kingdom, transferred to the Franks in 800, was the kingdom founded by the Lombards; while the outlying and unconquered districts were placed beneath the protectorate of the power which had guided their emancipation.  Thus the dualism introduced into Italy by Theodoric’s veneration for Rome, and confirmed by the failure of the Lombard conquest, was ratified in the settlement whereby the Pope gave a new Empire to Western Christendom.  Venice, Pisa, Genoa, and the maritime Republics of the south, excluded from the kingdom, were left to pursue their own course of independence; and this is the chief among many reasons why they rose so early into prominence.  Rome consolidated her ancient patrimonies and extended her rectorship in the center, while the Frankish kings, who succeeded each other through eight reigns, developed the Regno upon feudal principles by parceling the land among their Counts.  New marches were formed, traversing the previous Lombard fabric and introducing divisions that decentralized the kingdom.  Thus the great vassals of Ivrea, Verona, Tuscany, and Spoleto raised themselves against Pavia.  The monarchs, placed between the Papacy and their ambitious nobles, were unable to consolidate the realm; and when Berengar, the last independent sovereign strove to enforce the declining authority of Pavia, he was met with the resistance and the hatred of the nation.

The kingdom Berengar attempted to maintain against his vassals and the Church was virtually abrogated by Otho I., whom the Lombard nobles summoned into Italy in 951.  When he reappeared in 961, he was crowned Emperor at Rome, and assumed the title of the King of Italy.  Thus the Regno was merged in the Empire, and Pavia ceased to be a capital.  Henceforth the two great potentates in the peninsula were an unarmed Pontiff and an absent Emperor.  The subsequent history of the Italians shows how they succeeded in reducing both these powers to the condition of principles, maintaining the pontifical and imperial ideas, but repelling the practical authority of either potentate.  Otho created new marches and gave them to men of German origin.  The houses of Savoy and Montferrat rose into importance in his reign.  To Verona were intrusted the passes between Germany and Italy.  The Princes of Este at Ferrara held the keys of the Po, while the family of Canossa accumulated fiefs that stretched from Mantua across the plain of Lombardy, over the Apennines to Lucca, and southward to Spoleto.  Thus the ancient Italy of Lombards and Franks was superseded by a new Italy of German feudalism, owing allegiance to a suzerain whose interests detained him in the provinces beyond the Alps.  At the same time the organization of the Church was fortified.  The Bishops were placed on an equality with the Counts in the chief cities, and Viscounts were created to represent their civil jurisdiction.  It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of Otho’s concessions to the Bishops.  During the preceding