The prop of the Ghibellines was broken. Guido Novello and his
troopers rode away from Florence; 800 French horsemen, sent by
the new Angevine king, under Guy de Montfort, took their
places; the Guelfs swarmed in again--the Ghibellines swarmed
out; the popular constitution was restored, with new features
more popular than before. In 1273 there was a great attempt
made by Pope Gregory X. in person, to reconcile the factions
in Florence; but it had so little success that the Holy Father
left the city in disgust and pronounced it under interdict for
three years. In 1278 the attempt was renewed with somewhat
better success. "'And now, says Villani, 'the Ghibellines were
at liberty to return to Florence, they and their families. ...
And the said Ghibellines had back again their goods and
possessions; except that certain of the leading families were
ordered, for the safety of the city, to remain for a certain
time beyond the boundaries of the Florentine territory.' In
fact, little more is heard henceforward of the Ghibellines as
a faction within the walls of Florence. The old name, as a
rallying cry for the Tory or Imperialist party, was still
raised here and there in Tuscany; and Pisa still called
herself Ghibelline. But the stream of progress had run past
them and left them stranded."
_T. A. Trollope,
History of the Commonwealth of Florence,
book 1, chapters 4-5,
and book 2, chapter 1 (volume 1)._
ALSO IN
_N. Machiavelli,
Florentine Histories,
book 1._
_J. C. L. de Sismondi,
History of the Italian Republics,
chapter 4._
FLORENCE: A. D. 1250-1293.
Development of the popular constitution of the Commonwealth.
When it became clear that the republic was to rule itself
henceforth untrammelled by imperial interference, the people
[in 1250] divided themselves into six districts, and chose for
each district two Ancients, who administered the government in
concert with the Potestà and the Captain of the People. The
Ancients were a relic of the old Roman municipal organization.
... The body of the citizens, or the popolo, were ultimately
sovereigns in the State. Assembled under the banners of their
several companies, they formed a parlamento for delegating
their own power to each successive government. Their
representatives, again, arranged in two councils, called the
Council of the People and the Council of the Commune, under
the presidency of the Captain of the People and the Potestà,
ratified the measures which had previously been proposed and
carried by the executive authority or signoria. Under this
simple State system the Florentines placed themselves at the
head of the Tuscan League, fought the battles of the Church,
asserted their sovereignty by issuing the golden florin of the
republic, and flourished until 1266. In that year an important
change was effected in the Constitution. The whole population
of Florence consisted, on the one hand, of nobles or Grandi,
as they were called in Tuscany, and on the other hand of
working people. The latter, divided into traders and
handicraftsmen, were distributed in guilds called Arti; and at
that time there were seven Greater and five Lesser Arti, the most
influential of all being the Guild of the Wool Merchants.
These guilds had their halls for meeting, their colleges of
chief officers, their heads, called Consoli or Priors, and
their flags. In 1266 it was decided that the administration of
the commonwealth should be placed simply and wholly in the
hands of the Arti, and the Priors of these industrial
companies became the lords or Signory of Florence. No
inhabitant of the city who had not enrolled himself as a
craftsman in one of the guilds could exercise any function of
burghership. To be scioperato, or without industry, was to be
without power, without rank or place of honour in the State.
The revolution which placed the Arts at the head of the
republic had the practical effect of excluding the Grandi
altogether from the government. ... In 1293, after the
Ghibellines had been defeated in the great battle of
Campaldino, a series of severe enactments, called the
Ordinances of Justice, were decreed against the unruly Grandi.
All civic rights were taken from them; the severest penalties
were attached to their slightest infringement of municipal
law; their titles to land were limited; the privilege of
living within the city walls was allowed them only under
galling restrictions; and last not least, a supreme
magistrate, named the Gonfalonier of Justice, was created for
the special purpose of watching them and carrying out the
penal code against them. Henceforward Florence was governed
exclusively by merchants and artisans. The Grandi hastened to
enroll themselves in the guilds, exchanging their former
titles and dignities for the solid privilege of burghership.
