Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Melissa McDaniel and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original
document have been preserved.
The Story of Florence
All rights reserved
First Edition, September 1900.
Second Edition, December 1900.
[Illustration: _Pallas taming a Centaur, by Botticelli._
(THE TRIUMPH OF LORENZO.)]
The Story of Florence
by Edmund G. Gardner
Illustrated by Nelly Erichsen
London: J. M. Dent & Co.
Aldine House, 29 and 30 Bedford Street
Covent Garden W.C. 1900
To
MY SISTER
MONICA MARY GARDNER
PREFACE
The present volume is intended to supply a popular history of the
Florentine Republic, in such a form that it can also be used as a
guide-book. It has been my endeavour, while keeping within the
necessary limits of this series of _Mediaeval Towns_, to point out
briefly the most salient features in the story of Florence, to tell
again the tale of those of her streets and buildings, and indicate
those of her artistic treasures, which are either most intimately
connected with that story or most beautiful in themselves. Those who
know best what an intensely fascinating and many-sided history that of
Florence has been, who have studied most closely the work and
characters of those strange and wonderful personalities who have lived
within (and, in the case of the greatest, died without) her walls,
will best appreciate my difficulty in compressing even a portion of
all this wealth and profusion into the narrow bounds enjoined by the
aim and scope of this book. Much has necessarily been curtailed over
which it would have been tempting to linger, much inevitably omitted
which the historian could not have passed over, nor the compiler of a
guide-book failed to mention. In what I have selected for treatment
and what omitted, I have usually let myself be guided by the
remembrance of my own needs when I first commenced to visit Florence
and to study her arts and history.
It is needless to say that the number of books, old and new, is very
considerable indeed, to which anyone venturing in these days to write
yet another book on Florence must have had recourse, and to whose
authors he is bound to be indebted--from the earliest Florentine
chroniclers down to the most recent biographers of Lorenzo the
Magnificent, of Savonarola, of Michelangelo--from Vasari down to our
modern scientific art critics--from Richa and Moreni down to the
Misses Horner. My obligations can hardly be acknowledged here in
detail; but, to mention a few modern works alone, I am most largely
indebted to Capponi's _Storia della Repubblica di Firenze_, to various
writings of Professor Pasquale Villari, and to Mr Armstrong's _Lorenzo
de' Medici_; to the works of Ruskin and J. A. Symonds, of M. Reymond
and Mr Berenson; and, in the domains of topography, to Baedeker's
_Hand Book_. In judging of the merits and the authorship of individual
pictures and statues, I have usually given more weight to the results
of modern criticism than to the pleasantness of old tradition.
Carlyle's translation of the _Inferno_ and Mr Wicksteed's of the
_Paradiso_ are usually quoted.
If this little book should be found helpful in initiating the
English-speaking visitor to the City of Flowers into more of the
historical atmosphere of Florence and her monuments than guide-books
and catalogues can supply, it will amply have fulfilled its object.
E. G. G.
ROEHAMPTON, May 1900.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE
_The Commune and People of Florence_ 1
CHAPTER II
_The Times of Dante and Boccaccio_ 32
CHAPTER III
_The Medici and the Quattrocento_ 71
CHAPTER IV
_From Fra Girolamo to Duke Cosimo_ 111
CHAPTER V
_The Palazzo Vecchio--The Piazza della Signoria--The
Uffizi_ 146
CHAPTER VI
_Or San Michele and the Sesto di San Piero_ 184
CHAPTER VII
_From the Bargello past Santa Croce_ 214
CHAPTER VIII
_The Baptistery, the Campanile, and the Duomo_ 246
CHAPTER IX
_The Palazzo Riccardi--San Lorenzo--San
Marco_ 283
CHAPTER X
_The Accademia delle Belle Arti--The Santissima
Annunziata, and other Buildings_ 314
CHAPTER XI
_The Bridges--The Quarter of Santa Maria
Novella_ 340
CHAPTER XII
_Across the Arno_ 374
CHAPTER XIII
_Conclusion_ 409
* * * * *
_Genealogical Table of the Medici_ 423
_Chronological Index of Architects, Sculptors and
Painters_ 424
_General Index_ 430
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
_Pallas taming a Centaur (Photogravure)_[1] Frontispiece
_Florence from the Boboli Gardens_ 3
_The Buondelmonte Tower_ 20
_The Palace of the Parte Guelfa_ 29
_Arms of Parte Guelfa_ 31
_Florentine Families_ 33
_Corso Donati's Tower_ 40
_Across the Ponte Vecchio_ 47
_Mercato Nuovo, the Flower Market_ 51
_The Campanile_ 63
_Cross of the Florentine People_ 70
_Florence in the Days of Lorenzo the Magnificent_ 80
_The Badia of Fiesole_ 83
"_In the Sculptor's Work-shop_" (_Nanni di
Banco_) 97
_Arms of the Pazzi_ 110
_The Death of Savonarola_ 135
"_The Dawn_" (_Michelangelo_) 144
_The Palazzo Vecchio_ 147
_Looking through Vasari's Loggia, Uffizi_ 161
"_Venus_" (_Sandro Botticelli_) 178
_Orcagna's Tabernacle, Or San Michele_ 185
_Window of Or San Michele_ 191
_Tower of the Arte della Lana_ 201
_House of Dante_ 207
_Arms of the Sesto di San Piero_ 213
_Bargello Courtyard and Staircase_ 217
_Santa Croce_ 233
_Old Houses on the Arno_ 245
_The Baptistery_ 251
_The Bigallo_ 264
_Porta della Mandorla, Duomo_ 267
_Statue of Boniface VIII_ 270
_Arms of the Medici from the Badia at Fiesole_ 283
_Tomb of Giovanni and Piero dei Medici_ 288
_The Well of S. Marco_ 299
_The Cloister of the Innocenti_ 331
_A Florentine Suburb_ 337
_The Ponte Vecchio_ 343
_The Tower of S. Zanobi_ 347
_Arms of the Strozzi_ 353
_In the Green Cloisters, S. Maria Novella_ 357
_In the Boboli Gardens_ 374
_The Fortifications of Michelangelo_ 399
_Porta San Giorgio_ 403
_Map of Florence facing_ 422
[1] "_The Frontispiece and the Illustrations facing pages 97, 135,
144, 178 and 288 are reproduced, by permission, from photographs by
Messrs Alinari of Florence._"
The Story of Florence
CHAPTER I
_The People and Commune of Florence_
"La bellissima e famosissima figlia di Roma, Fiorenza."
