|
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]
CHAPTER II
_The Times of Dante and
Boccaccio_
"Godi, Fiorenza, poi che sei si grande
che per
mare e per terra batti l'ali,
e per l'inferno il tuo nome si
spande."
--_Dante._
The century that passed from the
birth of Dante in 1265 to the deaths
of Petrarch and Boccaccio, in 1374 and
1375 respectively, may be
styled the _Trecento_, although it includes the
last quarter of the
thirteenth century and excludes the closing years of the
fourteenth.
In general Italian history, it runs from the downfall of the
German
Imperial power at the battle of Benevento, in 1266, to the return
of
the Popes from Avignon in 1377. In art, it is the epoch of
the
completion of Italian Gothic in architecture, of the followers
and
successors of Niccolo and Giovanni Pisano in sculpture, of the
school
of Giotto in painting. In letters, it is the great period of
pure
Tuscan prose and verse. Dante and Giovanni Villani, Dino
Compagni,
Petrarch, Boccaccio and Sacchetti, paint the age for us in all
its
aspects; and a note of mysticism is heard at the close (though
not
from a Florentine) in the Epistles of St. Catherine of Siena, of
whom
a living Italian poet has written--_Nel Giardino del conoscimento
di
se ella e come una rosa di fuoco._ But at the same time it is a
century
full of civil war and sanguinary factions, in which every
Italian city was
divided against itself; and nowhere were these
divisions more notable or more
bitterly fought out than in Florence.
Yet, in spite of it all, the Republic
proceeded majestically on its
triumphant course. Machiavelli lays much stress
upon this in the Proem
to his _Istorie Fiorentine_. "In Florence," he says,
"at first the
nobles were divided against each other, then the people against
the
nobles, and lastly the people against the populace; and it
ofttimes
happened that when one of these parties got the upper hand, it
split
into two. And from these divisions there resulted so many deaths,
so
many banishments, so many destructions of families, as never befell
in
any other city of which we have record. Verily, in my opinion,
nothing
manifests more clearly the power of our city than the result of
these
divisions, which would have been able to destroy every great and
most
potent city. Nevertheless ours seemed thereby to grow ever
greater;
such was the virtue of those citizens, and the power of their
genius
and disposition to make themselves and their country great, that
those
who remained free from these evils could exalt her with their
virtue
more than the malignity of those accidents, which had diminished
them,
had been able to cast her down. And without doubt, if only
Florence,
after her liberation from the Empire, had had the felicity of
adopting
a form of government which would have kept her united, I know not
what
republic, whether modern or ancient, would have surpassed
her--with
such great virtue in war and in peace would she have been
filled."
[Illustration: FLORENTINE FAMILIES, EARLY THIRTEENTH CENTURY,
WITH A
PORTION OF THE SECOND WALLS INDICATED (_Temple Classics:
Paradiso_).
(The representation is approximate only: the Cerchi Palace near
the
Corso degli Adimari should be more to the right.)]
The first
thirty-four years of this epoch are among the brightest in
Florentine
history, the years that ran from the triumph of the Guelfs
to the sequel to
the Jubilee of 1300, from the establishment of the
_Secondo Popolo_ to its
split into Neri and Bianchi, into Black Guelfs
and White Guelfs. Externally
Florence became the chief power of
Tuscany, and all the neighbouring towns
gradually, to a greater or
less extent, acknowledged her sway; internally, in
spite of growing
friction between the burghers and the new Guelf nobility,
between
_popolani_ and _grandi_ or magnates, she was daily advancing in
wealth
and prosperity, in beauty and artistic power. The exquisite poetry
of
the _dolce stil novo_ was heard. Guido Cavalcanti, a noble Guelf
who
had married the daughter of Farinata degli Uberti, and, later,
the
notary Lapo Gianni and Dante Alighieri, showed the Italians what
true
lyric song was; philosophers like Brunetto Latini served the
state;
modern history was born with Giovanni Villani. Great palaces
were
built for the officers of the Republic; vast Gothic churches
arose.
Women of rare beauty, eternalised as Beatrice, Giovanna, Lagia and
the
like, passed through the streets and adorned the social gatherings
in
the open loggias of the palaces. Splendid pageants and
processions
hailed the Calends of May and the Nativity of the Baptist, and
marked
the civil and ecclesiastical festivities and state solemnities.