The exact parallel to this industrial constitution for a
commonwealth, carrying on wars with emperors and princes,
holding haughty captains in its pay, and dictating laws to
subject cities, cannot, I think, be elsewhere found in
history. It is as unique as the Florence of Dante and Giotto
is unique."
_J. A. Symonds,
Florence and the Medici
(Sketches and Studies in Italy, chapter 5)._
ALSO IN
_C. Balbo,
Life and Times of Dante,
volume 1, Introduction._
_A. Von Reumont,
Lorenzo de Medici,
book 1, chapter 1._
FLORENCE: A. D. 1284-1293.
War with Pisa.
See PISA: A. D. 1063-1293.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1289.
The victory of Campaldino, and the jealousy among its heroes.
In 1289 the Ghibellines of Arezzo having expelled the Guelfs
from that city, the Florentines made war in the cause of the
latter and won a great victory at Campaldino. This "raised the
renown and the military spirit of the Guelf party, for the
fame of the battle was very great; the hosts contained the
choicest chivalry of either side, armed and appointed with
emulous splendour. The fighting was hard, there was brilliant
and conspicuous gallantry, and the victory was complete. It
sealed Guelf ascendency. The Ghibelline warrior-bishop of
Arezzo fell, with three of the Uberti, and other Ghibelline
chiefs. ... In this battle the Guelf leaders had won great
glory. The hero of the day was the proudest, handsomest,
craftiest, most winning, most ambitious, most unscrupulous
Guelf noble in Florence--one of a family who inherited the
spirit and recklessness of the proscribed Uberti, and did not
refuse the popular epithet of 'Malefami'--Corso Donati.
{1134}
He did not come back from the field of Campaldino, where he
had won the battle by disobeying orders, with any increased
disposition to yield to rivals, or court the populace, or
respect other men's rights. Those rivals, too--and they also
had fought gallantly in the post of honour at Campaldino--were
such as he hated from his soul--rivals whom he despised, and
who yet were too strong for him [the family of the Cerchi].
His blood was ancient, they were upstarts; he was a soldier,
they were traders; he was poor, they the richest men in
Florence. ... They had crossed him in marriages, bargains,
inheritances. ... The glories of Campaldino were not as oil on
these troubled waters. The conquerors flouted each other all
the more fiercely in the streets on their return, and
ill-treated the lower people with less scruple."
_R. W. Church,
Dante and Other Essays,
pages 27-31._
ALSO IN
_C. Balbo,
Life and Times of Dante,
part 1, chapter 6 (volume 1)._
FLORENCE: A. D. 1295-1300.
New factions in the city, and Dante's relations to them.
The Bianchi and the Neri (Whites and Blacks).
Among the Nobles "who resisted the oppression of the people,
Corso Donati must have been the chief, but he did not at first
come forward; with one of his usual stratagems, however, he
was the cause of a new revolution [January, 1295], which drove
Giano della Bella, the leader of the people, from the city.
... Notwithstanding the fall of Giano, the Nobles did not
return into power. He was succeeded as a popular leader by one
much his inferior, one Pecora, surnamed, from his trade, the
Butcher. New disputes arose between the nobles and the people,
and between the upper and lower ranks of the people itself.
Villani tells us that, in the year 1295, 'many families, who
were neither tyrannical nor powerful, withdrew from the order
of the nobles, and enrolled themselves among the people,
diminishing the power of the nobles and increasing that of the
people.' Dante must have been precisely one of those nobles 'who
were neither tyrannical nor powerful;' and ... it is certain
that he was among those who passed over from their own order
to that of the Popolani, by being matriculated in one of the
Arts. In a register from 1297 to 1300, of the Art of the
physicians and druggists, the fifth of the seven major Arts,
he is found matriculated in these words: 'Dante d'Aldighiero
degli Aldighieri poeta fiorentino.' ... Dante, by this means,
obtained office under the popular government. ... The new
factions that arose in Florence, in almost all Tuscany, and in
some of the cities in other parts of Italy, were merely
subdivisions of the Guelf party; merely what, in time, happens
to every faction after a period of prosperity, a division of
the ultras and of the moderates, or of those who hold more or
less extravagant views. ... All this happened to the Guelf
party in a very few years, and the Neri and Bianchi, the names
'Of the two divisions of that party, which had arisen in 1300,
were no longer mentioned ten years afterwards, but were again
lost in the primitive appellations of Guelfs and Ghibellines.
