Historical Background of Dante 67
state. They strove with all the spiritual and worldly
weapons at their command to prevent the growth of any
political power in Italy superior to their own. If the Popes
themselves were not to be masters of a united Italy, nobody
else should.
This dog-in-the-manger policy had been that of the
papacy for ages, even from the time when the Lombards,
filing over the Julian Alps, had wrenched the valley of the
Po, the valley of the Arno, and parts of central and
southern Italy from the weakening grip of the sore beset
emperors of the Eastern Roman Empire seated at Con-
stantinople. But the Lombards, unfortunately for the peace
of Italy, were not quite strong enough to seize the entire
peninsula. The Pope was able to maintain a practical in-
dependence up and down the basin of the Tiber, while the
cities of the southern coasts, controlled by the sea-power of
Constantinople, remained under the Eastern Empire. Italy
was thus broken up into three sections, of which the Lom-
bards controlled the northern, the Popes the central section,
running diagonally across the peninsula and reaching some-
times to Ravenna, while the southern third was largely in
the hands of the Eastern Emperors, who also retained con-
trol of Sicily. The mastery of the northern and southern
portions changed hands many times, but the Popes through
fair and foul weather always maintained their hold on the
central strip or some portion of it.
In the early days when the Lombards threatened to take
Rome, the papal policy discovered protectors in the distant
Frankish kings. These rulers destroyed the Lombard
dynasty, annexed the Lombard kingdom, and greatly in-
creased the territorial power of the papacy. Then the
papacy, claiming the right to depose and elect emperors,
declared the throne of the empire vacant, and conferred the
Imperial title upon the greatest of the Frankish kings,