1. ITALIAN LITERATURE AND ITS DIVISIONS.--The fall of the Western Empire, the invasions of the northern tribes, and the subsequent wars and calamities, did not entirely extinguish the fire of genius in Italy. As we have seen, the Crusades had opened the East and revealed to Europe its literary and artistic treasures; the Arabs had established a celebrated school of medicine in Salerno, and had made known the ancient classics; a school of jurisprudence was opened in Bologna, where Roman law was expounded by eminent lecturers; and the spirit of chivalry, while it softened and refined human character, awoke the desire of distinction in arms and poetry. The origin of the Italian republics, giving scope to individual agency, marked another era in civilization; while the appearance of the Italian language quickened the national mind and led to a new literature. The spirit of freedom, awakened as early as the eleventh century, received new life in the twelfth, when the Lombard cities, becoming independent, formed a powerful league against Frederick Barbarossa. The instinct of self-defense thus developed increased the necessity of education. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Italian literature acquired its national character and rose to its highest splendor, through the writings of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, whose influence has been more or less felt in succeeding centuries. The literary history of Italy may be divided into three periods, each of which presents two distinct phases, one of progress and one of decline. The first period, extending from 1100 to 1475, embraces the origin of the literature, its development through the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and its first decline in the fifteenth, when it was supplanted by the absorbing study of the Greek and Latin classics. The second period, commencing 1475, embraces the age of Lorenzo de' Medici and Leo X., when literature began to revive; the age of Ariosto, Tasso, Machiavelli, and Galileo, when it reached its meridian splendor; its subsequent decline, through the school of Marini; and its last revival towards the close of the seventeenth century. The third period, extending from the close of the seventeenth century to the present time, includes the development of Italian literature, its decline under French influence, and its subsequent national tendency, through the writings of Metastasio, Goldoni, Alfieri, Parini, Monti, Manzoni, and Leopardi.