The Story of Florence
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
_Mediæval 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 mediæval 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 Cæsar, 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 Cæsar in building a new city on the banks of the Arno.
Florence, thus founded by Cæsar, 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 Cæsar and by Augustus. It has, indeed, been
urged of late that the old Florentine story has some truth in it, and
that Cæsar, 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. |
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