Thus this episode would possess little interest, and would be
scarcely mentioned in the history of Italy, or even of
Florence, had not the name of our sublime Poet been involved
in it; and, after his love, it is the most important
circumstance of his life, and the one to which he most
frequently alludes in his Commedia. It thus becomes a subject
worthy of history. ... Florentine historians attribute Corso
Donati's hatred towards Vieri de Cerchi to envy. ... This envy
arose to such a height between Dante's neighbours in Florence
that he has rendered it immortal. 'Through envy,' says
Villani, 'the citizens began to divide into factions, and one
of the principal feuds began in the Sesto dello Scandalo, near
the gate of St. Pietro, between the families of the Cerchi and
the Donati [from which latter family came Dante's wife]. ...
Messer Vieri was the head of the House of the Cerchi, and he
and his house were powerful in affairs, possessing a numerous
kindred; they were very rich merchants, for their company was
one of the greatest in the world.'" The state of animosity
between these two families "was existing in Florence in the
beginning of 1300, when it was increased by another rather
similar family quarrel that had arisen in Pistoia. . . .
'There was in Pistoia a family which amounted to more than 100
men capable of bearing arms; it was not of great antiquity,
but was powerful, wealthy, and numerous; it was descended from
one Cancellieri Notaio, and from him they had preserved
Cancellieri as their family name. From the children of the two
wives of this man were descended the 107 men of arms that have
been enumerated; one of the wives having been named Madonna
Bianca, her descendants were called Cancellieri Bianchi (White
Cancellieri); and the descendants of the other wife, in
opposition, were called Cancellieri Neri (Black
Cancellieri).'" Between these two branches of the family of
the Cancellieri there arose, some time near the end of the
thirteenth century, an implacable feud. "Florence ...
exercised a supremacy over Pistoia ... and fearing that these
internal dissensions might do injury to the Guelf party, she
took upon herself the lordship or supremacy of that city. The
principal Cancellieri, both Bianchi and Neri, were banished to
Florence itself; 'the Neri took up their abode in the house of
the Frescobaldi, beyond the Arno; the Bianchi at the house of
the Cerchi, in the Garbo, from being connected with them by
kindred. But as one sick sheep infects another, and is
injurious to the flock, so this cursed seed of discord, that
had departed from Pistoia and had now entered Florence,
corrupted all the Florentines, and divided them into two
parties.' ... The Cerchi, formerly called the Forest party
(parte selvaggia), now assumed the name of Bianchi; and those
who followed the Donati were now called Neri. ... 'There sided
with [the Bianchi, says Villani] the families of the Popolani
and petty artisans, and all the Ghibellines, whether Nobles or
Popolani.' ... Thus the usual position in which the two
parties stood was altered; for hitherto the Nobles had almost
always been Ghibellines, and the Popolani Guelfs; but now, if
the Popolani were not Ghibellines, they were at least not such
strong Guelfs as the nobles. Sometimes these parties are
referred to as White Guelfs and Black Guelfs."
_C. Balbo,
Life and Times of Dante,
chapter 10._
ALSO IN
_H. E. Napier,
Florentine History,
book 1, chapter 14 (volume l)._
_N. Machiavelli,
The Florentine Histories,
book 2._
{1135}
FLORENCE: A. D. 1301-1313.
Triumph of the Neri.
Banishment of Dante and his party.
Downfall and death of Corso Donati.
