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Gaul Cisalpine or Hither Gaul is the name given by the Romans in the Republican era to the territories of northern Italy between the Adige River to the East, the Alps to the west and to the north and the Rubicon in the South. The Po divided the region into Gaul and Gaul Transpadana Cispadana. These were the areas that correspond to the current Po valley, around the great river Po, including the territories of Liguria to the south-west, until the current Veneto in its northeastern part. The region became a Roman province, however, including all the territories west of the river Adige, to the Piedmont Alps.
The culture of Italy Canegrate was a prehistoric civilization that developed from the Bronze recent (thirteenth century BC) up to the Iron Age, in the Po valley in western Lombardy, eastern Piedmont and Ticino . It represents the arrival of a first wave of migration of populations probably Celtic (Protocelti) from the north of the Alps, which exceeded the Alpine passes, infiltrate and settle in the Po Valley West. From the archaeological evidence found can be deduced that the impact with the populations found not to have been entirely peaceful.
The Culture of Golant spread, between the Late Bronze Age and the early Iron Age in the area between the north-western Lombardy and Piedmont, including the Canton of Ticino. At the end of the prehistoric era and the area was a transit point of contact with the Hallstatt culture in the west, with that of the Fields of Urns in the continental north and south with the Villanovan civilization. Initially concentrated in the foothills and then dilagati in the whole area of the lakes here developed several housing districts of an original culture, whose oldest finds are available today dating from the ninth century BC
The population of Canegrate maintained its homogeneity for a limited period of time, about a century later to merge with indigenous peoples in Liguria and with this union give rise to a new phase called culture of Golant.
Livy reports that around 600 B.C. ( Tarquinio Prisco reigning Romae ) , a horde of Gauls led by Belloveso crossed the Alps and occupied the territory between Milan and Cremona ( founding the city of Mediolanum ) , identifying the locals , the Insubres , Gauls with these invaders . In the Periplus of Scylax of Scylax of Carianda , traveler and geographer greek active in between 522-485 BC attested to the presence of Celtic-speaking peoples settled in the north -east . The text, rewritten about a century later by the pseudo - Silace after the loss of the original, tells of the journey along the coast of the Mediterranean made ​​by the traveler greek describing the Celtic tribes along the coast just to the South of the settlements of the Venetians at a time that, considering the known dates of the life of Silace , should be around 490 BC
The review of archaeological sources , in particular the right step by Livio documenting the arrival of Belloveso and its Insubri back to the reign of Tarquinius Priscus ( sixth century BC), with the founding of Milan, he had to place the Celtic presence in Italy at least the seventh century BC if not before. The presence of the Celts in Northern Italy is , then , prior to the waves of invaders mentioned by the sources, so that the same Pallottine subalpine argued that Italy had been involved "in the same primary process of ethno- linguistic definition of the Celtic nation.
Germanic blood in Cisalpine:
Stendhal wrote , introducing the essay Historie de la peinture en Italie describes , in the blood, the origins of our civilization painting : " You know , about the year 400 of our era, the inhabitants of Germany and Russia, namely men freer, more adventurous , more cruel in history , had the idea to come to live in France and Italy . / Here's an aspect of their character. / Harold , king of Denmark, having founded on the coast of Pomerania name of a city or Jomsburg Julin , you had sent a colony of young Danes led by one of his warriors , Palna - Toke . / This governor , says the story , categorically forbade that could decide the word fear , even in the most danger imminent . a citizen of Jomsburg could never yield to the number for which it was overwhelming : he had to fight to the last breath , not a step back . Neither the prospect of certain death was an excuse .
Moeller van den Bruck was to write against Burckhardt , who saw the Italian art of the Renaissance , culminating in the moment , he places the apogee of " classicism" in Italian ' Italian- Germanentum , between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Italian beauty , he writes, was born in Tuscany Etruscan , from which has recently invaded the Rome of the Popes , the Byzantine Ravenna subject to the Goths , the Germanic Lombardy and Sicily Moorish . And ' the result of the marriage between " a spirit Tuscan original " resurgent Germanic influences and Germanic influences yet still flourishing , it can be defined as the result of a balance between the plasma and the Germanic Tuscan karma , the result of a balance between a life uomori overflowing with creative and principles of order not yet become conventional and "civilized .
Particular character of extravagance ( sic ! ) Have the thesis contained in two works by Woltmann The Germans The Germans in Italy and in France. The central idea is the same: for all nations " the value of civilization depends on the amount of blond race that they contain ." Vien remembered the blond race of Heracles , who had come to Sparta from the North. Vien remembered the testimony of Tacitus , the Roman decadence iniziatasi about the shortage of blond men . But most of all is an analysis to show that the Renaissance is a matter of race , it is far less the result of a rediscovery of classical antiquity that is not of Germanic blood transfusion in an otherwise barren substance ; ensure that all the noble families to all major cities in Italian and French cities , all the names of the most representative of the Italian and French civilization would be of Germanic origin, in the same way that the latter always in their facial features betray any of anthropological characters of the dolichocephalic blond.
On the subject of Germanization , we can mention some ancient writings , that could be an example , to confirm that the process of appropriation of the ancient Germans :
The storco Umbrian Bianconi reports in a publication, that in 990 Emperor Otto III , having to remunerate some barons " Teutonic " , gives them the lands of Deruta with the title of nobiles de Deruta .
In a document dated 1070 states a strong protest by the monks of St. Flora ( City Castle ) , against bullying and encroachments of the Lombards Barbolani , from which it follows that even in the year 1070, three hundred years after their defeat , the gangs of arimanni Longobarde still gave annoyance to the prelates .
A document of 1184 speaks of the Goths in Treviso , Boccaccio, who in his day was a true journalist , he describes the '300 Treviso , in the first day of the second story , where the square is full of Germans and other armed men , the which the lord of this land , so that rumors do not do, makes you feel ... the Germans he noticed the square of Treviso had come to the esaquie a certain Arrigo , their countryman , and almost certainly came from the hilly areas in north of the city like Asolo and Vittorio Veneto, where at that time minorities Lombard still spoke their own dialect of German .
