an that of England and the
neighbouring countries. Besides Venice, which has been mentioned
already, Amalfi kept up the commercial intercourse of Christendom with
the Saracen countries before the first crusade.[602] It was the singular
fate of this city to have filled up the interval between two periods of
civilization, in neither of which she was destined to be distinguished.
Scarcely known before the end of the sixth century, Amalfi ran a
brilliant career, as a free and trading republic, which was checked by
the arms of a conqueror in the middle of the twelfth. Since her
subjugation by Roger king of Sicily, the name of a people who for a
while connected Europe with Asia has hardly been repeated, except for
two discoveries falsely imputed to them, those of the Pandects and of
the compass.

[Sidenote: Pisa, Genoa, Venice.]

But the decline of Amalfi was amply compensated to the rest of Italy by
the constant elevation of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice in the twelfth and
ensuing ages. The crusades led immediately to this growing prosperity of
the commercial cities. Besides the profit accruing from so many naval
armaments which they supplied, and the continual passage of private
adventurers in their vessels, they were enabled to open a more extensive
channel of oriental traffic than had hitherto been known. These three
Italian republics enjoyed immunities in the Christian principalities of
Syria; possessing separate quarters in Acre, Tripoli, and other cities,
where they were governed by their own laws and magistrates. Though the
progress of commerce must, from the condition of European industry, have
been slow, it was uninterrupted; and the settlements in Palestine were
becoming important as factories, an use of which Godfrey and Urban
little dreamed, when they were lost through the guilt and imprudence of
their inhabitants.[603] Villani laments the injury sustained by commerce
in consequence of the capture of Acre, "situated, as it was, on the
coast of the Mediterranean, in the centre of Syria, and, as we might
say, of the habitable world, a haven for all merchandize, both from the
East and the West, which all the nations of the earth frequented for
this trade."[604] But the loss was soon retrieved, not perhaps by Pisa
and Genoa, but by Venice, who formed connexions with the Saracen
governments, and maintained her commercial intercourse with Syria and
Egypt by their licence, though subject probably to heavy exactions.
Sanuto,