Part 115

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.