In a chronicle of Brescia states that a witness for the year 769 a legal Goto, named " Stavila " citizen Bresciano , drew up an act according to the law of the Goths , and another in 1045 , also in Brescia , in which a certain " Obezo de Vico Enjoy " declared to live according to the laws of the Gothic law .
This goes to show that the Goths were left in Brescia long after their " elimination" .
Documents of this kind are to be found in tons .. !
THE CHANGE OF PSYCHO SOMATIC CHARACTERS OF ITALIAN ( Gualtiero Ciola )
The English historian Edward Gibbon wrote in 1774 in his <Storia of the Decline and Fall of the Romano> , speaking of the population of the Roman empire low : <... the stature of the people was more and more small and the Roman world was in fact inhabited by a multitude of dwarfs, giants broke when the North and the improved seed ... >
O. Seck in his <Storia the end of the world antico> believed , not without reason, that the Roman people in the decadence , had the facial features and stature in a somatic spiccamente Semitic .
After these premises , there is no one who can deny the change that occurred in the population at the time of migration - Italica ( invasions , I might add) Germanic in stature, that even now is, at least in northern Italy , equal to that of Southern Germany , and the facial features , where the color blue , gray, green and hazel eyes is compared to the black majority .
Even the blond hair is relatively rare, given that even in Germany and Scandinavia in the same are no longer the majority.
The latest statistics give 37% of the average height of a young Italian north - European level : thanks to improved dietary and food conditions , the values ​​are inherited are again highlighted , revealing , with this percentage , what must have been the contribution Nordic blood of the whole peninsula.
The first writer who saw the strictly anthropological connection between the Germans and the great geniuses of the Renaissance
was H.S. Chamberlain, who in his <Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts> (1899) , he said, a little too simplistically , that the protagonists of the cultural revival of Italy had the kind of psycho -somatic own Germanic tribe , and that they were the descendants of the Goths and of the Lombards immigrants.
Even more clearly the Schnaase in its <Geschichte der Bildender Kunst> , said the extent of the influence of the German psyche in the history of Italian culture ; L. Wilfer in 1895 has recognized the fundamental demonstration of the difference between the populations of prosottasi ' Northern Italy densely colonized by the Lombards and other Germans, and those of the southern provinces .
Germanization of the Po Valley:
The arrival of Germanic tribes in the Po Valley in Cisalpine and has a very long history and very diversified . It begins with the first great Germanic migration towards southern Europe that is of the Cimbri and the Teutons , attracted by the stories of the Celts and their legendary looting that had come up in Greece even destroying the temple of the oracle of Delphi. The Germans , probably encouraged by some particularly cold winters of the period, they walked towards the valley of the Danube clashing for the first time with the Romans in the bloody battle of Noreia (113 BC) near present-day Vienna. The story is well known . The Germans were masters of the battlefield but failed to conquer the Roman camp .
They were certainly far superior in number to the Romans. Against heavy infantry and cavalry Roman Italic suffered harsh losses , so much so that they gave up to continue to the south and moved to the northwest in the direction of the Rhine and Gaul .
He began a long war of conquest of these territories that brought them to Spain , where they found again the Romans well entrenched in fortified towns that forced them to go over in Gaul. Here near Aurasio (today's Orange ) , in 106 BC , they clashed with the great Roman consular army consisting of about 80,000 men. Was largely composed of patrician families , knights and their followers families recruited for the last time with the system centuriato . The Germans were at least twice and won a total victory , but paid a heavy price .
In two successive battles to Acquae Sextiae (Aix les Bains) and fields Raudi at Vercelli , the Cimbri , the Teutons and the Ambrones were annihilated militarily. But the Romans made a huge number of prisoners, especially women and girls, a little less than 100,000 after the battle of Vercelli. All of these people , along with other captives taken in Gaul , were sold as slaves and scattered in the countryside of northern Italy where the new Latin and Roman settlements were in dire need of manpower. These Germans that seems to assimilate quickly to the Gauls , often reduced in these areas to the rank servile , forming a layer that was valuable in ethnic substantial remediation of the Po valley that the Romans carried on agricultural species with exceptional results . On the other hand , even in this area the Romans were few in number and recent losses in the war they had even more decreased in number . The gaps were filled in large part by German prisoners . It is evident that these soon had to speak the language of their masters as happened to the Celts .
But in Northern Italy were a contribution of fundamental importance to ethnic junta settled in the fertile plains that allowed them to live and multiply without any problems. To make the soldiers for another century and a half we thought almost exclusively Roman - Italic .
Even during the wars in Germany , at the turn of the Common Era , many prisoners were transferred to the Germans in northern Italy. Often they were not even slaves, but they were entrusted settlers semi-free land to cultivate . Their number is not known , but it is known that the Romans preferred to be employed as the Celts and Germans, excellent and diligent settlers , while considered slaves and prisoners of little value because the Eastern drones ( the Scythians and the Parthians in particular do not even wanted to gift because they are dangerous and absolutely incapable of working the land or buildings ) . These details should be kept in mind because the servile element in Rome and in Italy it was constituted in the vast majority populations of European origin , especially Celtic and Germanic Europe and the Balkans .
Many Germans were used as known in the army, especially among the Praetorian Guard , for their stature and physical strength. But they served their Praetorian Guard in Rome and Lazio. At the end of a few stops away returned to their birthplace and stopped in Italy , where he generally obtained as a small land clearance for the service provided. The Germans who settled in Italy in this way through several centuries were very many , especially in the late empire.
