1. Development   of   an   agrarian   economy:      population   growth,   reclamation   of   land,   technological advancements; social change: peasant proletarization, freeing of "servi della gleba," erosion of ecclesiastic landed property in favor of a new urban middle class.

2. Rise of urban life:  aggressive conquest of "contado" by the towns; the "comuni;" permeation between feudal and landed ranks and the urban middle classes; the town as a center of artisan production and exchange of goods.

3. Relationship  between  the  "comuni"  and  the  universal  powers:    Papacy  and  Emperor;  Guelfism  and Ghibellinism; consular administration of the "comune;" popular involvement in social life; "Comune" infighting; podesta administration of "comune."

4. The town as center of culture; the first urban schools and universities; end of monastic isolation; the renewed study of law; the intellectual as exponent of communal and urban society and member of an

intercommunal cultural elite; the question of language: early Italian.

5. Church and heretical dissentions; religious renewal in the cities; deep influence of folkloric and civic ritual in the life of the common people; Church reaction: the Inquisition and the Mendicant Orders.

6. The development of commercial capitalism; the constitution of new social groups; monetary economy; the role of the Tuscan bankers; primitive capitalistic character of social relations.

7. Comune:   from the consular and podesta administratione to the popular fase; explosion of social contrasts; overpopulation and famine; the plague of 1347-51.

8. Florence:  the oligarchic comune; the "popolo minuto" and the uprising of Ciompi; the wool industry and its decline; the idealization of the city-state and the formation of an intellectual class (humanists); the "signoria" of the Medici; 1434-94 and Renaissance splendor; the importance of public patronage in art and culture.

9. Milan:  the "signoria" of Visconti; a policy of territorial expansion; the Sforza dynasty; administrative centralization; textile and military industries.

10. Venice:  the commercial and the military fleet; the Turkish threat; Expansion tendencies and relations with Milan and the rest of Lombardy and the Adriatic regions of Central and Southern Italy; The League of Cambrai; the end of Venice as a political power on the mainland; Venice as a center of cultural freedom in Italy.

11. The Papal State:  a theocratic power dominated by the clergy and by a divided nobility; Alexander VI:  a papacy of nepotism and worldliness; a backward society.

12. The French and Spanish in Italy, marking the end to Italy's leading cultural role in Europe and the beginning of Italian decadence:  the invasion of Carlo VIII; Milan and Venice, along with Austria, Spain and the Pope form a league; Milan passes under French domination following the invasion of Francesco

I; defeat of the French at Pavia (1525) by Charles V; Treaty of Cambresis (1559) sanctions Spanish domination of Milan and the rest of Italy (except Venice); immobilization and social polarization; the role of women in society; the importance of family.

13. The Papacy and the Counterreformation:  Venice reaffirms its autonomy from the Church; Paolo Sarpi; Rome and the Baroque; heresy: Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei; a parasitic aristocracy and a backward economy.