ABSTRACT
Until the latter eleventh century, the Germans and their Empire seemed preponderant, and the memory of this circumstance influenced the perceptions of those living later. The rapid expansion of the Capetian monarchy, the invasion of much of Europe by papal power and its affiliated Lombard merchant bankers and the defeat of the Hohenstaufen had driven the lesson home. Still, the foundations of French and Italian success had been laid much earlier. Italy did not lag behind France: her fleets swept the Mediterranean and her sons and daughters joined the French settling along that sea's eastern shores. France and Italy led Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Their pre-eminence seems odd when their internal constitutions are examined. During this time when French law spread far beyond her frontiers, France herself boasted no monarchy or state comparable to that of England, Norman southern Italy or even the declining Empire.