It should be emphasized here that the whole of North Italy and in particular the valley of the Po , with large land reclamation started with the Etruscans and then the Romans , it was no longer a semi abandoned and overgrown rich marshes and swamps , but it was slowly transformed into a vast region of fertile land and potentially very rich people who waited only able to put in cultivation. The original Celtic settlement and Venetians were allocated generally in hilly areas, or pre-Apennine foothills and , therefore, the foundations of the Roman cities newer and richer ( as Mantua, Forlinpopoli , Forli , Rimini , Senigallia , etc.). Were largely partially established on lands recently reclaimed in the lower valley of the Po These were the areas of large settlements occurred in the following centuries vulgar era , just because they are not
populated and potentially rich. These eventually become the richest areas of Italy ever. In this area the Celts and Germans settled in large numbers.
However, it can speak of a real Germanization of northern and central only after the conquest of the Goths of Theodoric. Meanwhile, they entered Italy after defeating an army entirely Germanic led by Odoacer .
The losers with their families , who now as all the Germans who arrive in Italy will move behind , scattered in the villages and in the countryside of northern Italy where they were no longer disturbed by the Goths. It was a large group of tribes of Eastern Goths , called " Ostgoten " that is, the Ostrogoths who , unlike the Western Goths or Visigoths ( finished in Spain) , had fought on the side of the Huns against the great Roman- Germanic alliance that had failed to Attila defeat and send him back to the East.
To the disintegration of the empire Hun Ostrogoths had passed to the salaries of the Roman Empire of the East, but restless and treacherous allies were sent to Italy, where they went with a real migration taking with them women , children and the elderly , as well as their herds and their property . How many were there ? It's an old problem that affects all migrations of the ancient Germans , for whom you usually know with certainty just how many warriors were up in arms. In ancient times, all able-bodied men were called to arms in the various tribes that formed a people, but in the era that we are dealing with the V -VI century AD the situation was very different , it was in fact formed at all these people a large class of artisans, farmers and peasants who were not always trained in the use of weapons and the complex military operations . The Germans were no longer fighting in the nude or nearly so, but they had learned how to build efficient armor and strategic food stocks . All this required many men involved in this work . There was a nobility increasingly demanding that he needed many slaves and servants. Who were they? Often they were of the same race of their lords captured in wars , in raids , taken for debt, etc. .
The Ostrogoths who arrived in Italy had an army of 50,000 warriors. Thus, among women, the elderly (few) , children ( many ) non-combatants , servants, artisans , grooms (very important ) , farmers and many prisoners were not less than 300,000 people.
He testified largely in Northern Italy by placing their capital at Ravenna , the last home of the emperors. At first , the Visigoths under their king had even plundered Rome ( 410.dC ) without causing too many casualties , with the excuse that they had not been paid their salaries military . The because it was perfectly true. Finally had been sent to Spain. In the most fertile regions of Italy the Ostrogoths had arrived asking for a third of the land or of the products, and they settled in accordance with the use of the occupying armies of the time.
The history of Ostrogothic rule in Italy hard about 80 years and in this period lived asset multiplied together with a Roman -Italic population but considered them barbarians and heretics ( Arians were in fact ) . When the Roman Empire of the East sought to re-establish a new sovereignty in the West, however, that sovereignty was never denied to the Goths, broke a long and terrible war. The most serious losses suffered the populations of places of military operations that took place largely in Central Italy . The settlements of the families were mostly Gothic in Northern Italy , where now constitute 10% of the population (in some areas a lot more) . At the time of the final defeat of the Goths had lost no more than 20/30 thousand men . Several warriors compromises left Italy , but almost all of the Goths and their families were settled in Northern Italy , where they were now for 80 years and where they now speak the local language.
The Ostrogoths belonged to the East Scandinavian branch that had wandered through half of Europe to come to Italy , where they were assimilated into the population except for the nobles and the ruling classes . Also Byzantine rule was short-lived because , in a few years after the end of their reign , arrived in central and northern Italy from Europe a people more numerous and important of the Ostrogoths , destined to leave an imprint of demographic and cultural significance era in Italy and in fact to lay the foundations of a new population that since he was no longer Roman , but somehow also Germanic .
This long process of ethnic transformation occurred under the rule of another ancient Germanic people originally from the mouths of the Elbe and similar if not identical to the Saxons, who after wandering in various parts of Europe (initially to escape the Romans) arrived in their land to remain forever and form an essential component of the population.
The Lombards - we're talking about - they were certainly not the Goths. It differed in origin , history and language although boasted a mythical origin from ' " island of Scanza " like almost all Germans.
The Lombards belonged to the Germanic tribe which stretched from Jutland to the Weser in the center with the great river Elbe. In addition to the Lombards inhabited those areas of the West Cauci , Bructeri , the Cheruschi , the Batavians and Frisians . On the right bank of the Elbe there were other such Maiores Lombards , who formed the core of the proto -Saxon peoples .
All of these people (except the Frisians who helped form the people of the Franks ) were federated in the early Middle Ages, the people said of the Saxons from strength to strength with their inbred populations coming from the high valley and the mountain forests of the Elbe .
In these places there were sheltered many Germanic tribes at the time of the conquest of Germany by the Romans after the defeat of Varus , in order to escape the massacres of Drusus and Germanicus.
In the upper valley of the Elbe the many people sought refuge there had adopted as a working tool in the forests and as a weapon of war, " saxta " ax typical of these populations and the " saxta " took the name of Saxons , from mountains to the sea .
In this context, it is logical to ask whether the Lombards had entirely disappeared for centuries from their historic homes at the mouth of the Elbe , or whether only the Lombards attacked by the Romans with destructive intent on the left of the big river have withdrawn to the South East , reaching the Bohemian quadrilateral . They were , however, Lombards, and Buteri Cheruschi fleeing the ruthless Germanic ones that gave birth to the great deforestation on the banks of the Elbe and the Oder - Neisse where he was reborn a new nation Saxon , eventually reuniting with the tribes " Saxon " North , formed the powerful duchy intended to resist for many years, even to the Carolingian Franks .