The
people advanced more and more in power and patriotism; while
the
magnates, in their towers and palace-fortresses, were partly forced
to
enter the life of the guilds, partly held aloof and plotted to
recover
their lost authority, but were always ready to officer the
burgher
forces in time of war, or to extend Florentine influence by serving
as
Podestas and Captains in other Italian cities.
Dante was born in
the Sesto di San Piero Maggiore in May 1265, some
eighteen months before the
liberation of the city. He lost his mother
in his infancy, and his father
while he was still a boy. This father
appears to have been a notary, and came
from a noble but decadent
family, who were probably connected with the
Elisei, an aristocratic
house of supposed Roman descent, who had by this time
almost entirely
disappeared. The Alighieri, who were Guelfs, do not seem to
have
ranked officially as _grandi_ or magnates; one of Dante's uncles
had
fought heroically at Montaperti. Almost all the families
connected
with the story of Dante's life had their houses in the Sesto di
San
Piero Maggiore, and their sites may in some instances still be
traced.
Here were the Cerchi, with whom he was to be politically associated
in
after years; the Donati, from whom sprung one of his dearest
friends,
Forese, with one of his deadliest foes, Messer Corso, and Dante's
own
wife, Gemma; and the Portinari, the house according to tradition
of
Beatrice, the "giver of blessing" of Dante's _Vita Nuova_, the
mystical
lady of the _Paradiso_. Guido Cavalcanti, the first and best
of all his
friends, lived a little apart from this Sesto di
Scandali--as St Peter's
section of the town came to be called--between
the Mercato Nuovo and San
Michele in Orto. Unlike the Alighieri,
though not of such ancient birth as
theirs, the Cavalcanti were
exceedingly rich and powerful, and ranked
officially among the
_grandi_, the Guelf magnates. At this epoch, as Signor
Carocci
observes in his _Firenze scomparsa_, Florence must have presented
the
aspect of a vast forest of towers. These towers rose over the
houses
of powerful and wealthy families, to be used for offence or
defence,
when the faction fights raged, or to be dismantled and cut down
when
the people gained the upper hand. The best idea of such a
mediæval
city, on a smaller scale, can still be got at San Gemignano, "the
fair
town called of the Fair Towers," where dozens of these _torri_
still
stand; and also, though to a less extent, at Gubbio. A few have
been
preserved here in Florence, and there are a number of narrow
streets,
on both sides of the Arno, which still retain some of their
mediæval
characteristics. In the Borgo Santissimi Apostoli, for instance,
and
in the Via Lambertesca, there are several striking towers of
this
kind, with remnants of palaces of the _grandi_; and, on the other
side
of the river, especially in the Via dei Bardi and the Borgo
San
Jacopo. When one family, or several associated families, had
palaces
on either side of a narrow street defended by such towers, and
could
throw chains and barricades across at a moment's notice, it
will
readily be understood that in times of popular tumult
Florence
bristled with fortresses in every direction.
In 1282, the
year before that in which Dante received the "most sweet
salutation,"
_dolcissimo salutare_, of "the glorious lady of my mind
who was called by
many Beatrice, that knew not how she was called,"
and saw the vision of the
Lord of terrible aspect in the mist of the
colour of fire (the vision which
inspired the first of his sonnets
which has been preserved to us), the
democratic government of the
_Secondo Popolo_ was confirmed by being placed
entirely in the hands
of the _Arti Maggiori_ or Greater Guilds. The Signoria
was henceforth
to be composed of the Priors of the Arts, chosen from the
chief
members of the Greater Guilds, who now became the supreme
magistrates
of the State. They were, at this epoch of Florentine history, six
in
number, one to represent each Sesto, and held office for two
months
only; on leaving office, they joined with the Capetudini, and
other
citizens summoned for the purpose, to elect their successors. At
a
later period this was done, ostensibly at least, by lot instead
of
election. The glorious Palazzo Vecchio had not yet been built, and
the
Priors met at first in a house belonging to the monks of the
Badia,
defended by the Torre della Castagna; and afterwards in a
palace
belonging to the Cerchi (both tower and palace are still standing).