--_Dante._
Before the imagination of a thirteenth century poet, one of the
sweetest singers of the _dolce stil novo_, there rose a phantasy of a
transfigured city, transformed into a capital of Fairyland, with his
lady and himself as fairy queen and king:
"Amor, eo chero mea donna in domino,
l'Arno balsamo fino,
le mura di Fiorenza inargentate,
le rughe di cristallo lastricate,
fortezze alte e merlate,
mio fedel fosse ciaschedun Latino."[2]
[2] "Love, I demand to have my lady in fee,
Fine balm let Arno be,
The walls of Florence all of silver rear'd,
And crystal pavements in the public way;
With castles make me fear'd,
Till every Latin soul have owned my sway."
--LAPO GIANNI (_Rossetti_).
But is not the reality even more beautiful than the dreamland Florence
of Lapo Gianni's fancy? We stand on the heights of San Miniato, either
in front of the Basilica itself or lower down in the Piazzale
Michelangelo. Below us, on either bank of the silvery Arno, lies
outstretched Dante's "most famous and most beauteous daughter of
Rome," once the Queen of Etruria and centre of the most wonderful
culture that the world has known since Athens, later the first capital
of United Italy, and still, though shorn of much of her former
splendour and beauty, one of the loveliest cities of Christendom.
Opposite to us, to the north, rises the hill upon which stands
Etruscan Fiesole, from which the people of Florence originally came:
"that ungrateful and malignant people," Dante once called them, "who
of old came down from Fiesole." Behind us stand the fortifications
which mark the death of the Republic, thrown up or at least
strengthened by Michelangelo in the city's last agony, when she barred
her gates and defied the united power of Pope and Emperor to take the
State that had once chosen Christ for her king.
"O foster-nurse of man's abandoned glory
Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendour;
Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story,
As ocean its wrecked fanes, severe yet tender:
The light-invested angel Poesy
Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee.
"And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught
By loftiest meditations; marble knew
The sculptor's fearless soul--and as he wrought,
The grace of his own power and freedom grew."
Between Fiesole and San Miniato, then, the story of the Florentine
Republic may be said to be written.
The beginnings of Florence are lost in cloudy legend, and her early
chroniclers on the slenderest foundations have reared for her an
unsubstantial, if imposing, fabric of fables--the tales which the
women of old Florence, in the _Paradiso_, told to their house-holds--
"dei Troiani, di Fiesole, e di Roma."
[Illustration: FLORENCE FROM THE BOBOLI GARDENS]
Setting aside the Trojans ("Priam" was mediaeval for "Adam," as a
modern novelist has remarked), there is no doubt that both Etruscan
Fiesole and Imperial Rome united to found the "great city on the banks
of the Arno." Fiesole or Faesulae upon its hill was an important
Etruscan city, and a place of consequence in the days of the Roman
Republic; fallen though it now is, traces of its old greatness remain.
Behind the Romanesque cathedral are considerable remains of Etruscan
walls and of a Roman theatre. Opposite it to the west we may ascend to
enjoy the glorious view from the Convent of the Franciscans, where
once the old citadel of Faesulae stood. Faesulae was ever the centre
of Italian and democratic discontent against Rome and her Senate
(_sempre ribelli di Roma_, says Villani of its inhabitants); and it
was here, in October B.C. 62, that Caius Manlius planted the Eagle of
revolt--an eagle which Marius had borne in the war against the
Cimbri--and thus commenced the Catilinarian war, which resulted in the
annihilation of Catiline's army near Pistoia.
This, according to Villani, was the origin of Florence. According to
him, Fiesole, after enduring the stupendous siege, was forced to
surrender to the Romans under Julius Caesar, and utterly razed to the
ground. In the second sphere of Paradise, Justinian reminds Dante of
how the Roman Eagle "seemed bitter to that hill beneath which thou
wast born." Then, in order that Fiesole might never raise its head
again, the Senate ordained that the greatest lords of Rome, who had
been at the siege, should join with Caesar in building a new city on
the banks of the Arno. Florence, thus founded by Caesar, was populated
by the noblest citizens of Rome, who received into their number those
of the inhabitants of fallen Fiesole who wished to live there. "Note
then," says the old chronicler, "that it is not wonderful that the
Florentines are always at war and in dissensions among themselves,
being drawn and born from two peoples, so contrary and hostile and
diverse in habits, as were the noble and virtuous Romans, and the
savage and contentious folk of Fiesole." Dante similarly, in Canto XV.
of the _Inferno_, ascribes the injustice of the Florentines towards
himself to this mingling of the people of Fiesole with the true Roman
nobility (with special reference, however, to the union of Florence
with conquered Fiesole in the twelfth century):--
"che tra li lazzi sorbi
si disconvien fruttare al dolce fico."[3]
[3] "For amongst the tart sorbs, it befits not the sweet fig to
fructify."
And Brunetto Latini bids him keep himself free from their pollution:--
"Faccian le bestie Fiesolane strame
di lor medesme, e non tocchin la pianta,
s'alcuna surge ancor nel lor letame,
in cui riviva la semente santa
di quei Roman che vi rimaser quando
fu fatto il nido di malizia tanta." [4]
[4] "Let the beasts of Fiesole make litter of themselves, and not
touch the plant, if any yet springs up amid their rankness, in which
the holy seed revives of those Romans who remained there when it
became the nest of so much malice."