In this context, it is possible that a part of these Saxons has fallen further south you continue to call with the old name of the Lombards eventually become vassals, while maintaining their identity , the great Hun Empire and ephemeral .
The fact that at the time of entry into Italy , 20,000 Saxon warriors with their families , flocks and wagons to follow the bulk of the Lombards in their migration goes to show the territorial contiguity and the close links between these populations. The Lombards , in fact, had never strayed from the zone of the Elbe and Moravia , areas where the Saxons and Lombards lived together . Indeed, it is the right thesis was advanced that the Saxons and Lombards were the same people divided into tribes or do different .
A relationship is quite different from what the Lombards entertained with the tribes " Bulgarian " their vassals or allies who followed them in good numbers in the invasion of Italy . In fact, with the generic name of " Bulgari " in this era it was intended to designate groups of Slavic populations to the control of the Huns who had somehow inherited the power of Attila. Within this political system the Slavic element emerged only slowly regain their independence. A similar phenomenon occurred with the " Avars " , but that in this form of cohabitation maintained their power in the valley of the Danube to the Carolingian period. It is known that the Lombards , and Avars , Bulgars and Huns had good relations of alliance , but knowing their danger and duplicity they decided to come to Italy to put between them and these people come to a large area bounded by the Alps However, the known treaty between the Lombards and Avars provided at the time of their migration to Italy , the possibility in case of failure to re-enter the premises from which they departed and that would have been " temporarily " occupied by the Avars .
From these arrangements it is clear that the Lombards were intended primarily to escape the pressures of these allies with whom they had destroyed the Gothic people of the Gepids , they waged a war with the infamous treachery and cruelty literally wiping out this people, it also Germanic . The reasons for this remote feud resolved with the help of the Avars deadly , is unknown to us , but it is likely that it is the pressure coming from the south of the Avars had induced the Lombards to reject those with extreme hardness Gothic tribes whose menacing warrior was known to them since they had served the Byzantines in Italy . The alliance and co-existence with the Saxons , however, is a fact that is evident both in remote circumstances in the most recent events , to the common descent in Italy .
But it is known that the Lombards were a people already contentious and fierce intertribal relations and their dukes brought with them deadly rivalry that exploded openly , especially after their settlement in Italy . Anarchy Duke , which led them to refuse to accept a new king and a few rules in the behavior towards their Roman subjects in the areas that were able to occupy (about one third of Italy) , had devastating consequences for themselves even in the long period . First of all , most of the Roman population of their domains , often incoherent and with uncertain boundaries , fled in the territories remained Roman- Byzantine and early representing more than 2/ 3 of all Italy , including the islands . In addition, they failed to break the resistance in central Rome , so that their domain was divided territorially even with the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento isolated in Southern Italy.
This led to an increase in the Lombard settlements in limited areas of northern Italy that ended up having a concentration of Germanic population of at least one third of the pre-existing ( already very low ) . To better understand this demographic aspect we must remember that , after the devastating Gothic War , the Italian population was greatly reduced and the territories conquered by the Lombards counted , probably a little more than 2 million inhabitants . That said , you should consider what could be the number of the Lombards settled in Italy , this is also a " vexed question " .
After lengthy historical analysis and various disputes lasted until the present day , we can say with high probability - always starting from the certain fact of warriors capable of putting on the field - that the Lombards entered Italy , along with the Saxons , and Bulgarians , were not less than 350,000 and perhaps no more than 400,000 .
On balance , therefore, in the occupied territories they constituted a little less than 20 % of the population , which were added to the Goths and other Germans who settled earlier in Italy , to constitute a third of the population of Northern Italy .
This is a very high figure that can be compared only to the colonization of the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian then in Britain. Even in Italy, as the British archipelago , the distribution of the Germanic peoples in the area was very diverse . In Britain dominated largely on the eastern coast of Britain is that of Ireland, in Italy, however, was a patchy population concentrated mainly in some strategic points , where the population Lombard appeared even prevailing on the Roman one.
The areas of highest concentration Lombards were Friuli , overseeing the eastern steps from where they could reach the major threats (especially from former allies Hun - Avar ) .
A strong duchy was Costituto in the Val d' Adige, Trentino in today . Here the presence of the Duke of Zaban , clearly Bulgarian origin , could have resulted in a mixed settlement of the Lombards and Bulgari . Even the valleys of Ticino towards the St. Gotthard were well manned by the Lombards , where the mountain climate and cool in those areas seems to have been much appreciated. Strong settlements were at the foot of the Western Alps , especially in today's province of Cuneo , in the Apuan Alps on the borders of Liguria not yet conquered and strongly defended by the Byzantines long . Another strong concentration occurred in today Modena , on the borders of the Byzantine , today Romagna (or Romania , as it was called ) . Finally there was a great concentration on the northern border of Lazio ( with the obvious intention of entering the domain first and then the Byzantine Empire of the Popes) in the area of Santa Fiora, Grosseto and the Aldobrandini , where even today you can see clearly in the population strong physical characters of those Germans in the North.
This location had a negative effect for ethnic Lombard : first , because even around their capital Pavia did not form a nucleus never completely Germanic that did prevail Lombard - Saxon language , and secondly because in the remaining cities , villages and castles in the ' use of Latin as the language of the court and of the dominant groups in two or three generations led to the extinction of every spoken German . Even the edict of King Rothari was written in Latin , although issues were purely legal and customary Lombards ( and doubt that there was an editorial in the vernacular of the Edict Lombard ) .
