During the two centuries
elapsed since the Lombard barbarians conquered Italy, the two races,
originally so different in their ideas and in their character, so
opposed in their customs and in their nature, have been slowly but
surely blending together, on the strength of common environment and by
the necessities of mutual relations: so that by the last half of the
eighth century, we can truly say that national differences, as such,
have disappeared, and left behind them a single race, a combination
but still a unity. We no longer have to deal with a double
nationality, with the northern conquerors and their southern victims,
with the oppressed and their oppressors. In considering the
development of the institutional life of the people, we need no longer
seek for differences, but may assume the easier task of tracing
similarities. In a word, we no longer speak of Lombards and of Romans,
but describe all that remains of both by the new word _Italians_.
It is not within the scope of this enquiry to trace the various steps
or indicate the various influences, the civilizing effect of the
Church, the restraining power of the law, by which this complete
amalgamation of two distinct races became an accomplished fact; we
need only to note that the unity of the race was achieved. Even
Macchiavelli recognizes this fact and, speaking of the time of the
Carlovingian conquest, in the brief review of the history of all Italy
which forms the first part of the first book of the "Florentine
History," he truly says that, after two hundred and twenty-two years
of occupation by the Lombards, "they retained nothing of the foreigner
save the name.
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