It follows then that there are only a few of the archbishoprics and bishoprics of Italy which at all stand out in general history. ♦Relation to the Roman See.♦ The growth of the Roman see also more distinctly overshadowed the Italian bishops than it did those of other lands. ♦Rivals of Rome.♦ The bishoprics which have most historical importance are those which at one time or another stood out in rivalry or opposition to Rome. ♦Milan. | Aquileia.♦ Such was the great see of _Milan_, whose province took in a crowd of Lombard bishoprics; such was the patriarchal see of _Aquileia_, whose metropolitan jurisdiction took in Como at one end and the Istrian Pola at the other. The patriarchs of Aquileia, standing as they did on the march of the Italian, Teutonic, and Slavonic lands, grew, unlike most of the Italian prelates, into powerful temporal princes. ♦Ravenna.♦ _Ravenna_ was the head of a smaller province than either Milan or Aquileia; but _Ravenna_ too stands out as one of the churches which kept up for a while an independent position in the face of the growing power of Rome. Milan and Ravenna, in short, never lost the memory of their Imperial days; and Aquileia took advantage, first of a theological difference, and secondly of its temporal position as the great border see. ♦The immediate Roman Province.♦ In the rest of Italy the case is different. Rome herself was the immediate head of a large province stretching from sea to sea. Within this the _suburbicarian_ sees, those close around Rome, stood in a special and closer relation to the patriarchal see itself. ♦Metropolitan sees of central Italy.♦ The famous cities of _Genoa_, _Bologna_, _Pisa_, _Florence_, and _Sienna_, were also metropolitan sees, though their ecclesiastical dignity is quite overshadowed by their civic greatness. _Lucca_ has been added to the same list in modern times. ♦Pisa and Genoa.♦ The provinces of Pisa and Genoa are notable as having been extended into the island of Corsica after its recovery from the Saracens. The history and extent of the Italian dioceses is, with these few exceptions, a matter almost wholly of local ecclesiastical concern. ♦The southern province.♦ In the south and in Sicily the endless archiepiscopal sees preserve the names of some famous cities, as _Capua_—the later Capua on the site of Casilinum—_Tarentum_, _Bari_, and others. But some even of the metropolitan churches are fixed in places of quite secondary importance, and the simple bishoprics are endless. § 3. _The Ecclesiastical Divisions of Gaul and Germany._