Finally, the failure to conquer the whole of Italy , since their arrival in the peninsula , allowed the persistence of a large class of owners Romans in neighboring territories , often among the richest of the peninsula ; these territories once incorporated in the Lombard Kingdom , more than a century later , contributed to the rapid Romanization language of the nobility and ruling groups Lombards. In less than a century Gothic and Lombard disappeared almost completely (but not entirely ) as a spoken language , but in the meantime also spoken Latin had disappeared with the formation of a spoken " vulgar" far away from Latin. At the turn of the millennium , however, after the Carolingian conquest , nobody in Italy knew or understood more Latin, except the scholars and clerics , and even the Lombards . >>
Taken from " The roots of the Italian " Paolo Possenti
The culture of Italy Canegrate was a prehistoric civilization that developed from the Bronze recent (thirteenth century BC) up to the Iron Age, in the Po valley in western Lombardy, eastern Piedmont and Ticino . It represents the arrival of a first wave of migration of populations probably Celtic (Protocelti) from the north of the Alps, which exceeded the Alpine passes, infiltrate and settle in the Po Valley West. From the archaeological evidence found can be deduced that the impact with the populations found not to have been entirely peaceful.
The Culture of Golant spread, between the Late Bronze Age and the early Iron Age in the area between the north-western Lombardy and Piedmont, including the Canton of Ticino. At the end of the prehistoric era and the area was a transit point of contact with the Hallstatt culture in the west, with that of the Fields of Urns in the continental north and south with the Villanovan civilization. Initially concentrated in the foothills and then dilagati in the whole area of the lakes here developed several housing districts of an original culture, whose oldest finds are available today dating from the ninth century BC
The population of Canegrate maintained its homogeneity for a limited period of time, about a century later to merge with indigenous peoples in Liguria and with this union give rise to a new phase called culture of Golant.
Livy reports that around 600 B.C. ( Tarquinio Prisco reigning Romae ) , a horde of Gauls led by Belloveso crossed the Alps and occupied the territory between Milan and Cremona ( founding the city of Mediolanum ) , identifying the locals , the Insubres , Gauls with these invaders . In the Periplus of Scylax of Scylax of Carianda , traveler and geographer greek active in between 522-485 BC attested to the presence of Celtic-speaking peoples settled in the north -east . The text, rewritten about a century later by the pseudo - Silace after the loss of the original, tells of the journey along the coast of the Mediterranean made ​​by the traveler greek describing the Celtic tribes along the coast just to the South of the settlements of the Venetians at a time that, considering the known dates of the life of Silace , should be around 490 BC
The review of archaeological sources , in particular the right step by Livio documenting the arrival of Belloveso and its Insubri back to the reign of Tarquinius Priscus ( sixth century BC), with the founding of Milan, he had to place the Celtic presence in Italy at least the seventh century BC if not before. The presence of the Celts in Northern Italy is , then , prior to the waves of invaders mentioned by the sources, so that the same Pallottine subalpine argued that Italy had been involved "in the same primary process of ethno- linguistic definition of the Celtic nation.
Germanic blood in Cisalpine:
Stendhal wrote , introducing the essay Historie de la peinture en Italie describes , in the blood, the origins of our civilization painting : " You know , about the year 400 of our era, the inhabitants of Germany and Russia, namely men freer, more adventurous , more cruel in history , had the idea to come to live in France and Italy . / Here's an aspect of their character. / Harold , king of Denmark, having founded on the coast of Pomerania name of a city or Jomsburg Julin , you had sent a colony of young Danes led by one of his warriors , Palna - Toke . / This governor , says the story , categorically forbade that could decide the word fear , even in the most danger imminent . a citizen of Jomsburg could never yield to the number for which it was overwhelming : he had to fight to the last breath , not a step back . Neither the prospect of certain death was an excuse .
Moeller van den Bruck was to write against Burckhardt , who saw the Italian art of the Renaissance , culminating in the moment , he places the apogee of " classicism" in Italian ' Italian- Germanentum , between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Italian beauty , he writes, was born in Tuscany Etruscan , from which has recently invaded the Rome of the Popes , the Byzantine Ravenna subject to the Goths , the Germanic Lombardy and Sicily Moorish . And ' the result of the marriage between " a spirit Tuscan original " resurgent Germanic influences and Germanic influences yet still flourishing , it can be defined as the result of a balance between the plasma and the Germanic Tuscan karma , the result of a balance between a life uomori overflowing with creative and principles of order not yet become conventional and "civilized .
Particular character of extravagance ( sic ! ) Have the thesis contained in two works by Woltmann The Germans The Germans in Italy and in France. The central idea is the same: for all nations " the value of civilization depends on the amount of blond race that they contain ." Vien remembered the blond race of Heracles , who had come to Sparta from the North. Vien remembered the testimony of Tacitus , the Roman decadence iniziatasi about the shortage of blond men . But most of all is an analysis to show that the Renaissance is a matter of race , it is far less the result of a rediscovery of classical antiquity that is not of Germanic blood transfusion in an otherwise barren substance ; ensure that all the noble families to all major cities in Italian and French cities , all the names of the most representative of the Italian and French civilization would be of Germanic origin, in the same way that the latter always in their facial features betray any of anthropological characters of the dolichocephalic blond.
On the subject of Germanization , we can mention some ancient writings , that could be an example , to confirm that the process of appropriation of the ancient Germans :
The storco Umbrian Bianconi reports in a publication, that in 990 Emperor Otto III , having to remunerate some barons " Teutonic " , gives them the lands of Deruta with the title of nobiles de Deruta .
In a document dated 1070 states a strong protest by the monks of St. Flora ( City Castle ) , against bullying and encroachments of the Lombards Barbolani , from which it follows that even in the year 1070, three hundred years after their defeat , the gangs of arimanni Longobarde still gave annoyance to the prelates .
A document of 1184 speaks of the Goths in Treviso , Boccaccio, who in his day was a true journalist , he describes the '300 Treviso , in the first day of the second story , where the square is full of Germans and other armed men , the which the lord of this land , so that rumors do not do, makes you feel ... the Germans he noticed the square of Treviso had come to the esaquie a certain Arrigo , their countryman , and almost certainly came from the hilly areas in north of the city like Asolo and Vittorio Veneto, where at that time minorities Lombard still spoke their own dialect of German .