Of
the seven Greater Arts--the _Calimala_, the Money-changers,
the
Wool-merchants, the Silk-merchants, the Physicians and
Apothecaries,
the traders in furs and skins, the Judges and Notaries--the
latter
alone do not seem at first to have been represented in the
Priorate;
but to a certain extent they exercised control over all the
Guilds,
sat in all their tribunals, and had a Proconsul, who came next to
the
Signoria in all state processions, and had a certain jurisdiction
over
all the Arts. It was thus essentially a government of those who
were
actually engaged in industry and commerce. "Henceforth,"
writes
Pasquale Villari, "the Republic is properly a republic of
merchants,
and only he who is ascribed to the Arts can govern it: every grade
of
nobility, ancient or new, is more a loss than a privilege." The
double
organisation of the People under the Captain with his two
councils,
and the Commune under the Podesta with his special council and
the
general council (in these two latter alone, it will be
remembered,
could nobles sit and vote) still remained; but the authority of
the
Podesta was naturally diminished.
[Illustration: CORSO DONATI'S
TOWER]
Florence was now the predominant power in central Italy; the
cities of
Tuscany looked to her as the head of the Guelfic League,
although,
says Dino Compagni, "they love her more in discord than in peace,
and
obey her more for fear than for love." A protracted war against
Pisa
and Arezzo, carried on from 1287 to 1292, drew even Dante from
his
poetry and his study; it is believed that he took part in the
great
battle of Campaldino in 1289, in which the last efforts of the
old
Tuscan Ghibellinism were shattered by the Florentines and
their
allies, fighting under the royal banner of the House of Anjou.
Amerigo
di Narbona, one of the captains of King Charles II. of Naples, was
in
command of the Guelfic forces. From many points of view, this is one
of
the more interesting battles of the Middle Ages. It is said to have
been
almost the last Italian battle in which the burgher forces, and
not the
mercenary soldiery of the Condottieri, carried the day. Corso
Donati and
Vieri dei Cerchi, soon to be in deadly feud in the
political arena, were
among the captains of the Florentine host; and
Dante himself is said to have
served in the front rank of the cavalry.
In a fragment of a letter ascribed
to him by one of his earlier
biographers, Dante speaks of this battle of
Campaldino; "wherein I had
much dread, and at the end the greatest gladness,
by reason of the
varying chances of that battle." One of the Ghibelline
leaders,
Buonconte da Montefeltro, who was mortally wounded and died in
the
rout, meets the divine poet on the shores of the Mountain
of
Purgation, and, in lines of almost ineffable pathos, tells him
the
whole story of his last moments. Villani, ever mindful of
Florence
being the daughter of Rome, assures us that the news of the
great
victory was miraculously brought to the Priors in the Cerchi
Palace,
in much the same way as the tidings of Lake Regillus to the
expectant
Fathers at the gate of Rome. Several of the exiled Uberti had
fallen
in the ranks of the enemy, fighting against their own country. In
the
cloisters of the Annunziata you will find a contemporary monument
of
the battle, let into the west wall of the church near the ground;
the
marble figure of an armed knight on horseback, with the golden
lilies
of France over his surcoat, charging down upon the foe. It is the
tomb
of the French cavalier, Guglielmo Berardi, "balius" of Amerigo
di
Narbona, who fell upon the field.
The eleven years that follow
Campaldino, culminating in the Jubilee of
Pope Boniface VIII. and the opening
of the fourteenth century, are the
years of Dante's political life. They
witnessed the great political
reforms which confirmed the democratic
character of the government,
and the marvellous artistic embellishment of the
city under Arnolfo di
Cambio and his contemporaries. During these years the
Palazzo Vecchio,
the Duomo, and the grandest churches of Florence were
founded; and the
Third Walls, whose gates and some scanty remnants are with
us to-day,
were begun. Favoured by the Popes and the Angevin sovereigns
of
Naples, now that the old Ghibelline nobility, save in a few valleys
and
mountain fortresses, was almost extinct, the new nobles, the
_grandi_ or
Guelf magnates, proud of their exploits at Campaldino, and
chafing against
the burgher rule, began to adopt an overbearing line
of conduct towards the
people, and to be more factious than ever among
themselves. Strong measures
were adopted against them, such as the
complete enfranchisement of the
peasants of the contrada in
1289--measures which culminated in the famous
Ordinances of Justice,
passed in 1293, by which the magnates were completely
excluded from
the administration, severe laws made to restrain their rough
usage of
the people, and a special magistrate, the _Gonfaloniere_
or
"Standard-bearer of Justice," added to the Priors, to hold office
like
them for two months in rotation from each sesto of the city, and
to
rigidly enforce the laws against the magnates. This Gonfaloniere
became
practically the head of the Signoria, and was destined to
become the supreme
head of the State in the latter days of the
Florentine Republic; to him was
publicly assigned the great Gonfalon
of the People, with its red cross on a
white field; and he had a large
force of armed popolani under his command to
execute these ordinances,
against which there was no appeal allowed.[9] These
Ordinances also
fixed the number of the Guilds at twenty-one--seven Arti
Maggiori,
mainly engaged in wholesale commerce, exportation and
importation,
fourteen Arti Minori, which carried on the retail traffic and
internal
trade of the city--and renewed their statutes.
