HIST-281 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Crop Rotation, Manorialism
3 Nov 2020
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Document Summary
Change gripped the italian peninsula as well. By the middle of the twelfth century, italy too had well-developed traditions of communalism and of monarchy, of liberal near-egalitarianism and of hierarchical paternalism. As a natural crossroads for the cultures that made up the mediterranean basin, italy displayed surprising degrees of tolerance across religious and ethnic lines along with often astonishing degrees of repression and violence. By the middle of the twelfth century, however, both northern and southern italy witnessed a dynamic growth of economic strength, intellectual advance, and institutional development. The communal-urban pattern of the northern peninsula represented to a certain extent merely a revival of the normative style of life that dated back for centuries. The terrain of italy, with its coastal clusters of merchant-settlers and its rugged mountains that divide the interior into discrete rural units, accounted for much of this traditional localism. As the population of northern italy grew, so did the demand for food.