In a chronicle of Brescia states that a witness for the year 769 a legal Goto, named " Stavila " citizen Bresciano , drew up an act according to the law of the Goths , and another in 1045 , also in Brescia , in which a certain " Obezo de Vico Enjoy " declared to live according to the laws of the Gothic law .
This goes to show that the Goths were left in Brescia long after their " elimination" .
Documents of this kind are to be found in tons .. !
THE CHANGE OF PSYCHO SOMATIC CHARACTERS OF ITALIAN ( Gualtiero Ciola )
The English historian Edward Gibbon wrote in 1774 in his <Storia of the Decline and Fall of the Romano> , speaking of the population of the Roman empire low : <... the stature of the people was more and more small and the Roman world was in fact inhabited by a multitude of dwarfs, giants broke when the North and the improved seed ... >
O. Seck in his <Storia the end of the world antico> believed , not without reason, that the Roman people in the decadence , had the facial features and stature in a somatic spiccamente Semitic .
After these premises , there is no one who can deny the change that occurred in the population at the time of migration - Italica ( invasions , I might add) Germanic in stature, that even now is, at least in northern Italy , equal to that of Southern Germany , and the facial features , where the color blue , gray, green and hazel eyes is compared to the black majority .
Even the blond hair is relatively rare, given that even in Germany and Scandinavia in the same are no longer the majority.
The latest statistics give 37% of the average height of a young Italian north - European level : thanks to improved dietary and food conditions , the values ​​are inherited are again highlighted , revealing , with this percentage , what must have been the contribution Nordic blood of the whole peninsula.
The first writer who saw the strictly anthropological connection between the Germans and the great geniuses of the Renaissance
was H.S. Chamberlain, who in his <Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts> (1899) , he said, a little too simplistically , that the protagonists of the cultural revival of Italy had the kind of psycho -somatic own Germanic tribe , and that they were the descendants of the Goths and of the Lombards immigrants.
Even more clearly the Schnaase in its <Geschichte der Bildender Kunst> , said the extent of the influence of the German psyche in the history of Italian culture ; L. Wilfer in 1895 has recognized the fundamental demonstration of the difference between the populations of prosottasi ' Northern Italy densely colonized by the Lombards and other Germans, and those of the southern provinces .
Germanization of the Po Valley:
The arrival of Germanic tribes in the Po Valley in Cisalpine and has a very long history and very diversified . It begins with the first great Germanic migration towards southern Europe that is of the Cimbri and the Teutons , attracted by the stories of the Celts and their legendary looting that had come up in Greece even destroying the temple of the oracle of Delphi. The Germans , probably encouraged by some particularly cold winters of the period, they walked towards the valley of the Danube clashing for the first time with the Romans in the bloody battle of Noreia (113 BC) near present-day Vienna. The story is well known . The Germans were masters of the battlefield but failed to conquer the Roman camp .
They were certainly far superior in number to the Romans. Against heavy infantry and cavalry Roman Italic suffered harsh losses , so much so that they gave up to continue to the south and moved to the northwest in the direction of the Rhine and Gaul .
He began a long war of conquest of these territories that brought them to Spain , where they found again the Romans well entrenched in fortified towns that forced them to go over in Gaul. Here near Aurasio (today's Orange ) , in 106 BC , they clashed with the great Roman consular army consisting of about 80,000 men. Was largely composed of patrician families , knights and their followers families recruited for the last time with the system centuriato . The Germans were at least twice and won a total victory , but paid a heavy price .
In two successive battles to Acquae Sextiae (Aix les Bains) and fields Raudi at Vercelli , the Cimbri , the Teutons and the Ambrones were annihilated militarily. But the Romans made a huge number of prisoners, especially women and girls, a little less than 100,000 after the battle of Vercelli. All of these people , along with other captives taken in Gaul , were sold as slaves and scattered in the countryside of northern Italy where the new Latin and Roman settlements were in dire need of manpower. These Germans that seems to assimilate quickly to the Gauls , often reduced in these areas to the rank servile , forming a layer that was valuable in ethnic substantial remediation of the Po valley that the Romans carried on agricultural species with exceptional results . On the other hand , even in this area the Romans were few in number and recent losses in the war they had even more decreased in number . The gaps were filled in large part by German prisoners . It is evident that these soon had to speak the language of their masters as happened to the Celts .
But in Northern Italy were a contribution of fundamental importance to ethnic junta settled in the fertile plains that allowed them to live and multiply without any problems. To make the soldiers for another century and a half we thought almost exclusively Roman - Italic .
Even during the wars in Germany , at the turn of the Common Era , many prisoners were transferred to the Germans in northern Italy. Often they were not even slaves, but they were entrusted settlers semi-free land to cultivate . Their number is not known , but it is known that the Romans preferred to be employed as the Celts and Germans, excellent and diligent settlers , while considered slaves and prisoners of little value because the Eastern drones ( the Scythians and the Parthians in particular do not even wanted to gift because they are dangerous and absolutely incapable of working the land or buildings ) . These details should be kept in mind because the servile element in Rome and in Italy it was constituted in the vast majority populations of European origin , especially Celtic and Germanic Europe and the Balkans .
Many Germans were used as known in the army, especially among the Praetorian Guard , for their stature and physical strength. But they served their Praetorian Guard in Rome and Lazio. At the end of a few stops away returned to their birthplace and stopped in Italy , where he generally obtained as a small land clearance for the service provided. The Germans who settled in Italy in this way through several centuries were very many , especially in the late empire.
It should be emphasized here that the whole of North Italy and in particular the valley of the Po , with large land reclamation started with the Etruscans and then the Romans , it was no longer a semi abandoned and overgrown rich marshes and swamps , but it was slowly transformed into a vast region of fertile land and potentially very rich people who waited only able to put in cultivation. The original Celtic settlement and Venetians were allocated generally in hilly areas, or pre-Apennine foothills and , therefore, the foundations of the Roman cities newer and richer ( as Mantua, Forlinpopoli , Forli , Rimini , Senigallia , etc.). Were largely partially established on lands recently reclaimed in the lower valley of the Po These were the areas of large settlements occurred in the following centuries vulgar era , just because they are not
populated and potentially rich. These eventually become the richest areas of Italy ever. In this area the Celts and Germans settled in large numbers.
