equally be contrasted by the trade of Venice--which adapted rapidly to the Turkish shadow, partly by establishing commercial relations with them and partly by expanding other, Near-Eastern routes through which links with the east could continue; or that of Lombardy, where trade links with northern Europe were improving, and new products such as silk and rice were being developed. Again, the evidence points to qualitative changes and geographical shifts, of which specific crises are perhaps symptoms.

Whether or not the Italian economy was yet in decline, it is clear enough that in the fourteenth century the peninsula threatened to be overwhelmed by its political problems. The Guelph alliance was now coming under great strain. The papacy was out of Italy, though it had to be a priority to make the way safe for a return to Rome, the fount of its authority. In Naples the death of Robert of Anjou plunged the kingdom into over a century of unrelenting instability as barons and outsiders fought to influence a succession of weak kings and queens. The other eminent partner of the alliance, Florence, increasingly bore the burden and resented the cost and instability of the quagmire of the political scene in the papal states. Strangely it was during the period of absence that the papacy took the first serious steps towards the pacification of these states, with the career of the cardinal and general Gil Albornoz. Peace treaties were drawn up and the aspirations of some of the signori of the region were recognized by the establishment of vicariates, a useful innovation. Yet the pacification soon came up against the limits of what was possible. The weak point was the northern border of the states, and particularly the strategically placed town of Bologna, over which the Florentines and the popes eventually fell out. The War of the Eight Saints, in which Florence incurred interdict and fought papal forces, was a low point. It culminated in a rebellion of some of Florence's poorly paid industrial workers, the ciompi, who briefly seized power in one of Europe's first clear examples of urban social revolution. Things were no better in northern Italy, where a succession of towns were taken over by rulers who attempted to found dynasties, with varying success and, as in the communal phase,

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