While Florence and all the centre of the peninsula were in a state of civil war, or painfully working to attain an independent municipal life, Naples, the home of the Hohenstaufens and the capital of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, was enjoying profound peace, royal luxury, great freedom of thought, and all the refinements of life, in the midst of institutions which may be considered perfect for their time. Queen Constanza had already granted special protection to the Provençal poets, and her son, Frederick II, only placed above the troubadours of the south of France the learned philosophers of Baghdad and Cordova, as if the great man only believed himself understood or appreciated by those whose glance was not troubled by religious, political, or local passions. The influence of this brilliant court, which united taste for science with frivolity, where serious discussions on law and philosophy alternated with the gay Provençal wisdom, and where displays of chivalry and love songs diverted the greatest statesmen of the Middle Ages after the fatigues or annoyances of politics, this preponderant influence made the Sicilian nation for a time the chief actor in the history of Italy, and their language the dominant organ of the rising literature; and it is not surprising that the first great work in Italian prose was written in the dialect made popular by the beautiful songs of the emperor Frederick II and his famous chancellor Pietro delle Vigne, King Enzio, and the brave Manfred, his half-brother. Matteo Spinelli, the contemporary of these poets of noble birth, has left a chronicle under the very characteristic title “journal,” which enables us to judge at once what Italian prose was at that period. If we quote this work of Spinelli’s first, it is not because we are unaware of the numerous and often vague attempts which preceded him; but all previous writings may be considered as uncertain groping. The language of these works is not even completely Italian yet, and the true modern idiom has been considered to rise in all its individuality in the poems of Ciullo d’Alcamo and in the _Journals_ of Spinelli. Moreover, the work of the Sicilian chronicler (although, as its name seems to indicate, it was a diary scarcely intended for publication) offers by its very extent more ample matter for literary and philological study than certain inscriptions, deeds, laws, decrees, and other documents of similar nature. [Illustration: SAN MARTINO, NAPLES]