However, it can speak of a real Germanization of northern and central only after the conquest of the Goths of Theodoric. Meanwhile, they entered Italy after defeating an army entirely Germanic led by Odoacer .
The losers with their families , who now as all the Germans who arrive in Italy will move behind , scattered in the villages and in the countryside of northern Italy where they were no longer disturbed by the Goths. It was a large group of tribes of Eastern Goths , called " Ostgoten " that is, the Ostrogoths who , unlike the Western Goths or Visigoths ( finished in Spain) , had fought on the side of the Huns against the great Roman- Germanic alliance that had failed to Attila defeat and send him back to the East.
To the disintegration of the empire Hun Ostrogoths had passed to the salaries of the Roman Empire of the East, but restless and treacherous allies were sent to Italy, where they went with a real migration taking with them women , children and the elderly , as well as their herds and their property . How many were there ? It's an old problem that affects all migrations of the ancient Germans , for whom you usually know with certainty just how many warriors were up in arms. In ancient times, all able-bodied men were called to arms in the various tribes that formed a people, but in the era that we are dealing with the V -VI century AD the situation was very different , it was in fact formed at all these people a large class of artisans, farmers and peasants who were not always trained in the use of weapons and the complex military operations . The Germans were no longer fighting in the nude or nearly so, but they had learned how to build efficient armor and strategic food stocks . All this required many men involved in this work . There was a nobility increasingly demanding that he needed many slaves and servants. Who were they? Often they were of the same race of their lords captured in wars , in raids , taken for debt, etc. .
The Ostrogoths who arrived in Italy had an army of 50,000 warriors. Thus, among women, the elderly (few) , children ( many ) non-combatants , servants, artisans , grooms (very important ) , farmers and many prisoners were not less than 300,000 people.
He testified largely in Northern Italy by placing their capital at Ravenna , the last home of the emperors. At first , the Visigoths under their king had even plundered Rome ( 410.dC ) without causing too many casualties , with the excuse that they had not been paid their salaries military . The because it was perfectly true. Finally had been sent to Spain. In the most fertile regions of Italy the Ostrogoths had arrived asking for a third of the land or of the products, and they settled in accordance with the use of the occupying armies of the time.
The history of Ostrogothic rule in Italy hard about 80 years and in this period lived asset multiplied together with a Roman -Italic population but considered them barbarians and heretics ( Arians were in fact ) . When the Roman Empire of the East sought to re-establish a new sovereignty in the West, however, that sovereignty was never denied to the Goths, broke a long and terrible war. The most serious losses suffered the populations of places of military operations that took place largely in Central Italy . The settlements of the families were mostly Gothic in Northern Italy , where now constitute 10% of the population (in some areas a lot more) . At the time of the final defeat of the Goths had lost no more than 20/30 thousand men . Several warriors compromises left Italy , but almost all of the Goths and their families were settled in Northern Italy , where they were now for 80 years and where they now speak the local language.
The Ostrogoths belonged to the East Scandinavian branch that had wandered through half of Europe to come to Italy , where they were assimilated into the population except for the nobles and the ruling classes . Also Byzantine rule was short-lived because , in a few years after the end of their reign , arrived in central and northern Italy from Europe a people more numerous and important of the Ostrogoths , destined to leave an imprint of demographic and cultural significance era in Italy and in fact to lay the foundations of a new population that since he was no longer Roman , but somehow also Germanic .
This long process of ethnic transformation occurred under the rule of another ancient Germanic people originally from the mouths of the Elbe and similar if not identical to the Saxons, who after wandering in various parts of Europe (initially to escape the Romans) arrived in their land to remain forever and form an essential component of the population.
The Lombards - we're talking about - they were certainly not the Goths. It differed in origin , history and language although boasted a mythical origin from ' " island of Scanza " like almost all Germans.
The Lombards belonged to the Germanic tribe which stretched from Jutland to the Weser in the center with the great river Elbe. In addition to the Lombards inhabited those areas of the West Cauci , Bructeri , the Cheruschi , the Batavians and Frisians . On the right bank of the Elbe there were other such Maiores Lombards , who formed the core of the proto -Saxon peoples .
All of these people (except the Frisians who helped form the people of the Franks ) were federated in the early Middle Ages, the people said of the Saxons from strength to strength with their inbred populations coming from the high valley and the mountain forests of the Elbe .
In these places there were sheltered many Germanic tribes at the time of the conquest of Germany by the Romans after the defeat of Varus , in order to escape the massacres of Drusus and Germanicus.
In the upper valley of the Elbe the many people sought refuge there had adopted as a working tool in the forests and as a weapon of war, " saxta " ax typical of these populations and the " saxta " took the name of Saxons , from mountains to the sea .
In this context, it is logical to ask whether the Lombards had entirely disappeared for centuries from their historic homes at the mouth of the Elbe , or whether only the Lombards attacked by the Romans with destructive intent on the left of the big river have withdrawn to the South East , reaching the Bohemian quadrilateral . They were , however, Lombards, and Buteri Cheruschi fleeing the ruthless Germanic ones that gave birth to the great deforestation on the banks of the Elbe and the Oder - Neisse where he was reborn a new nation Saxon , eventually reuniting with the tribes " Saxon " North , formed the powerful duchy intended to resist for many years, even to the Carolingian Franks .
In this context, it is possible that a part of these Saxons has fallen further south you continue to call with the old name of the Lombards eventually become vassals, while maintaining their identity , the great Hun Empire and ephemeral .