The truth appears to be that Florence was originally founded by
Etruscans from Fiesole, who came down from their mountain to the plain
by the Arno for commercial purposes. This Etruscan colony was probably
destroyed during the wars between Marius and Sulla, and a Roman
military colony established here--probably in the time of Sulla, and
augmented later by Caesar and by Augustus. It has, indeed, been urged
of late that the old Florentine story has some truth in it, and that
Caesar, not only in legend but in fact, may be regarded as the true
first founder of Florence. Thus the Roman colony of Florentia
gradually grew into a little city--_come una altra piccola Roma_,
declares her patriotic chronicler. It had its capitol and its forum in
the centre of the city, where the Mercato Vecchio once stood; it had
an amphitheatre outside the walls, somewhere near where the Borgo dei
Greci and the Piazza Peruzzi are to-day. It had baths and temples,
though doubtless on a small scale. It had the shape and form of a
Roman camp, which (together with the Roman walls in which it was
inclosed) it may be said to have retained down to the middle of the
twelfth century, in spite of legendary demolitions by Attila and
Totila, and equally legendary reconstructions by Charlemagne. Above
all, it had a grand temple to Mars, which almost certainly occupied
the site of the present Baptistery, if not actually identical with it.
Giovanni Villani tells us--and we shall have to return to his
statement--that the wonderful octagonal building, now known as the
Baptistery or the Church of St John, was consecrated as a temple by
the Romans in honour of Mars, for their victory over the Fiesolans,
and that Mars was the patron of the Florentines as long as paganism
lasted. Round the equestrian statue that was supposed to have once
stood in the midst of this temple, numberless legends have gathered.
Dante refers to it again and again. In Santa Maria Novella you shall
see how a great painter of the early Renaissance, Filippino Lippi,
conceived of his city's first patron. When Florence changed him for
the Baptist, and the people of Mars became the sheepfold of St John,
this statue was removed from the temple and set upon a tower by the
side of the Arno:--
"The Florentines took up their idol which they called the God Mars,
and set him upon a high tower near the river Arno; and they would not
break or shatter it, seeing that in their ancient records they found
that the said idol of Mars had been consecrated under the ascendency
of such a planet, that if it should be broken or put in a
dishonourable place, the city would suffer danger and damage and great
mutation. And although the Florentines had newly become Christians,
they still retained many customs of paganism, and retained them for a
long time; and they greatly feared their ancient idol of Mars; so
little perfect were they as yet in the Holy Faith."
This tower is said to have been destroyed like the rest of Florence by
the Goths, the statue falling into the Arno, where it lurked in hiding
all the time that the city lay in ruins. On the legendary rebuilding
of Florence by Charlemagne, the statue, too--or rather the mutilated
fragment that remained--was restored to light and honour. Thus
Villani:--
"It is said that the ancients held the opinion that there was no power
to rebuild the city, if that marble image, consecrated by necromancy
to Mars by the first Pagan builders, was not first found again and
drawn out of the Arno, in which it had been from the destruction of
Florence down to that time. And, when found, they set it upon a pillar
on the bank of the said river, where is now the head of the Ponte
Vecchio. This we neither affirm nor believe, inasmuch as it appeareth
to us to be the opinion of augurers and pagans, and not reasonable,
but great folly, to hold that a statue so made could work thus; but
commonly it was said by the ancients that, if it were changed, our
city would needs suffer great mutation."
Thus it became _quella pietra scema che guarda il ponte_, in Dantesque
phrase; and we shall see what terrible sacrifice its clients
unconsciously paid to it. Here it remained, much honoured by the
Florentines; street boys were solemnly warned of the fearful
judgments that fell on all who dared to throw mud or stones at it;
until at last, in 1333, a great flood carried away bridge and statue
alike, and it was seen no more. It has recently been suggested that
the statue was, in reality, an equestrian monument in honour of some
barbaric king, belonging to the fifth or sixth century.
Florence, however, seems to have been--in spite of Villani's
describing it as the Chamber of the Empire and the like--a place of
very slight importance under the Empire. Tacitus mentions that a
deputation was sent from Florentia to Tiberius to prevent the Chiana
being turned into the Arno. Christianity is said to have been first
introduced in the days of Nero; the Decian persecution raged here as
elsewhere, and the soil was hallowed with the blood of the martyr,
Miniatus. Christian worship is said to have been first offered up on
the hill where a stately eleventh century Basilica now bears his name.
When the greater peace of the Church was established under
Constantine, a church dedicated to the Baptist on the site of the
Martian temple and a basilica outside the walls, where now stands San
Lorenzo, were among the earliest churches in Tuscany.
In the year 405, the Goth leader Rhadagaisus, _omnium antiquorum
praesentiumque hostium longe immanissimus_, as Orosius calls him,
suddenly inundated Italy with more than 200,000 Goths, vowing to
sacrifice all the blood of the Romans to his gods. In their terror the
Romans seemed about to return to their old paganism, since Christ had
failed to protect them. _Fervent tota urbe blasphemiae_, writes
Orosius. They advanced towards Rome through the Tuscan Apennines, and
are said to have besieged Florence, though there is no hint of this in
Orosius. On the approach of Stilicho, at the head of thirty legions
with a large force of barbarian auxiliaries, Rhadagaisus and his
hordes--miraculously struck helpless with terror, as Orosius
implies--let themselves be hemmed in in the mountains behind Fiesole,
and all perished, by famine and exhaustion rather than by the sword.
Villani ascribes the salvation of Florence to the prayers of its
bishop, Zenobius, and adds that as this victory of "the Romans and
Florentines" took place on the feast of the virgin martyr Reparata,
her name was given to the church afterwards to become the Cathedral of
Florence.
Zenobius, now a somewhat misty figure, is the first great Florentine
of history, and an impressive personage in Florentine art. We dimly
discern in him an ideal bishop and father of his people; a man of
great austerity and boundless charity, almost an earlier Antoninus.