[9] Some
years later a new officer, the Executor of Justice, was
instituted to carry
out these ordinances instead of leaving them to
the Gonfaloniere. This
Executor of Justice was associated with the
Captain, but was usually a
foreign Guelf burgher; later he developed
into the Bargello, head of police
and governor of the gaol. It will,
of course, be seen that while Podesta,
Captain, Executore (the
_Rettori_), were aliens, the Gonfaloniere and
Priors (the _Signori_)
were necessarily Florentines and
popolani.
The hero of this Magna Charta of Florence is a certain Giano
della
Bella, a noble who had fought at Campaldino and had now joined
the
people; a man of untractable temper, who knew not how to
make
concessions; somewhat anti-clerical and obnoxious to the Pope,
but
consumed by an intense and savage thirst for justice, upon which
the
craftier politicians of both sides played. "Let the State
perish,
rather than such things be tolerated," was his constant
political
formula: _Perisca innanzi la citta, che tante opere rie
si
sostengano._ But the magnates, from whom he was endeavouring to
snatch
their last political refuge, the Parte Guelfa, muttered, "Let us
smite
the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered"; and at length,
after
an ineffectual conspiracy against his life, Giano was driven out
of
the city, on March 5th, 1295, by a temporary alliance of the
burghers
and magnates against him. The _popolo minuto_ and artizans, upon
whom
he had mainly relied and whose interests he had sustained,
deserted
him; and the government remained henceforth in the hands of
the
wealthy burghers, the _popolo grosso_. Already a cleavage was
becoming
visible between these Arti Maggiori, who ruled the State, and the
Arti
Minori whose gains lay in local merchandise and traffic,
partly
dependent upon the magnates. And a butcher, nicknamed Pecora, or,
as
we may call him, Lambkin, appears prominently as a would-be
politician;
he cuts a quaintly fierce figure in Dino Compagni's
chronicle. In this same
year, 1295, Dante Alighieri entered public
life, and, on July 6th, he spoke
in the General Council of the Commune
in support of certain modifications in
the Ordinances of Justice,
whereby nobles, by leaving their order and
matriculating in one or
other of the Arts, even without exercising it, could
be free from
their disabilities, and could share in the government of the
State,
and hold office in the Signoria. He himself, in this same
year,
matriculated in the Arte dei Medici e Speziali, the great guild
which
included the painters and the book-sellers.
The growing
dissensions in the Guelf Republic came to a head in 1300,
the famous year of
jubilee in which the Pope was said to have declared
that the Florentines were
the "fifth element." The rival factions of
Bianchi and Neri, White Guelfs and
Black Guelfs, which were now to
divide the whole city, arose partly from the
deadly hostility of two
families each with a large following, the Cerchi and
the Donati,
headed respectively by Vieri dei Cerchi and Corso Donati, the
two
heroes of Campaldino; partly from an analogous feud in Pistoia,
which
was governed from Florence; partly from the political discord
between
that party in the State that clung to the (modified) Ordinances
of
Justice and supported the Signoria, and another party that hated
the
Ordinances and loved the tyrannical Parte Guelfa. They were
further
complicated by the intrigues of the "black" magnates with
Pope
Boniface VIII., who apparently hoped by their means to repress
the
burgher government and unite the city in obedience to himself.
