region of the peninsula to the other.
And also from the peninsula to the outside. In the second half of the eleventh century, the frequency of Italian merchants in France must have greatly increased. Towards Germany, new Alpine roads begin to open in the 10th century. XII. Master builders and stonecutters already swarm to the countries of France and Germany and even further away: as, between the century. X and XI, William of Vulpiano who sets out on a journey to Burgundy, leading a small expedition which includes men litteris well ruditi and men diversorum operum magisterio docti. The East and North Africa, so far beaten only by Venetians, Amalfitans and other southern Italians, are now also populated by Tuscans and Ligurians. Their naval expeditions to those countries during the century. XI, added to the others carried out in Sardinia and Corsica, mark after the fragmentary but effective and sometimes victorious resistance of the Campani, Calabresi, Pugliesi against the infidels in the previous two centuries, the greatest reaction effort of the Italians for the reconquest of the dominion of the Mediterranean, already mastered by the Arabs: an effort that precedes and prepares the Crusades. They are certainly businesses with an economic-mercantile background. The Normans, on the other hand, also proposed political and territorial purposes in the countries facing Puglia and Sicily. The last representatives of the Greek and Arab domination had not yet abandoned the lands of the South, and Roberto il Guiscardo was already aiming at the Balkans, and beyond. And the first expedition to Albania dates back to 1081. At the same time Ruggiero aimed at Malta and Gozo and took them away from the Arabs, preparing more distant African conquests. Northern cities and Normans, with more of merchant purposes than those of conquerors, then participated in the first crusade. And some increased their trade and established new colonial nuclei, ordered like the motherland; the others acquired feudal lands and jurisdictions, competing with the French barons. Not many years passed, and a great Pisan expedition moved towards the Balearics. Likewise, Italians from various regions were present in Spain, in the century. XII, during the struggles of Christians against the Arabs: present as soldiers, pilots, craftsmen, builders of war machines, merchants. The Genoese were now clearly oriented in that direction.
In short, the peninsula is once again becoming a center of action capable of radiating around. Nor only papal and church action, marked not a little by Romanism; but also economic and artistic, political and military; also of real culture (remember in the 10th and 11th centuries Gunzone, Lanfranco di Pavia, Anselmo d’Aosta, etc., to mention only those who carry out their activities outside the peninsula, in whole or in part): although these are not yet, in Italy, times of eminent culture. However, this action, as it bears certain common signs, thus helps to strengthen the common elements of Italian life, to nourish in the Italians that feeling of moral unity that also came to them from the memories of Rome and from the now common heritage of the reborn culture.