Perhaps the fact that some of the intervening Florentine bishops were
anything but edifying, has made these two--almost at the beginning and
end of the Middle Ages--stand forth in a somewhat ideal light. He
appears to have lived a monastic life outside the walls in a small
church on the site of the present San Lorenzo, with two young
ecclesiastics, trained by him and St Ambrose, Eugenius and
Crescentius. They died before him and are commonly united with him by
the painters. Here he was frequently visited by St Ambrose--here he
dispensed his charities and worked his miracles (according to the
legend, he had a special gift of raising children to life)--here at
length he died in the odour of sanctity, A.D. 424. The beautiful
legend of his translation should be familiar to every student of
Italian painting. I give it in the words of a monkish writer of the
fourteenth century:--
"About five years after he had been buried, there was made bishop one
named Andrew, and this holy bishop summoned a great chapter of
bishops and clerics, and said in the chapter that it was meet to bear
the body of St Zenobius to the Cathedral Church of San Salvatore; and
so it was ordained. Wherefore, on the 26th of January, he caused him
to be unburied and borne to the Church of San Salvatore by four
bishops; and these bishops bearing the body of St Zenobius were so
pressed upon by the people that they fell near an elm, the which was
close unto the Church of St John the Baptist; and when they fell, the
case where the body of St Zenobius lay was broken, so that the body
touched the elm, and gradually, as the elm was touched, it brought
forth flowers and leaves, and lasted all that year with the flowers
and leaves. The people, seeing the miracle, broke up all the elm, and
with devotion carried the branches away. And the Florentines,
beholding what was done, made a column of marble with a cross where
the elm had been, so that the miracle should ever be remembered by the
people."
Like the statue of Mars, this column was destroyed by the flood of
1333, and the one now standing to the north of the Baptistery was set
up after that year. It was at one time the custom for the clergy on
the feast of the translation to go in procession and fasten a green
bough to this column. Zenobius now stands with St Reparata on the
cathedral facade. Domenico Ghirlandaio painted him, together with his
pupils Eugenius and Crescentius, in the Sala dei Gigli of the Palazzo
della Signoria; an unknown follower of Orcagna had painted a similar
picture for a pillar in the Duomo. Ghiberti cast his miracles in
bronze for the shrine in the Chapel of the Sacrament; Verrocchio and
Lorenzo di Credi at Pistoia placed him and the Baptist on either side
of Madonna's throne. In a picture by some other follower of
Verrocchio's in the Uffizi he is seen offering up a model of his city
to the Blessed Virgin. Two of the most famous of his miracles, the
raising of a child to life and the flowering of the elm tree at his
translation, are superbly rendered in two pictures by Ridolfo
Ghirlandaio. On May 25th the people still throng the Duomo with
bunches of roses and other flowers, which they press to the reliquary
which contains his head, and so obtain the "benedizione di San
Zenobio." Thus does his memory live fresh and green among the people
to whom he so faithfully ministered.
Another barbarian king, the last Gothic hero Totila, advancing upon
Rome in 542, took the same shorter but more difficult route across the
Apennines. According to the legend, he utterly destroyed all Florence,
with the exception of the Church of San Giovanni, and rebuilt Fiesole
to oppose Rome and prevent Florence from being restored. The truth
appears to be that he did not personally attack Florence, but sent a
portion of his troops under his lieutenants. They were successfully
resisted by Justin, who commanded the imperial garrison, and, on the
advance of reinforcements from Ravenna, they drew off into the valley
of the Mugello, where they turned upon the pursuing "Romans" (whose
army consisted of worse barbarians than Goths) and completely routed
them. Fiesole, which had apparently recovered from its old
destruction, was probably too difficult to be assailed; but it appears
to have been gradually growing at the expense of Florence--the
citizens of the latter emigrating to it for greater safety. This was
especially the case during the Lombard invasion, when the fortunes of
Florence were at their lowest, and, indeed, in the second half of the
eighth century, Florence almost sank to being a suburb of Fiesole.
With the advent of Charlemagne and the restoration of the Empire,
brighter days commenced for Florence,--so much so that the story ran
that he had renewed the work of Julius Caesar and founded the city
again. In 786 he wintered here with his court on his third visit to
Rome; and, according to legend, he was here again in great wealth and
pomp in 805, and founded the Church of Santissimi Apostoli--the oldest
existing Florentine building after the Baptistery. Upon its facade you
may still read a pompous inscription concerning the Emperor's
reception in Florence, and how the Church was consecrated by
Archbishop Turpin in the presence of Oliver and Roland, the Paladins!
Florence was becoming a power in Tuscany, or at least beginning to see
more of Popes and Emperors. The Ottos stayed within her walls on their
way to be crowned at Rome; Popes, flying from their rebellious
subjects, found shelter here. In 1055 Victor II. held a council in
Florence. Beautiful Romanesque churches began to rise--notably the SS.
Apostoli and San Miniato, both probably dating from the eleventh
century. Great churchmen appeared among her sons, as San Giovanni
Gualberto--the "merciful knight" of Burne-Jones' unforgettable
picture--the reformer of the Benedictines and the founder of
Vallombrosa. The early reformers, while Hildebrand was still
"Archdeacon of the Roman Church," were specially active in Florence;
and one of them, known as Peter Igneus, in 1068 endured the ordeal of
fire and is said to have passed unhurt through the flames, to convict
the Bishop of Florence of simony. This, with other matters relating to
the times of Giovanni Gualberto and the struggles of the reformers of
the clergy, you may see in the Bargello in a series of noteworthy
marble bas-reliefs (terribly damaged, it is true), from the hand of
Benedetto da Rovezzano.
Although we already begin to hear of the "Florentine people" and the
"Florentine citizens," Florence was at this time subject to the
Margraves of Tuscany. One of them, Hugh the Great, who is said to have
acted as vicar of the Emperor Otto III., and who died at the beginning
of the eleventh century, lies buried in the Badia which had been
founded by his mother, the Countess Willa, in 978. His tomb, one of
the most noteworthy monuments of the fifteenth century, by Mino da
Fiesole, may still be seen, near Filippino Lippi's Vision of St
Bernard.