With
this end in view, he had been endeavouring to obtain from Albert
of
Austria the renunciation, in favour of the Holy See, of all
rights
claimed by the Emperors over Tuscany. Dante himself, Guido
Cavalcanti,
and most of the best men in Florence either directly adhered to,
or at
least favoured, the Cerchi and the Whites; the populace, on the
other
hand, was taken with the dash and display of the more
aristocratic
Blacks, and would gladly have seen Messer Corso--"il Barone," as
they
called him--lord of the city. Rioting, in which Guido
Cavalcanti
played a wild and fantastic part, was of daily occurrence,
especially
in the Sesto di San Piero. The adherents of the Signoria had
their
head-quarters in the Cerchi Palace, in the Via della Condotta;
the
Blacks found their legal fortress in that of the Captains of the
Parte
Guelfa in the Via delle Terme. At last, on May 1st, the two
factions
"came to blood" in the Piazza di Santa Trinita on the occasion of
a
dance of girls to usher in the May. On June 15th Dante was elected
one
of the six Priors, to hold office till August 15th, and he at
once
took a strong line in resisting all interference from Rome, and
in
maintaining order within the city. In consequence of an assault
upon
the officers of the Guilds on St. John's Eve, the Signoria,
probably
on Dante's initiative, put under bounds a certain number of
factious
magnates, chosen impartially from both parties, including Corso
Donati
and Guido Cavalcanti. From his place of banishment at Sarzana,
Guido,
sick to death, wrote the most pathetic of all his
lyrics:--
"Because I think not ever to return,
Ballad, to
Tuscany,--
Go therefore thou for me
Straight to my lady's
face,
Who, of her noble grace,
Shall show thee
courtesy.
* * * * *
"Surely thou knowest, Ballad, how that Death
Assails me, till my life
is almost sped:
Thou knowest how my heart still travaileth
Through the sore pangs which in my soul are bred:--
My body being now
so nearly dead,
It cannot suffer more.
Then, going, I
implore
That this my soul thou take
(Nay, do so for my
sake),
When my heart sets it free."[10]
[10] Rossetti's
translation of the _ripresa_ and second stanza of the
Ballata _Perch'i' no
spero di tornar giammai_.
And at the end of August, when Dante had left
office, Guido returned
to Florence with the rest of the Bianchi, only to die.
For more than a
year the "white" burghers were supreme, not only in Florence,
but
throughout a greater part of Tuscany; and in the following May
they
procured the expulsion of the Blacks from Pistoia. But Corso Donati
at
Rome was biding his time; and, on November 1st, 1301, Charles
of
Valois, brother of King Philip of France, entered Florence with
some
1200 horsemen, partly French and partly Italian,--ostensibly as
papal
peacemaker, but preparing to "joust with the lance of Judas." In
Santa
Maria Novella he solemnly swore, as the son of a king, to preserve
the
peace and well-being of the city; and at once armed his
followers.
Magnates and burghers alike, seeing themselves betrayed, began
to
barricade their houses and streets. On the same day (November
5th)
Corso Donati, acting in unison with the French, appeared in
the
suburbs, entered the city by a postern gate in the second walls,
near
S. Piero Maggiore, and swept through the streets with an armed
force,
burst open the prisons, and drove the Priors out of their new
Palace.
For days the French and the Neri sacked the city and the contrada
at
their will, Charles being only intent upon securing a large share
of
the spoils for himself. But even he did not dare to alter the
popular
constitution, and was forced to content himself with
substituting
"black" for "white" burghers in the Signoria, and establishing
a
Podesta of his own following, Cante de' Gabbrielli of Gubbio, in
the
Palace of the Commune. An apparently genuine attempt on the part
of
the Pope, by a second "peacemaker," to undo the harm that his first
had
done, came to nothing; and the work of proscription commenced,
under the
direction of the new Podesta. Dante was one of the first
victims. The two
sentences against him (in each case with a few other
names) are dated January
27th, 1302, and March 10th--and there were to
be others later. It is the
second decree that contains the famous
clause, condemning him to be burned to
death, if ever he fall into the
power of the Commune. At the beginning of
April all the leaders of the
"white" faction, who had not already fled or
turned "black," with
their chief followers, magnates and burghers alike, were
hounded into
exile; and Charles left Florence to enter upon an almost
equally
shameful campaign in Sicily.
