Читать книгу The Mystical Element of Religion (Vol. 1&2) - Friedrich von Hügel - Страница 74

Lying at the foot of imposing mountain terraces, at the great central bend and chief natural harbour of the rocky, sun-baked, mountain-backed Riviera, Genoa formed, from early, pre-Roman days, the natural capital of this thin strip of territory which, eastward from Spezia and westward from Nice, looks all along towards the sea, and towards the broad blue sea alone. And the natural influences of the country seem ever to have been met and doubled by a fierce, explosive strain in the characters of the successive races that peopled this narrow, steep, hot sea-board. The ferocious, wild Ligurians gave the Romans trouble, right up to the end of their dominion; and the subsequent Lombard invasion and subjugation did little to change their character. The keen rivals of Venice, in her trade and power in the East, and the mortal foes of their competitor Pisa, so near to their own gates, the Genoese did much for trade and commerce, but little for science and art, and were feared and hated by the Tuscans, in their rich and fertile lands, and with their large and liberal culture. Sailors, adventurers, free-booters; great merchants and carriers and bankers; conspirators and revolutionaries,—they have produced great admirals, such as Andrea Doria; great administrative and warlike Popes, in the persons of the two masterful, irascible della Roveres, from the twenty miles distant Savona,—Sixtus IV, and Michael Angelo’s friend and patron, Julius II; a great navigator, in Christopher Columbus; a fierce and fanatical, but lofty and utterly disinterested revolutionary, in Mazzini; and a brave, reckless condottiere in Garibaldi, born as far away as Nice, but whose mother came from the near Chiavari.