century established a network of regular, state-controlled convoys of galleys: to the Black Sea (where both Venice and Genoa established colonies), to Syria, Egypt, the North African coast from Tangier to the Straits of Gibraltar, Marseilles, Aigues-Mortes, Barcelona. They had gained total control of the Adriatic and effective control of much more. Salt and grain were transported in the eastern Mediterranean under Venetian monopoly. Venice was closely rivalled by Genoa, but between them the Italians had a virtual monopoly of traffic with the east, and it was quite natural that exploration further afield should follow. Voyages such as those of the Polos were surprisingly common. It was also quite natural that, with Italy at the hub of international trade, it should also be in the vanguard of technological development. The production of glass in the west reached its height in Venice--for tableware, spectacles, and windows; paper was first manufactured regularly in the west at Fabriano; the mechanical clock was an Italian invention; even 'Arabic' numerals were introduced to Europe through an Italian mathematician.

Throughout this development Italy remained profoundly turbulent. The cities were notorious for their instability while continuing to astonish the world, and successive historians, with their brilliance and inventiveness. The word precocious is apt. They were not 'bourgeois' or revolutionary, though in some of their social conflicts and 'pre-capitalistic' innovations they signpost the future. Civic pride achieved much, yet in many ways remained deeply conservative. Of the many writers who exalt civic ideals and virtues while describing the less exalted behaviour of actual flesh-and-blood citizens, perhaps the one who best sums up this mass of contradictions is the poet Dante Alighieri. Dante's writings are an irrepressible commentary on both the ideals and the shortcomings of the age. A Florentine citizen active in the political turmoil of the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries before being banished from his native town, Dante had been reared in the Florentine civic tradition, and in the Tuscan language and literary tradition which he did so much to develop. His interests ranged over many theoretical disciplines--philosophy, theology,

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