It was while Florence was nominally under the sway of Hugo's most
famous successor, the Countess Matilda of Tuscany, that Dante's
ancestor Cacciaguida was born; and, in the fifteenth and sixteenth
cantos of the _Paradiso_, he draws an ideal picture of that austere
old Florence, _dentro dalla cerchia antica_, still within her Roman
walls. We can still partly trace and partly conjecture the position of
these walls. The city stood a little way back from the river, and had
four master gates; the Porta San Piero on the east, the Porta del
Duomo on the north, the Porta San Pancrazio on the west, the Porta
Santa Maria on the south (towards the Ponte Vecchio). The heart of the
city, the Forum or, as it came to be called, the Mercato Vecchio, has
indeed been destroyed of late years to make way for the cold and
altogether hideous Piazza Vittorio Emanuele; but we can still perceive
that at its south-east corner the two main streets of this old
_Florentia quadrata_ intersected,--Calimara, running from the Porta
Santa Maria to the Porta del Duomo, south to north, and the Corso,
running east to west from the Porta San Piero to the Porta San
Pancrazio, along the lines of the present Corso, Via degli Speziali,
and Via degli Strozzi. The Porta San Piero probably stood about where
the Via del Corso joins the Via del Proconsolo, and there was a suburb
reaching out to the Church of San Piero Maggiore. Then the walls ran
along the lines of the present Via del Proconsolo and Via dei
Balestrieri, inclosing Santa Reparata and the Baptistery, to the Duomo
Gate beyond the Bishop's palace--probably somewhere near the opening
of the modern Borgo San Lorenzo. Then along the Via Cerretani, Piazza
Antinori, Via Tornabuoni, to the Gate of San Pancrazio, which was
somewhere near the present Palazzo Strozzi; and so on to where the
Church of Santa Trinita now stands, near which there was a postern
gate called the Porta Rossa. Then they turned east along the present
Via delle Terme to the Porta Santa Maria, which was somewhere near the
end of the Mercato Nuovo, after which their course back to the Porta
San Piero is more uncertain. Outside the walls were churches and
ever-increasing suburbs, and Florence was already becoming an
important commercial centre. Matilda's beneficent sway left it in
practical independence to work out its own destinies; she protected it
from imperial aggressions, and curbed the nobles of the contrada, who
were of Teutonic descent and who, from their feudal castles round,
looked with hostility upon the rich burgher city of pure Latin blood
that was gradually reducing their power and territorial sway. At
intervals the great Countess entered Florence, and either in person or
by her deputies and judges (members of the chief Florentine families)
administered justice in the Forum. Indeed she played the part of
Dante's ideal Emperor in the _De Monarchia_; made Roman law obeyed
through her dominions; established peace and curbed disorder; and
therefore, in spite of her support of papal claims for political
empire, when the _Divina Commedia_ came to be written, Dante placed
her as guardian of the Earthly Paradise to which the Emperor should
guide man, and made her the type of the glorified active life. Her
praises, _la lauda di Matelda_, were long sung in the Florentine
churches, as may be gathered from a passage in Boccaccio.
It is from the death of Matilda in 1115 that the history of the
Commune dates. During her lifetime she seems to have gradually,
especially while engaged in her conflicts with the Emperor Henry,
delegated her powers to the chief Florentine citizens themselves; and
in her name they made war upon the aggressive nobility in the country
round, in the interests of their commerce. For Dante the first half of
this twelfth century represents the golden age in which his ancestor
lived, when the great citizen nobles--Bellincion Berti, Ubertino
Donati, and the heads of the Nerli and Vecchietti and the rest--lived
simple and patriotic lives, filled the offices of state and led the
troops against the foes of the Commune. In a grand burst of triumph
that old Florentine crusader, Cacciaguida, closes the sixteenth canto
of the _Paradiso_:
"Con queste genti, e con altre con esse,
vid'io Fiorenza in si fatto riposo,
che non avea cagion onde piangesse;
con queste genti vid'io glorioso,
e giusto il popol suo tanto, che'l giglio
non era ad asta mai posto a ritroso,
ne per division fatto vermiglio."[5]
[5] "With these folk, and with others with them, did I see Florence in
such full repose, she had not cause for wailing;
With these folk I saw her people so glorious and so just, ne'er was
the lily on the shaft reversed, nor yet by faction dyed
vermilion."--Wicksteed's translation.
When Matilda died, and the Popes and Emperors prepared to struggle for
her legacy (which thus initiated the strifes of Guelfs and
Ghibellines), the Florentine Republic asserted its independence: the
citizen nobles who had been her delegates and judges now became the
Consuls of the Commune and the leaders of the republican forces in
war. In 1119 the Florentines assailed the castle of Monte Cascioli,
and killed the imperial vicar who defended it; in 1125 they took and
destroyed Fiesole, which had always been a refuge for robber nobles
and all who hated the Republic. But already signs of division were
seen in the city itself, though it was a century before it came to a
head; and the great family of the Uberti--who, like the nobles of the
contrada, were of Teutonic descent--were prominently to the front, but
soon to be _disfatti per la lor superbia_. Scarcely was Matilda dead
than they appear to have attempted to seize on the supreme power, and
to have only been defeated with much bloodshed and burning of houses.
Still the Republic pursued its victorious course through the twelfth
century--putting down the feudal barons, forcing them to enter the
city and join the Commune, and extending their commerce and influence
as well as their territory on all sides. And already these nobles
within and without the city were beginning to build their lofty
towers, and to associate themselves into Societies of the Towers;
while the people were grouped into associations which afterwards
became the Greater and Lesser Arts or Guilds. Villani sees the origin
of future contests in the mingling of races, Roman and Fiesolan;
modern writers find it in the distinction, mentioned already, between
the nobles, of partly Teutonic origin and imperial sympathies, and the
burghers, who were the true Italians, the descendants of those over
whom successive tides of barbarian conquest had swept, and to whom the
ascendency of the nobles would mean an alien yoke. This struggle
between a landed military and feudal nobility, waning in power and
authority, and a commercial democracy of more purely Latin descent,
ever increasing in wealth and importance, is what lies at the bottom
of the contest between Florentine Guelfs and Ghibellines; and the
rival claims of Pope and Emperor are of secondary importance, as far
as Tuscany is concerned.
