27.4 Europe: a.d. 1201 to 1300  (Page 2/14)

The Kingdom of Serbia had been moving toward a high level of civilization in art and music. The kings of the Nemanjic family promulgated enduring laws, founded monasteries and encouraged learning and the visual arts. At the very end of the century, at the peak of development, religious heresies and persecutions began to destroy national unity and made way for an ultimate Turkish victory in the next century. (Ref. 206 )

Italy

In the early part of the century Italy was subjected to repeated German invasions. The Holy Roman Emperor, Otto IV, completed a conquest of southern Italy, in spite of his excommunication by the pope. When Otto was deposed by the German princes in 1211, Frederick II, grandson of both Frederick Barbarossa and the Norman Roger II, was elected king of Germany and he was crowned emperor of the Roman domains in 1220. As he was the monarch of Sicily, he had to divide his time in managing affairs in both Italy and Germany. He often kept court in Sicily and founded the University of Naples and enlarged the medical school at Salerno. Continuing an already established regulation of medicine, Frederick specified that before one could apply for a medical license, he should study logic for three years, medicine and surgery for five years, practice with an experienced physician for one year and then be publicly examined by the masters at Salerno. In Bologna the Dominican friar, Theodoric, pioneered anesthesia, using sponges soaked in opiates applied to the nose. (Ref. 222 )

At Frederick II's death in 1250 his empire began to collapse but the great part of Italy was already a mosaic of city-states. Venice was the great trade center of Europe, with pepper, cinnamon, saffron, cloves, ginger, cardamon, medicines and silks coming through there from Constantinople. Genoa, as an enemy of Venice, was also powerful but since part of western Europe had stopped growing grain, Genoa had to use most of its shipping to supply its own people with food. A typical household of ten (with servants) used five and one-half tons of grain per year and a town of 2,000 or 3,000 thus had to have 1,000 to 1,500 tons of grain per annum and this was the produce of 10,000 acres of land. Genoa occasionally cooperated some with the Venetians in bringing in carpets, tapestries and fruits from or through Egypt, but in 1264 the Venetians destroyed the Genoese fleet at Trepani. (Ref. 125 , 211 , 137 , 222 )

Attempts to reunify Italy were continued by Frederick II's bastard heir, Manfred, the new King of Sicily, but he found himself at odds with the pope, who offered the Sicilian crown to Edmund, son of Henry III of England. Later, however, the head of the papal state financed the French king's brother, Charles of Anjou, in an attack on Manfred, who was killed in the battle of Benevento in 1266. Charles then tried to develop his own empire in Italy, North Africa and the tip of the southern peninsula of Greece, where there was a remnant of the old Latin Empire. Throughout most of the century the Two Sicilies remained the richest, most advanced and tightly organized state in Europe as it remained under Angevin control. In A.D. 1282, however, Charles and Sicily were conquered by forces from Aragon in Spain