"In the year 1301, a serious affray took place between the two
parties [the Bianchi and the Neri]; the whole city was in
arms; the law, and the authority of the Signoria, among whom
was the poet Dante Alighieri, was set at naught by the great
men of each side, while the best citizens looked on with fear
and trembling. The Donati, fearing that unaided they would not
be a match for their adversaries, proposed that they should
put themselves under a ruler of the family of the king of
France. Such a direct attack on the independence of the state
was not to be borne by the Signoria, among whom the poet had
great influence. At his instigation they armed the populace,
and with their assistance compelled the heads of the
contending parties to lay down their arms, and sent into exile
Messer Donati and others who had proposed the calling in of
foreigners. A sentence of banishment was also pronounced
against the most violent men of the party of the Bianchi, most
of whom, however, were allowed, under various pretences, to
return to their country. The party of the Donati in their
exile carried on those intrigues which they had commenced
while at home. They derived considerable assistance from the
king of France's brother, Charles of Valois, whom Pope
Boniface had brought into Italy. That prince managed, by means
of promises, which he subsequently violated, to get admission
for himself, together with several of the Neri, and the legate
of the pope, into Florence. He then produced letters,
generally suspected to be forgeries, charging the leaders of
the Bianchi with conspiracy. The popularity of the accused
party had already been on the wane, and after a violent
tumult, the chief men among them, including Dante, were
obliged to leave the city; their goods were confiscated, and
their houses destroyed. ... From this time Corso Donati, the
head of the faction of the Neri, became the chief man at
Florence. The accounts of its state at this period, taken from
the most credible historians, warrant us in thinking that the
severe invectives of Dante are not to be ascribed merely to
indignation or resentment at the harsh treatment he had
received. ... The city was rent by more violent dissensions
than ever. There were now three distinct sources of
contention--the jealousy between the people and the nobles,
the disputes between the Bianchi and the Neri, and those
between the Ghibellines and the Guelfs. It was in vain that
the legate of Pope Benedict, a man of great piety, went
thither for the sake of trying to restore order. The
inhabitants showed how little they respected him by exhibiting
a scandalous representation of hell on the river Arno; and,
after renewing his efforts without success, he cursed the city
and departed [1302]. The reign of Corso Donati ended like that
of most of those who have succeeded to power by popular violence.
Six years after the banishment of his adversaries he was
suspected, not without reason, of endeavouring to make himself
independent of constitutional restraints. The Signori declared
him guilty of rebellion. After a protracted resistance he made
his escape from the city, but was pursued and taken at Rovesca
[1308]. When he was led captive by those among whom his
authority had lately been paramount, he threw himself under
his horse, and, after having been dragged some distance, he
was dispatched by one of the captors. ... The party that had
been raised by Corso Donati continued to hold the chief power
at Florence even after the death of their chief. The exiled
faction, in the words of one of their leaders, ... had not
learned the art of returning to their country as well as their
adversaries. Four years after the events alluded to, the
Emperor, Henry VII., made some negotiations in their favour,
which but imperfectly succeeded. The Florentines, however,
were awed when he approached their city at the head of his
army; and in the extremity of their danger they implored the
assistance of King Robert of Naples, and made him Lord of
their city for the space of five years. The Emperor's
mysterious death [August 24, 1313], at Buonconvento freed them
from their alarm."
_W. P. Urquhart,
Life and Times of Francesco Sforza,
book 1, chapter 3 (volume 1)._
ALSO IN
_Mrs. Oliphant,
The Makers of Florence,
chapter 2._
_B. Duffy,
The Tuscan Republics,
chapter 12._
FLORENCE: A. D. 1310-1313.
Resistance to the Emperor, Henry VII.
Siege by the imperial army.
See ITALY: A. D, 1310-1313,
FLORENCE: A. D. 1313-1328.
Wars with Pisa and with Castruccio Castracani, of Lucca.
Disastrous battles of Montecatini and Altopascio.
See ITALY: A. D. 1313-1330.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1336-1338.
Alliance with Venice against Mastino della Scala.
See VERONA: A. D. 1260-1338.
FLORENCE: A. D. 1341-1343.
Defeat by the Pisans before Lucca.