In 1173 (as the most recent historian of Florence has shown, and not
in the eleventh century as formerly supposed), the second circle of
walls was built, and included a much larger tract of city, though many
of the churches which we have been wont to consider the most essential
things in Florence stand outside them. A new Porta San Piero, just
beyond the present facade of the ruined church of San Piero Maggiore,
enclosed the Borgo di San Piero; thence the walls passed round to the
Porta di Borgo San Lorenzo, just to the north of the present Piazza,
and swept round, with two gates of minor importance, past the chief
western Porta San Pancrazio or Porta San Paolo, beyond which the
present Piazza di Santa Maria Novella stands, down to the Arno where
there was a Porta alla Carraia, at the point where the bridge was
built later. Hence a lower wall ran along the Arno, taking in the
parts excluded from the older circuit down to the Ponte Vecchio. About
half-way between this and the Ponte Rubaconte, the walls turned up
from the Arno, with several small gates, until they reached the place
where the present Piazza di Santa Croce lies--which was outside. Here,
just beyond the old site of the Amphitheatre, there was a gate, after
which they ran straight without gate or postern to San Piero, where
they had commenced.
Instead of the old Quarters, named from the gates, the city was now
divided into six corresponding Sesti or sextaries; the Sesto di Porta
San Piero, the Sesto still called from the old Porta del Duomo, the
Sesto di Porta Pancrazio, the Sesto di San Piero Scheraggio (a church
near the Palazzo Vecchio, but now totally destroyed), and the Sesto di
Borgo Santissimi Apostoli--these two replacing the old Quarter of
Porta Santa Maria. Across the river lay the Sesto d'Oltrarno--then
for the most part unfortified. At that time the inhabitants of
Oltrarno were mostly the poor and the lower classes, but not a few
noble families settled there later on. The Consuls, the supreme
officers of the state, were elected annually, two for each sesto,
usually nobles of popular tendencies; there was a council of a
hundred, elected every year, its members being mainly chosen from the
Guilds as the Consuls from the Towers; and a Parliament of the people
could be summoned in the Piazza. Thus the popular government was
constituted.
Hardly had the new walls risen when the Uberti in 1177 attempted to
overthrow the Consuls and seize the government of the city; they were
partially successful, in that they managed to make the administration
more aristocratic, after a prolonged civil struggle of two years'
duration. In 1185 Frederick Barbarossa took away the privileges of the
Republic and deprived it of its contrada; but his son, Henry VI.,
apparently gave it back. With the beginning of the thirteenth century
we find the Consuls replaced by a Podesta, a foreign noble elected by
the citizens themselves; and the Florentines, not content with having
back their contrada, beginning to make wars of conquest upon their
neighbours, especially the Sienese, from whom they exacted a cession
of territory in 1208.
[Illustration: THE BUONDELMONTE TOWER]
In 1215 there was enacted a deed in which poets and chroniclers have
seen a turning point in the history of Florence. Buondelmonte dei
Buondelmonti, "a right winsome and comely knight," as Villani calls
him, had pledged himself for political reasons to marry a maiden of
the Amidei family--the kinsmen of the proud Uberti and Fifanti. But,
at the instigation of Gualdrada Donati, he deserted his betrothed and
married Gualdrada's own daughter, a girl of great beauty. Upon this
the nobles of the kindred of the deserted girl held a council
together to decide what vengeance to take, in which "Mosca dei
Lamberti spoke the evil word: _Cosa fatta, capo ha_; to wit, that he
should be slain; and so it was done." On Easter Sunday the Amidei and
their associates assembled, after hearing mass in San Stefano, in a
palace of the Amidei, which was on the Lungarno at the opening of the
present Via Por Santa Maria; and they watched young Buondelmonte
coming from Oltrarno, riding over the Ponte Vecchio "dressed nobly in
a new robe all white and on a white palfrey," crowned with a garland,
making his way towards the palaces of his kindred in Borgo Santissimi
Apostoli. As soon as he had reached this side, at the foot of the
pillar on which stood the statue of Mars, they rushed out upon him.
Schiatta degli Uberti struck him from his horse with a mace, and Mosca
dei Lamberti, Lambertuccio degli Amidei, Oderigo Fifanti, and one of
the Gangalandi, stabbed him to death with their daggers at the foot of
the statue. "Verily is it shown," writes Villani, "that the enemy of
human nature by reason of the sins of the Florentines had power in
this idol of Mars, which the pagan Florentines adored of old; for at
the foot of his figure was this murder committed, whence such great
evil followed to the city of Florence." The body was placed upon a
bier, and, with the young bride supporting the dead head of her
bridegroom, carried through the streets to urge the people to
vengeance. Headed by the Uberti, the older and more aristocratic
families took up the cause of the Amidei; the burghers and the
democratically inclined nobles supported the Buondelmonti, and from
this the chronicler dates the beginning of the Guelfs and Ghibellines
in Florence.
But it was only the names that were then introduced, to intensify a
struggle which had in reality commenced a century before this, in
1115, on the death of Matilda. As far as Guelf and Ghibelline meant a
struggle of the commune of burghers and traders with a military
aristocracy of Teutonic descent and feudal imperial tendencies, the
thing is already clearly defined in the old contest between the Uberti
and the Consuls. This, however, precipitated matters, and initiated
fifty years of perpetual conflict. Dante, through Cacciaguida, touches
upon the tragedy in his great way in _Paradiso_ XVI., where he calls
it the ruin of old Florence.
"La casa di che nacque il vostro fleto,
per lo giusto disdegno che v'ha morti
e posto fine al vostro viver lieto,
era onorata ed essa e suoi consorti.
O Buondelmonte, quanto mal fuggisti
le nozze sue per gli altrui conforti!
Molti sarebbon lieti, che son tristi,
se Dio t'avesse conceduto ad Ema
la prima volta che a citta venisti.
Ma conveniasi a quella pietra scema
che guarda il ponte, che Fiorenza fesse
vittima nella sua pace postrema."[6]
[6] "The house from which your wailing sprang, because of the just
anger which hath slain you and placed a term upon your joyous life,
"was honoured, it and its associates. Oh Buondelmonte, how ill didst
thou flee its nuptials at the prompting of another!
"Joyous had many been who now are sad, had God committed thee unto the
Ema the first time that thou camest to the city.