The fact that at the time of entry into Italy , 20,000 Saxon warriors with their families , flocks and wagons to follow the bulk of the Lombards in their migration goes to show the territorial contiguity and the close links between these populations. The Lombards , in fact, had never strayed from the zone of the Elbe and Moravia , areas where the Saxons and Lombards lived together . Indeed, it is the right thesis was advanced that the Saxons and Lombards were the same people divided into tribes or do different .
A relationship is quite different from what the Lombards entertained with the tribes " Bulgarian " their vassals or allies who followed them in good numbers in the invasion of Italy . In fact, with the generic name of " Bulgari " in this era it was intended to designate groups of Slavic populations to the control of the Huns who had somehow inherited the power of Attila. Within this political system the Slavic element emerged only slowly regain their independence. A similar phenomenon occurred with the " Avars " , but that in this form of cohabitation maintained their power in the valley of the Danube to the Carolingian period. It is known that the Lombards , and Avars , Bulgars and Huns had good relations of alliance , but knowing their danger and duplicity they decided to come to Italy to put between them and these people come to a large area bounded by the Alps However, the known treaty between the Lombards and Avars provided at the time of their migration to Italy , the possibility in case of failure to re-enter the premises from which they departed and that would have been " temporarily " occupied by the Avars .
From these arrangements it is clear that the Lombards were intended primarily to escape the pressures of these allies with whom they had destroyed the Gothic people of the Gepids , they waged a war with the infamous treachery and cruelty literally wiping out this people, it also Germanic . The reasons for this remote feud resolved with the help of the Avars deadly , is unknown to us , but it is likely that it is the pressure coming from the south of the Avars had induced the Lombards to reject those with extreme hardness Gothic tribes whose menacing warrior was known to them since they had served the Byzantines in Italy . The alliance and co-existence with the Saxons , however, is a fact that is evident both in remote circumstances in the most recent events , to the common descent in Italy .
But it is known that the Lombards were a people already contentious and fierce intertribal relations and their dukes brought with them deadly rivalry that exploded openly , especially after their settlement in Italy . Anarchy Duke , which led them to refuse to accept a new king and a few rules in the behavior towards their Roman subjects in the areas that were able to occupy (about one third of Italy) , had devastating consequences for themselves even in the long period . First of all , most of the Roman population of their domains , often incoherent and with uncertain boundaries , fled in the territories remained Roman- Byzantine and early representing more than 2/ 3 of all Italy , including the islands . In addition, they failed to break the resistance in central Rome , so that their domain was divided territorially even with the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento isolated in Southern Italy.
This led to an increase in the Lombard settlements in limited areas of northern Italy that ended up having a concentration of Germanic population of at least one third of the pre-existing ( already very low ) . To better understand this demographic aspect we must remember that , after the devastating Gothic War , the Italian population was greatly reduced and the territories conquered by the Lombards counted , probably a little more than 2 million inhabitants . That said , you should consider what could be the number of the Lombards settled in Italy , this is also a " vexed question " .
After lengthy historical analysis and various disputes lasted until the present day , we can say with high probability - always starting from the certain fact of warriors capable of putting on the field - that the Lombards entered Italy , along with the Saxons , and Bulgarians , were not less than 350,000 and perhaps no more than 400,000 .
On balance , therefore, in the occupied territories they constituted a little less than 20 % of the population , which were added to the Goths and other Germans who settled earlier in Italy , to constitute a third of the population of Northern Italy .
This is a very high figure that can be compared only to the colonization of the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian then in Britain. Even in Italy, as the British archipelago , the distribution of the Germanic peoples in the area was very diverse . In Britain dominated largely on the eastern coast of Britain is that of Ireland, in Italy, however, was a patchy population concentrated mainly in some strategic points , where the population Lombard appeared even prevailing on the Roman one.
The areas of highest concentration Lombards were Friuli , overseeing the eastern steps from where they could reach the major threats (especially from former allies Hun - Avar ) .
A strong duchy was Costituto in the Val d' Adige, Trentino in today . Here the presence of the Duke of Zaban , clearly Bulgarian origin , could have resulted in a mixed settlement of the Lombards and Bulgari . Even the valleys of Ticino towards the St. Gotthard were well manned by the Lombards , where the mountain climate and cool in those areas seems to have been much appreciated. Strong settlements were at the foot of the Western Alps , especially in today's province of Cuneo , in the Apuan Alps on the borders of Liguria not yet conquered and strongly defended by the Byzantines long . Another strong concentration occurred in today Modena , on the borders of the Byzantine , today Romagna (or Romania , as it was called ) . Finally there was a great concentration on the northern border of Lazio ( with the obvious intention of entering the domain first and then the Byzantine Empire of the Popes) in the area of Santa Fiora, Grosseto and the Aldobrandini , where even today you can see clearly in the population strong physical characters of those Germans in the North.
This location had a negative effect for ethnic Lombard : first , because even around their capital Pavia did not form a nucleus never completely Germanic that did prevail Lombard - Saxon language , and secondly because in the remaining cities , villages and castles in the ' use of Latin as the language of the court and of the dominant groups in two or three generations led to the extinction of every spoken German . Even the edict of King Rothari was written in Latin , although issues were purely legal and customary Lombards ( and doubt that there was an editorial in the vernacular of the Edict Lombard ) .
Finally, the failure to conquer the whole of Italy , since their arrival in the peninsula , allowed the persistence of a large class of owners Romans in neighboring territories , often among the richest of the peninsula ; these territories once incorporated in the Lombard Kingdom , more than a century later , contributed to the rapid Romanization language of the nobility and ruling groups Lombards. In less than a century Gothic and Lombard disappeared almost completely (but not entirely ) as a spoken language , but in the meantime also spoken Latin had disappeared with the formation of a spoken " vulgar" far away from Latin. At the turn of the millennium , however, after the Carolingian conquest , nobody in Italy knew or understood more Latin, except the scholars and clerics , and even the Lombards . >>
Taken from " The roots of the Italian " Paolo Possenti