The brief tyranny of the Duke of Athens.
In 1341, Mastino della Scala, of Verona, who had become master
of Lucca in 1335 by treachery, offered to sell that town to
the Florentines. The bargain was concluded; "but it appeared
to the Pisans the signal of their own servitude, for it cut
off all communication between them and the Ghibelines of
Lombardy. They immediately advanced their militia into the
Lucchese states to prevent the Florentines from taking
possession of the town; vanquished them in battle, on the 2d
of October, 1341, under the walls of Lucca; and, on the 6th of
July following, took possession of that city for themselves.
The people of Florence attributed this train of disasters to
the incapacity of their magistrates. ... At this period,
Gauttier [Walter] de Brienne, duke of Athens, a French noble,
but born in Greece, passed through Florence on his way from
Naples to France; The duchy of Athens had remained in his
family from the conquest of Constantinople till it was taken
from his father in 1312. ... It was for this man the
Florentines, after their defeat at Lucca, took a sudden fancy.
... On the 1st of August, 1342, they obliged the signoria to
confer on him the title of captain of justice, and to give him
the command of their militia." A month later, the duke, by his
arts, had worked such a ferment among the lower classes of the
population that they "proclaimed him sovereign lord of
Florence for his life, forced the public palace, drove from it
the gonfalonier and the priori, and installed him there in
their place. ... Happily, Florence was not ripe for slavery:
ten months sufficed for the duke of Athens to draw from it
400,000 golden florins, which he sent either to France or
Naples; but ten months sufficed also to undeceive all parties
who had placed any confidence in him," and by a universal
rising, in July, 1343, he was driven from the city.
_J. C. L. de Sismondi,
History of the Italian Republics,
chapter 6._
ALSO IN:
_T. A. Trollope,
History of the Commonwealth of Florence,
book 3, chapter 4 (volume 2)._
{1136}
FLORENCE: 14th Century.
Industrial Prosperity of the City.
"John Villani has given us an ample and precise account of the
state of Florence in the earlier part of the 14th century. The
revenue of the Republic amounted to 300,000 florins, a sum
which, allowing for the depreciation of the precious metals,
was at least equivalent to 600,000 pounds sterling; a larger
sum than England and Ireland, two centuries ago, yielded
annually to Elizabeth--a larger sum than, according to any
computation which we have seen, the Grand Duke of Tuscany now
derives from a territory of much greater extent. The
manufacture of wool alone employed 200 factories and 30,000
workmen. The cloth annually produced sold, at an average, for
1,200,000 florins; a sum fairly equal, in exchangeable value,
to two millions and a half of our money. Four hundred thousand
florins were annually coined. Eighty banks conducted the
commercial operations, not of Florence only, but of all
Europe. The transactions of these establishments were
sometimes of a magnitude which may surprise even the
contemporaries of the Barings and the Rothschilds. Two houses
advanced to Edward the Third of England upwards of 300,000
marks, at a time when the mark contained more silver than 50
shillings of the present day, and when the value of silver was
more than quadruple of what it now is. The city and its
environs contained 170,000 inhabitants. In the various schools
about 10,000 children were taught to read; 1,200 studied
arithmetic; 600 received a learned education. The progress of
elegant literature and of the fine arts was proportioned to
that of the public prosperity. ... Early in the 14th century
came forth the Divine Comedy, beyond comparison the greatest
work of imagination which had appeared since the poems of
Homer. The following generation produced indeed no second
Dante: but it was eminently distinguished by general
intellectual activity. The study of the Latin writers had
never been wholly neglected in Italy. But Petrarch introduced
a more profound, liberal, and elegant scholarship; and
communicated to his countrymen that enthusiasm for the
literature, the history, and the antiquities of Rome, which
divided his own heart with a frigid mistress and a more frigid
Muse. Boccaccio turned their attention to the more sublime and
graceful models of Greece."
_Lord Macaulay,
Machiavelli
(Essays, volume 1)._
FLORENCE: A. D. 1348.
The Plague.