"But to that mutilated stone which guardeth the bridge 'twas meet that
Florence should give a victim in her last time of peace."
And again, in the Hell of the sowers of discord, where they are
horribly mutilated by the devil's sword, he meets the miserable Mosca.
"Ed un, ch'avea l'una e l'altra man mozza,
levando i moncherin per l'aura fosca,
si che il sangue facea la faccia sozza,
grido: Ricorderaiti anche del Mosca,
che dissi, lasso! 'Capo ha cosa fatta,'
che fu il mal seme per la gente tosca."[7]
[7] "And one who had both hands cut off, raising the stumps through
the dim air so that their blood defiled his face, cried: 'Thou wilt
recollect the Mosca too, ah me! who said, "A thing done has an end!"
which was the seed of evil to the Tuscan people.'" (_Inf._ xxviii.)
For a time the Commune remained Guelf and powerful, in spite of
dissensions; it adhered to the Pope against Frederick II., and waged
successful wars with its Ghibelline rivals, Pisa and Siena. Of the
other Tuscan cities Lucca was Guelf, Pistoia Ghibelline. A religious
feud mingled with the political dissensions; heretics, the Paterini,
Epicureans and other sects, were multiplying in Italy, favoured by
Frederick II. and patronised by the Ghibellines. Fra Pietro of Verona,
better known as St Peter Martyr, organised a crusade, and, with his
white-robed captains of the Faith, hunted them in arms through the
streets of Florence; at the Croce al Trebbio, near Santa Maria
Novella, and in the Piazza di Santa Felicita over the Arno, columns
still mark the place where he fell furiously upon them, _con l'uficio
apostolico_. But in 1249, at the instigation of Frederick II., the
Uberti and Ghibelline nobles rose in arms; and, after a desperate
conflict with the Guelf magnates and the people, gained possession of
the city, with the aid of the Emperor's German troops. And, on the
night of February 2nd, the Guelf leaders with a great following of
people armed and bearing torches buried Rustico Marignolli, who had
fallen in defending the banner of the Lily, with military honours in
San Lorenzo, and then sternly passed into exile. Their palaces and
towers were destroyed, while the Uberti and their allies with the
Emperor's German troops held the city. This lasted not two years. In
1250, on the death of Frederick II., the Republic threw off the yoke,
and the first democratic constitution of Florence was established, the
_Primo Popolo_, in which the People were for the first time regularly
organised both for peace and for war under a new officer, the Captain
of the People, whose appointment was intended to outweigh the Podesta,
the head of the Commune and the leader of the nobles. The Captain was
intrusted with the white and red Gonfalon of the People, and
associated with the central government of the Ancients of the people,
who to some extent corresponded to the Consuls of olden time.
This _Primo Popolo_ ran a victorious course of ten years, years of
internal prosperity and almost continuous external victory. It was
under it that the banner of the Commune was changed from a white lily
on a red field to a red lily on a white field--_per division fatto
vermiglio_, as Dante puts it--after the Uberti and Lamberti with the
turbulent Ghibellines had been expelled. Pisa was humbled; Pistoia and
Volterra forced to submit. But it came to a terrible end, illuminated
only by the heroism of one of its conquerors. A conspiracy on the part
of the Uberti to take the government from the people and subject the
city to the great Ghibelline prince, Manfredi, King of Apulia and
Sicily, son of Frederick II., was discovered and severely punished.
Headed by Farinata degli Uberti and aided by King Manfredi's German
mercenaries, the exiles gathered at Siena, against which the
Florentine Republic declared war. In 1260 the Florentine army
approached Siena. A preliminary skirmish, in which a band of German
horsemen was cut to pieces and the royal banner captured, only led a
few months later to the disastrous defeat of Montaperti, _che fece
l'Arbia colorata in rosso_; in which, after enormous slaughter and
loss of the Carroccio, or battle car of the Republic, "the ancient
people of Florence was broken and annihilated" on September 4th, 1260.
Without waiting for the armies of the conqueror, the Guelf nobles with
their families and many of the burghers fled the city, mainly to
Lucca; and, on the 16th of September, the Germans under Count
Giordano, Manfredi's vicar, with Farinata and the exiles, entered
Florence as conquerors. All liberty was destroyed, the houses of
Guelfs razed to the ground, the Count Guido Novello--the lord of Poppi
and a ruthless Ghibelline--made Podesta. The Via Ghibellina is his
record. It was finally proposed in a great Ghibelline council at
Empoli to raze Florence to the ground; but the fiery eloquence of
Farinata degli Uberti, who declared that, even if he stood alone, he
would defend her sword in hand as long as life lasted, saved his city.
Marked out with all his house for the relentless hate of the
Florentine people, Dante has secured to him a lurid crown of glory
even in Hell. Out of the burning tombs of the heretics he rises, _come
avesse l'inferno in gran dispitto_, still the unvanquished hero who,
when all consented to destroy Florence, "alone with open face defended
her."
For nearly six years the life of the Florentine people was suspended,
and lay crushed beneath an oppressive despotism of Ghibelline nobles
and German soldiery under Guido Novello, the vicar of King Manfredi.
Excluded from all political interests, the people imperceptibly
organised their greater and lesser guilds, and waited the event.
During this gloom Farinata degli Uberti died in 1264, and in the
following year, 1265, Dante Alighieri was born. That same year, 1265,
Charles of Anjou, the champion of the Church, invited by Clement IV.
to take the crown of the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, entered Italy,
and in February 1266 annihilated the army of Manfredi at the battle of
Benevento. Foremost in the ranks of the crusaders--for as such the
French were regarded--fought the Guelf exiles from Florence, under the
Papal banner specially granted them by Pope Clement--a red eagle
clutching a green dragon on a white field. This, with the addition of
a red lily over the eagle's head, became the arms of the society known
as the Parte Guelfa; you may see it on the Porta San Niccolo and in
other parts of the city between the cross of the People and the red
lily of the Commune. Many of the noble Florentines were knighted by
the hand of King Charles before the battle, and did great deeds of
valour upon the field. "These men cannot lose to-day," exclaimed
Manfredi, as he watched their advance; and when the silver eagle of
the house of Suabia fell from Manfredi's helmet and he died in the
melee crying _Hoc est signum Dei_, the triumph of the Guelfs was
complete and German rule at an end in Italy. Of Manfredi's heroic
death and the dishonour done by the Pope's legate to his body, Dante
has sung in the _Purgatorio_.