[Illustration: ACROSS THE PONTE
VECCHIO]
Dante is believed to have been absent from Florence on an
embassy to
the Pope when Charles of Valois came, and to have heard the news
of
his ruin at Siena as he hurried homewards--though both embassy
and
absence have been questioned by Dante scholars of repute.
His
ancestor, Cacciaguida, tells him in the _Paradiso_:--
"Tu
lascerai ogni cosa diletta
piu caramente, e questo e quello
strale
che l'arco dello esilio pria saetta.
Tu proverai si
come sa di sale
lo pane altrui, e com'e duro calle
lo
scendere e il salir per l'altrui scale."[11]
[11] "Thou shall abandon
everything beloved most dearly; this is the
arrow which the bow of exile
shall first shoot.
"Thou shalt make trial of how salt doth taste
another's bread, and how
hard the path to descend and mount upon another's
stair."
Wicksteed's translation.
The rest of Dante's life was
passed in exile, and only touches the
story of Florence indirectly at certain
points. "Since it was the
pleasure of the citizens of the most beautiful and
most famous
daughter of Rome, Florence," he tells us in his _Convivio_, "to
cast
me forth from her most sweet bosom (in which I was born and
nourished
up to the summit of my life, and in which, with her good will,
I
desire with all my heart to rest my weary soul and end the time
given
me), I have gone through almost all the parts to which this
language
extends, a pilgrim, almost a beggar, showing against my will the
wound
of fortune, which is wont unjustly to be ofttimes reputed to
the
wounded."
Attempts of the exiles to win their return to Florence
by force of
arms, with aid from the Ubaldini and the Tuscan Ghibellines,
were
easily repressed. But the victorious Neri themselves now split
into
two factions; the one, headed by Corso Donati and composed mainly
of
magnates, had a kind of doubtful support in the favour of the
populace;
the other, led by Rosso della Tosa, inclined to the Signoria
and the _popolo
grosso_. It was something like the old contest between
Messer Corso and Vieri
dei Cerchi, but with more entirely selfish
ends; and there was evidently
going to be a hard tussle between Messer
Corso and Messer Rosso for the
possession of the State. Civil war was
renewed in the city, and the confusion
was heightened by the
restoration of a certain number of Bianchi, who were
reconciled to the
Government. The new Pope, Benedict XI., was ardently
striving to
pacify Florence and all Italy; and his legate, the Cardinal
Niccolo da
Prato, took up the cause of the exiles. Pompous peace-meetings
were
held in the Piazza di Santa Maria Novella, for the friars of
St
Dominic--to which order the new Pope belonged--had the welfare of
the
city deeply at heart; and at one of these meetings the exiled
lawyer,
Ser Petracco dall'Ancisa (in a few days to be the father of
Italy's
second poet), acted as the representative of his party. Attempts
were
made to revive the May-day pageants of brighter days--but they
only
resulted in a horrible disaster on the Ponte alla Carraia, of
which
more presently. The fiends of faction broke loose again; and in
order
to annihilate the Cavalcanti, who were still rich and powerful
round
about the Mercato Nuovo, the leaders of the Neri deliberately burned
a
large portion of the city. On July 20th, 1304, an attempt by the
now
allied Bianchi and Ghibellines to surprise the city proved
a
disastrous failure; and, on that very day (Dante being now far away
at
Verona, forming a party by himself), Francesco di Petracco--who was
to
call himself Petrarca and is called by us Petrarch--was born in
exile
at Arezzo.
[Illustration: MERCATO NUOVO, THE FLOWER
MARKET]
This miserable chapter of Florentine history ended tragically in
1308,
with the death of Corso Donati. In his old age he had married
a
daughter of Florence's deadliest foe, the great Ghibelline
champion,
Uguccione della Faggiuola; and, in secret understanding with
Uguccione
and the Cardinal Napoleone degli Orsini (Pope Clement V. had
already
transferred the papal chair to Avignon and commenced the
Babylonian
captivity), he was preparing to overthrow the Signoria, abolish
the
Ordinances, and make himself Lord of Florence. But the
people
anticipated him. On Sunday morning, October 16th, the Priors
ordered
their great bell to be sounded; Corso was accused, condemned as
a
traitor and rebel, and sentence pronounced in less than an hour;
and
with the great Gonfalon of the People displayed, the forces of
the
Commune, supported by the swordsmen of the Della Tosa and a band
of
Catalan mercenaries in the service of the King of Naples, marched
upon
the Piazza di San Piero Maggiore. Over the Corbizzi tower floated
the
banner of the Donati, but only a handful of men gathered round
the
fierce old noble who, himself unable by reason of his gout to
bear
arms, encouraged them by his fiery words to hold out to the last.
