Documents for "Italian History":

• Black Shirts colloquial term originally used to refer to the members of the Fasci di combattimento, units of the Fascist organization founded in Italy in Mar., 1919, by Benito Mussolini. A black shirt was the most distinctive part of their uniform. The Black Shirts were mainly discontented ex-soldiers. Ultranationalist, they posed as champions of law and order and violently...

• Bridge of Sighs covered stone bridge in Venice, Italy, built in the 16th cent. to connect the ducal palace with the state prison. The prisoners were led over the bridge directly to prison after trial in the ducal...

• Camorra Italian secret criminal association in Naples. Of controversial origin, it first came to light in 1830. Its activities spread by intimidation, blackmail, and bribery until Naples was controlled by...

• Carbonari [Ital.,=charcoal burners], members of a secret society that flourished in Italy, Spain, and France early in the 19th cent. Possibly derived from Freemasonry, the society originated in the kingdom...

• Cisalpine Republic Italian state created by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1797 by uniting the Transpadane and Cispadane republics, which he had established (1796) N and S of the Po River. The new republic included the...

• Cispadane Republic see Cisalpine Republic.

• condottiere [Ital.,=leader], leader of mercenary soldiers in Italy in the 14th and 15th cent., when wars were almost incessant there. The condottieri hired and paid the bands who fought under them. They dealt...

• Ghibellines see Guelphs and Ghibellines ; Hohenstaufen.

• Guelphs and Ghibellines opposing political factions in Germany and in Italy during the later Middle Ages. The names were used to designate the papal (Guelph) party and the imperial (Ghibelline) party during the long...

• irredentism originally, the Italian nationalist movement for the annexation to Italy of territories— Italia irredenta [unredeemed Italy]—inhabited by an Italian majority but retained by Austria after 1866. These included the Trentino, Trieste, Istria, Fiume, and parts of Dalmatia. Agitation took place both inside...

• Lombard League an alliance formed in 1167 among the communes of Lombardy to resist Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I when he attempted to assert his imperial authority in Lombardy. Previously the communes had been...

• Lombards ancient Germanic people. By the 1st cent. AD the Lombards were settled along the lower Elbe. After obscure migrations they were allowed (547) by Byzantine Emperor Justinian I to settle in Pannonia...

• Lorenzo de' Medici For the members of the Medici family thus named, use Medici, Lorenzo de'.

• Naples, kingdom of former state, occupying the Italian peninsula south of the former Papal States. It comprised roughly the present regions of Campania , Abruzzi , Molise , Basilicata , Apulia , and Calabria. Naples...

• Papal States Ital. Lo Stato della Chiesa, from 754 to 1870 an independent territory under the temporal rule of the popes, also called the States of the Church and the Pontifical States. The territory varied in size at different times; in...

• Parthenopean Republic [from Parthenope, an ancient name of Naples], state set up in Naples in Jan., 1799, by the French Revolutionary army under General Championnet and by liberal Neapolitans after the flight of King Ferdinand IV (later Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies). In 1798, Ferdinand had joined the Second Coalition against the French Revolution (see French Revolutionary Wars ). His army was unable to halt the French, and Naples was conquered. In February, Cardinal Ruffo, at the head of royalist troops, landed in Calabria and attempted to oust the French. Military...

• Patrimony of Saint Peter see Papal States.

• Pazzi conspiracy 1478, plot against Lorenzo de' Medici (Lorenzo il Magnifico) and his brother Giuliano, designed to end the hegemony of the Medici in the Florentine state and to enlarge papal territory. It was instigated by Pope Sixtus IV , his nephew Gerolamo Riario, Archbishop Salviati, and members of the Pazzi family, a wealthy Florentine family that rivaled the Medici. Actually, the Pazzi were tools in the conspiracy, which aimed...

• Risorgimento [Ital.,=resurgence], in 19th-century Italian history, period of cultural nationalism and of political activism, leading to unification of Italy.

• Sardinia, kingdom of name given to the possessions of the house of Savoy (see Savoy, house of ) in 1720, when the island of Sardinia was awarded (by the Treaty of London) to Duke Victor Amadeus II of Savoy to compensate him for the loss of Sicily to Austria. Besides Sardinia, the kingdom...

• Sicilian Vespers in Italian history, name given the rebellion staged by the Sicilians against the Angevin French domination of Sicily; the rebellion broke out at Palermo at the start of Vespers on Easter Monday,...

• States of the Church see Papal States.

• Ten, Council of in the republic of Venice , a special tribunal created (1310) to avert plots and crimes against the state. It was a direct result of the unsuccessful Tiepolo conspiracy against the Venetian oligarchy. In 1335 the body was...

• Transpadane Republic see Cisalpine Republic.

• Two Sicilies, kingdom of the The name Two Sicilies was used in the Middle Ages to mean the kingdoms of Sicily and of Naples (see Sicily and Naples, kingdom of ). Alfonso V of Aragón, who in 1442 reunited the two kingdoms under his rule, styled himself king of the Two Sicilies. Under his successors the kingdoms were again separate, but the title was revived during...

• Umberto For Italian kings so named, use Humbert.

• Vespers, Sicilian see Sicilian Vespers.