When the news reached Florence, the Ghibellines trembled for their
safety, and the people prepared to win back their own. An attempt at
compromise was first made, under the auspices of Pope Clement. Two
_Frati Gaudenti_ or "Cavalieri di Maria," members of an order of
warrior monks from Bologna, were made Podestas, one a Guelf and one a
Ghibelline, to come to terms with the burghers. You may still trace
the place where the Bottega and court of the Calimala stood in Mercato
Nuovo (the Calimala being the Guild of dressers of foreign
cloth--panni franceschi, as Villani calls it), near where the Via
Porta Rossa now enters the present Via Calzaioli. Here the new council
of thirty-six of the best citizens, burghers and artizans, with a few
trusted members of the nobility, met every day to settle the affairs
of the State. Dante has branded these two warrior monks as hypocrites,
but, as Capponi says, from this Bottega issued at once and almost
spontaneously the Republic of Florence. Their great achievement was
the thorough organisation of the seven greater Guilds, of which more
presently, to each of which were given consuls and rectors, and a
gonfalon or ensign of its own, around which its followers might
assemble in arms in defence of People and Commune. To counteract this,
Guido Novello brought in more troops from the Ghibelline cities of
Tuscany, and increased the taxes to pay his Germans; until he had
fifteen hundred horsemen in the city under his command. With their aid
the nobles, headed by the Lamberti, rushed to arms. The people rose
_en masse_ and, headed by a Ghibelline noble, Gianni dei Soldanieri,
who apparently had deserted his party in order to get control of the
State (and who is placed by Dante in the Hell of traitors), raised
barricades in the Piazza di Santa Trinita and in the Borgo SS.
Apostoli, at the foot of the Tower of the Girolami, which still
stands. The Ghibellines and Germans gathered in the Piazza di San
Giovanni, held all the north-east of the town, and swept down upon
the people's barricades under a heavy fire of darts and stones from
towers and windows. But the street fighting put the horsemen at a
hopeless disadvantage, and, repulsed in the assault, the Count and his
followers evacuated the town. This was on St Martin's day, November
11th, 1266. The next day a half-hearted attempt to re-enter the city
at the gate near the Ponte alla Carraia was made, but easily driven
off; and for two centuries and more no foreigner set foot as conqueror
in Florence.
Not that Florence either obtained or desired absolute independence.
The first step was to choose Charles of Anjou, the new King of Naples
and Sicily, for their suzerain for ten years; but, cruel tyrant as he
was elsewhere, he showed himself a true friend to the Florentines, and
his suzerainty seldom weighed upon them oppressively. The Uberti and
others were expelled, and some, who held out among the castles, were
put to death at his orders. But the government became truly
democratic. There was a central administration of twelve Ancients,
elected annually, two for each sesto; with a council of one hundred
"good men of the People, without whose deliberation no great thing or
expense could be done"; and, nominally at least, a parliament. Next
came the Captain of the People (usually an alien noble of democratic
sympathies), with a special council or _credenza_, called the Council
of the Captain and Capetudini (the Capetudini composed of the consuls
of the Guilds), of 80 members; and a general council of 300 (including
the 80), all _popolani_ and Guelfs. Next came the Podesta, always an
alien noble (appointed at first by King Charles), with the Council of
the Podesta of 90 members, and the general Council of the Commune of
300--in both of which nobles could sit as well as popolani. Measures
presented by the 12 to the 100 were then submitted successively to
the two councils of the Captain, and then, on the next day, to the
councils of the Podesta and the Commune. Occasionally measures were
concerted between the magistrates and a specially summoned council of
_richiesti_, without the formalities and delays of these various
councils. Each of the seven greater Arts[8] was further organised with
its own officers and councils and banners, like a miniature republic,
and its consuls (forming the Capetudini) always sat in the Captain's
council and usually in that of the Podesta likewise.
[8] The Arte di Calimala, or of the Mercatanti di Calimala, the
dressers of foreign cloth; the Arte della Lana, or wool; the Arte dei
Giudici e Notai, judges and notaries, also called the Arte del
Proconsolo; the Arte del Cambio or dei Cambiatori, money-changers; the
Arte dei Medici e Speziali, physicians and apothecaries; the Arte
della Seta, or silk, also called the Arte di Por Santa Maria; and the
Arte dei Vaiai e Pellicciai, the furriers. The Minor Arts were
organised later.
[Illustration: THE PALACE OF THE PARTE GUELFA]
There was one dark spot. A new organisation was set on foot, under the
auspices of Pope Clement and King Charles, known as the Parte
Guelfa--another miniature republic within the republic--with six
captains (three nobles and three popolani) and two councils, mainly to
persecute the Ghibellines, to manage confiscated goods, and uphold
Guelf principles in the State. In later days these Captains of the
Guelf Party became exceedingly powerful and oppressive, and were the
cause of much dissension. They met at first in the Church of S. Maria
sopra la Porta (now the Church of S. Biagio), and later had a special
palace of their own--which still stands, partly in the Via delle
Terme, as you pass up it from the Via Por Santa Maria on the right,
and partly in the Piazza di San Biagio. It is an imposing and somewhat
threatening mass, partly of the fourteenth and partly of the early
fifteenth century. The church, which retains in part its structure of
the thirteenth century, had been a place of secret meeting for the
Guelfs during Guido Novello's rule; it still stands, but converted
into a barracks for the firemen of Florence.
Thus was the greatest and most triumphant Republic of the Middle Ages
organised--the constitution under which the most glorious culture and
art of the modern world was to flourish. The great Guilds were
henceforth a power in the State, and the _Secondo Popolo_ had
arisen--the democracy that Dante and Boccaccio were to know.
[Illustration: ARMS OF PARTE GUELFA]