Italy

F

Health and Welfare

A government-run national health service, created by legislation enacted in 1978, has the goal of providing free medical care for all citizens. In 2002 Italy had one hospital bed for every 227 people and one physician for every 165 people. Social-welfare insurance, funded largely by employers, is extended to the infirm and the aged, as well as to people pensioned by the state, farmers, unemployed agricultural workers, and apprentices. Life expectancy at birth was estimated at 83 years for women and 77 years for men in 2007; the infant mortality rate was 6 per 1,000 live births.

G

Defense

The armed forces of Italy have been greatly expanded since the country joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949. In 2004 the Italian permanent armed forces totaled 191,875 people, with an army of 112,000, a navy of 34,000, an air force of 45,875, and a central staff. Compulsory military service for men extends for ten months. Italy planned to end peacetime conscription in 2006 and replace its defense force with a professional army.

VI

History of Italy

For the history of Italy to the 5th century ad, see Ancient Rome and Roman Empire. For additional data on the development of modern Italy, see Etruscan Civilization; Florence; Genoa; Lombardy (Lombardia); Milan; Naples; Papal States; Savoy, House of; Sicily; Tuscany; Venice.

A

The Early Middle Ages

A

1

The End of Roman Italy

In ad 476 the last independent Roman emperor of the West, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by the invading Germanic chieftain Odoacer. This date has traditionally marked the start of the so-called barbarian invasions that brought to a close the political, cultural, and economic greatness of imperial Rome. Modern historians, however, regard this view as much exaggerated. They see the Germanic invasion as the culmination of Rome’s internal decline over a long period. For more than a century Italy had come under attack from neighboring peoples and tribes—Goths, Visigoths, Huns, and Vandals—who were migrating westward from central and eastern Europe. Long before Odoacer became king, Italian rulers had called on neighboring warlords to fight their battles. At the time Odoacer became their ruler, people in Italy noticed no fundamental change, and Roman law and institutions remained in force.

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After 476 ad Italy was to remain politically divided, however. The Gothic kings made Ravenna their capital. In Rome the Roman Catholic popes acquired new political importance. Roman emperors in Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, continued to rule most of coastal and southern Italy.

In 488 the Ostrogoth warlord Theodoric invaded Italy and defeated and killed Odoacer. Theodoric ruled until his death in 526, during which time Italy enjoyed relative peace. In 535, however, Justinian I, emperor of the Byzantine Empire, sent the great general Belisarius to drive the Gothic rulers out of Italy. The war ended in 553 with the death of Teias, the last of the Gothic kings, but Byzantine rule was short-lived. In 572 Italy was invaded by the Lombards, another Germanic tribe, whose king, Alboin, made Pavia his capital. The Lombards, unlike the Goths, were intent on settling the region. They gained control of northern Italy, leaving the Byzantine emperor most of the south and Ravenna.

A

2

Lombards and Franks

Alboin died in 572 and left no clear leader, enabling individual Lombard warlords known as duces to take power at a local level. The Lombards, like the Goths before them, held to the Arian creed (see Arianism) until Agiluf, a Lombard king who reigned from 590 to 615, was converted to orthodox Christianity. As the Lombards expanded their power in northern Italy, they began to encroach on papal territory. In 754 Pope Stephen II turned for help to the neighboring Franks, who had gained power in the former Roman colony of Gaul (later France). Frankish ruler Pepin the Short accepted the pope’s plea, and he and his son, Charlemagne, deposed the last Lombard king in 774. When Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor of the West on Christmas Day 800, the idea of the Western Roman Empire was reborn.

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