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Italy (see maps on pages 704 and 711)

Italy remained as a group of states, including the Venetian Republic, Florence, the Papal States, Genoa and Corsica, Sicily under Spanish Aragon control, the Kingdom of Naples

After 1435 Naples was also ruled by the Aragon king until November, 1500 when, in a secret treaty of Granada, Louis XII and Ferdinand divided this kingdom between them. (Ref. 150 )
, and finally the German Empire which was dominant in the very north. Of all these, Venice was probably the most active, annexing much of the north Italian plain, giving her not only agricultural land of her own, but a direct route to Germany and guaranteeing her grain supply. (Ref. 292 ) Spices coming through Venice were in ever greater demand because they could disguise rancidity in food, reduce saltiness and give some character to otherwise insipid, dried edibles. At one time pepper was as negotiable as silver for currency in Europe. Venice imported 2,500 tons of pepper and ginger and almost as much again of other spices. The Venetian control of this trade actually was a great stimulus to the Portuguese to open up a sea route to India and was a factor in Spain's discovery of America. (Ref. 137 , 211 ) This city was also the incoming port for cotton in the form of yarn or bales, receiving loads twice a year from Syria in 1,000 ton ships
Genoese carracks at this same period were already up to 1,500 tons. (Ref. 279 )
. Venice was one of the first city-states to have a completely mercenary land army, although they had long used the same practice at sea. (Ref. 260 , 279 )

In contrast, it was in Florence that the Golden Age of the Renaissance started, in the last half of the century. Although plague continued to cause extensive loss of life in Italy as a whole, with a continued fall of the population of most Italian cities and with a decline in industrial and agricultural production and woolen cloth, still Florence seemed to prosper. The Florentine wool trade was a combination of activities in both town and country. In fact Gino Barbieri recently commented

As quoted by Braudel (Ref. 292 ), page 312
: "The Italian renaissance is really all about wool'" Controlled by the Medici family, Florence bought Pisa, gaining direct access to the sea and it then invited learned Greeks to the community (1439). This initiated a period of great art and secondarily a considerable looseness in living and morals. The house of a merchant in Tuscany about 1400 might have had 12 to 14 rooms with a tile roof and glass windows, possibly a fireplace and wall hangings of French serge or linen or carpet. Floor carpeting, however, was rare. The dining room would have a long table with only one communal drinking glass and no forks (except for serving) and few spoons. Guests would bring their own knives. Benches were far more common than chairs. As everything was made of wood, fires were common and catastrophic, as in all of Europe.

As a result of the transfer of the church from a religious organization to, for all intents and purposes, a secular political power, the Italian middle and upper classes became the most skeptical of all European peoples. Although they paid lip service to the Catholic faith, their ideas and writings became more humanistic. (Ref. 50 , 213 ) The papal schisms of this century undoubtedly had something to do with this shift of loyalties Water was beginning to be a troublesome factor in a great city such as Rome and one of the few accomplishments of Pope Martin V after the first papal schism was to restore one of the demolished great Roman aqueducts. (Ref. 260 )

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Source:  OpenStax, A comprehensive outline of world history (organized by region). OpenStax CNX. Nov 23, 2009 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10597/1.2
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