ABSTRACT
From the window of the jet, the visitor gets the first glimpses of Italy—the snow-covered Alps, their brown foothills, and then the green plains strewn with deep, glistening lakes. The physical character of the peninsula has had a profound effect on the development of the civilization within it. The Romans brought peace and prosperity to the peninsula and founded many of the cities that were to become important during the Renaissance. Clinging to the hills or hidden in the valleys and plains, groups of people scratched a living from the land. Frightened, suspicious of outsiders, these fragmented rural groups became increasingly isolated and provincial. The rise of the Franciscans and the other mendicant orders did much to calm city life, but in the early communes some of the danger and hostility of the countryside remained. The prospects of Heaven and Hell were taken seriously, and the physical world was infested with sin and evil.
