The constitution of an exarchate at Ravenna, which lasted until the eighth century, caused Byzantine influences to predominate throughout Tuscany ; and though it is difficult to say precisely how far they prevailed in literature, we have the clearest evidence of their existence in the plastic arts. In the baptistery of San Giovanni, one of the most ancient monuments of Florence, the ornamentation of the ceiling is unmistakably Greek, reminding one of the mosaics in the tomb of Galla Placidia at Ravenna and the beautiful mosaics of San Vitale, where the Empress Theodora, painted like a courtesan, and the Emperor Justinian, are represented in the midst of an Oriental Court, composed of eunuchs, Nubians, and Persians. It was Cimabue, the first leader of the Florentine school, who shook off the yoke of Byzantine influences, and brought the artists of his day back to the study of nature.

In sculpture Niccolo Pisano and other natives of Pisa led the way, though it is only just to add that they took their inspiration from national art, and learned much from the sarcophagi of Pisa, which had been carved two centuries before the Christian era by the Roman sculptors of whom Strabo wrote in such eulogistic terms.

The art and the science of the Arabs, their unrivalled taste, and their thorough though limited workmanship, also exercised an unquestionable influence on the movement. Masters of Italy from the ninth to the eleventh century, they could not fail to impress something of their style and characteristics their love of color, their liking for rich materials and complex decoration upon those with whom they were in constant communication at all the ports of the Mediterranean.

The Arabs were especially fond of richly chased armor, delicately wrought jewels, brilliant enamels, embossed leathers, and elaborately caparisoned horses; and, accustomed to camp life, they were wont, even in times of peace, to trace the images of war; thus the jousts and tournaments for which Italy became famous derived much of their splendor from the imitation, conscious or unconscious, of these Arab pageants.

The House of Swabia, when it had claimed the throne of the Roman Caesars, never exercised more than a nominal and intermittent authority over Italy, and its genius differed so fundamentally from that of the Tuscans that the traces which it left behind it were very faint. Personal energy of character, however, has always had great influence in Italy, and the remarkable cultivation of Frederick Barbarossa's descendant, Frederick II., had a wide-spreading effect. His reign was the prologue of the Renaissance, and he probably had something to do with the tendency shown by the Florentines to shake off all religious influence in the work of civilization. He leaned to the side of the Arabs rather than of the Romans, and this sufficed to raise an accusation of atheism against him. He founded the University of Naples in 1224, spoke Italian, French, Greek, and Arabic, was a poet and a dandy, and was so exempt from prejudice that he admitted Arabs, however poor, to his Court if they were distinguished in literature or science. His secretary was a Mussulman, his doctor a Spanish' Jew, and his metaphysician an Englishman, Michael Scotus. The spirit of tolerance which he displayed is one of the distinctive marks of the Renaissance, and this was why the movement was held in suspicion by a few extreme sectaries.

The Normans, who had gained possession of Magna Gr cia, driving out the Byzantines and Saracens, capturing Messina, Catania, and Palermo, and founding dynasties in Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, siding at one time with the Pope and at another with the Emperor, were beyond doubt a valiant race ; but they were less apt to receive than to impress upon others any intellectual influence. The singular monuments which they have left at Lucera, Canosa, and Venosa do no more than attest to the reality of the conquests made by Roger, Robert Guiscard, the sons of Tancred of Hauteville, and the heroes of " Jerusalem Delivered," and it is evident, when one examines the shape and character of these works of art, that those who reared them were dominated by the influence of what they had seen among the Arabs whom they had been combating in the East. The Normans made no attempt to alter the course of the civilization, higher than their own, which they found in these provinces, and it must be said to their credit that they left the holders of the soil in possession of their legal rights, the two races living side by side in perfect peace ; so much so, that when they were succeeded by Frederick II. the Arab civilization was found intact.

The troubadours, driven from France by the crusade against the Albigenses, also had some influence upon the genius not only of Italy, but of Florence. This is proved by the frequent imitations of their works, and the language of Florence teemed with expressions and idioms borrowed from the tongue of Provence.

Three sovereigns of Southern Italy wrote poems in that tongue, and the troubadours also inculcated upon the Italians a chivalrous regard for the female sex, and that predilection for fine-drawn arguments which later degenerated into the Concetti.

These are the main influences and the various causes which brought about the Renaissance, and apart from them all the rest is due to the peculiar genius of Florence, to the national temperament, and to circumstances of race and politics. Much might be said, too, of the gradual formation of the vulgar tongue, and of its employment as the universal vehicle of thought throughout Italy when it came to be used by Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and the many other great writers who preceded Machiavelli, Guieciardini, and the learned men who discussed antiquity with Cosimo and Lorenzo beneath the wide-spreading trees of Careggi.