74 Dante Sexcentenary Lectures
magnificent revenge he took upon Boniface in the “Inferno”
by burying him head downward in a pit in hell and torturing
him to all eternity with balls of fire placed with nice ex-
actitude upon the soles of his projecting and wildly strug-
gling feet.
Thus far we have sketched the main outlines of the
historical development of two of the three sections, the
central and southern, into which was divided the political
Italy of Dante’s time. It now remains to say something of
the conditions which prevailed during this same period in
the third and northern section, the section which contained
the great cities of the Lombard plain in the valley of the
Po, and the cities of Tuscany in the valley of the Arno.
The story of these cities is an epic which relates the
gradual revival of commerce and industry after the havoc
and destruction wrought in the complex structure of Roman
society by the various barbarian hordes that broke into
Italy during the fifth and sixth centuries, the last of which
were the Lombards. It was not till the eleventh century
that the cities began to raise their heads. But then the mid-
dle classes, vigorously developing a reviving manufacture
and trade, began to organize for the furtherance of their
own particular interests. They had foes a-plenty, and the
story of the succeeding centuries is a record of a continuous
and increasingly successful struggle with one or other of
these foes.
The first of these in most cases was the foe within their
gates, the bishop of the city. The bishop, in the dark days
of the Invasions, had been the staff and prop of the com-
munity, and the guidance of the city passed imperceptibly
and naturally into his hands. But as the numbers, wealth,
intelligence, and organized, self-conscious power of the mer-
chant class increased, they fretted under the restrictions of