MEDIEVAL LIFE IN EUROPE 293

Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles,

Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles !

She looks a sea cybele, fresh from ocean,

Rising with her tiara of proud towers

At airy distance, with majestic motion,

A ruler of the waters and their powers :

And such she was;—her daughters had their dowers

From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East

Pour'd in her lap all gems in sparkling showers.

In purple was she robed, and of her feast

Monarchs partook, and deem'd their dignity increased.

In 1177, in recognition of her importance as well as
services rendered to the Church, Pope Alexander III bestowed
on her Doge a ring and said : " Take this as a token of
dominion over the sea, and wed her every year, you and
your successors forever, in order that all may know that
the sea belongs to Venice and is subject to her as a bride
is subject to her husband/' This annual "wedding of the
Adriatic" continued to be one of the most gorgeous cere-
monies of the Middle Ages. Genoa became a rival, par-
ticularly after 1261, when she demonstrated her power by
assisting! the Greeks in the overthrow of the Latins at Con-
stantinople. For a long time their reckless rivalries ec-
lipsed the ascendancy of the two Italian cities, until both
were overwhelmed by the triumphs of the Crescent in the
East.

Florence, the city of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ma-
chiavelli, Michael Angelo, Lenardo da Vinci, Galileo, Ame-
rigo Vespucci, and the Medici, was " the most illustrious and
fortunate of Italian republics." Despite the handicaps of her
inland situation, Florence still became, " through the skill, in-
dustry, enterprise, and genius of her citizens, the great manu-
facturing, financial, literary, and art centre of the later me-
dieval centuries... .indeed, as respects the number of her