The city of Pisa is particularly identified with the rise of Italian sculpture. Near the town lay the marble mines of Carrara. The Crusades, by opening up the markets of the East and, particularly, Byzantium, had done much to increase its material prosperity. The citizens of Pisa, for instance, had contributed largely to the success of the second Crusade. Their reward for assistance in the capture of Jerusalem was a series of trading privileges extending over a great part of the East. Pisan banks and warehouses arose in every port. Material prosperity freed social life from many hampering conventions. Economic independence proved the first step towards the consciousness of intellectual liberty which was so striking a characteristic of the Renaissance. Pisa was only nominally a republic. Its aristocrats wielded power, and they realized, as Pisistratus had done in ancient Athens, that their tenure of authority was held at the price of magnificent schemes of public utility. The Cathedral was consecrated in 1118, and forty years later the Baptistery was finished. During this time the Republic, owing to its successful campaigns against Genoa and Lucca, became more and more powerful. One of the principal results following the opening up of the Eastern world was a revelation of the grace and beauty of the sculpture of the ancients. The Pisans evinced a strong interest in the few works of antiquity that could be found. The merchants eagerly competed for one of the carved Roman sarcophagi which the Pisan fleets occasionally brought over from the East.