But
the soldiery of Uguccione never came, and not a single magnate in
the
city stirred to aid him. Corso, forced at last to abandon
his
position, broke through his enemies, and, hotly pursued, fled
through
the Porta alla Croce. He was overtaken, captured, and
barbarously
slain by the lances of the hireling soldiery, near the Badia di
San
Salvi, at the instigation, as it was whispered, of Rosso della
Tosa
and Pazzino dei Pazzi. The monks carried him, as he lay dying,
into
the Abbey, where they gave him humble sepulchre for fear of
the
people. With all his crimes, there was nothing small in anything
that
Messer Corso did; he was a great spirit, one who could
have
accomplished mighty things in other circumstances, but who could
not
breathe freely in the atmosphere of a mercantile republic. "His
life
was perilous," says Dino Compagni sententiously, "and his death
was
blame-worthy."
A brief but glorious chapter follows, though
denounced in Dante's
bitterest words. Hardly was Corso dead when, after their
long
silence, the imperial trumpets were again heard in the Garden of
the
Empire. Henry of Luxemburg, the last hero of the Middle Ages,
elected
Emperor as Henry VII., crossed the Alps in September 1310, resolved
to
heal the wounds of Italy, and to revive the fading mediæval dream
of
the Holy Roman Empire. In three wild and terrible letters,
Dante
announced to the princes and peoples of Italy the advent of
this
"peaceful king," this "new Moses"; threatened the Florentines with
the
vengeance of the Imperial Eagle; urged Cæsar on against the
city--"the
sick sheep that infecteth all the flock of the Lord with
her
contagion." But the Florentines rose to the occasion, and with the
aid
of their ally, the King of Naples, formed what was practically
an
Italian confederation to oppose the imperial invader. "It was at
this
moment," writes Professor Villari, "that the small merchant
republic
initiated a truly national policy, and became a great power in
Italy."
From the middle of September till the end of October, 1312,
the
imperial army lay round Florence. The Emperor, sick with fever,
had
his head-quarters in San Salvi. But he dared not venture upon
an
attack, although the fortifications were unfinished; and, in
the
following August, the Signoria of Florence could write exultantly
to
their allies, and announce "the blessed tidings" that "the most
savage
tyrant, Henry, late Count of Luxemburg, whom the
rebellious
persecutors of the Church, and treacherous foes of ourselves and
you,
called King of the Romans and Emperor of Germany," had died
at
Buonconvento.
But in the Empyrean Heaven of Heavens, in the
mystical convent of
white stoles, Beatrice shows Dante the throne of glory
prepared for
the soul of the noble-hearted Cæsar:--
"In quel gran
seggio, a che tu gli occhi tieni
per la corona che gia v'e su
posta,
prima che tu a queste nozze ceni,
sedera l'alma, che
fia giu agosta,
dell'alto Enrico, ch'a drizzare Italia
verra
in prima che ella sia disposta." [12]
[12] "On that great seat where
thou dost fix thine eyes, for the
crown's sake already placed above it, ere
at this wedding feast
thyself do sup,
"Shall sit the soul (on
earth 'twill be imperial) of the lofty Henry,
who shall come to straighten
Italy ere she be ready for it."
After this, darker days fell upon
Florence. Dante, with a renewed
sentence of death upon his head, was
finishing his _Divina Commedia_
at Verona and Ravenna,--until, on September
14th, 1321, he passed away
in the latter city, with the music of the
pine-forest in his ears and
the monuments of dead emperors before his dying
eyes. Petrarch, after
a childhood spent at Carpentras, was studying law at
Montpellier and
Bologna--until, on that famous April morning in Santa Chiara
at
Avignon, he saw the golden-haired girl who made him the greatest
lyrist
of the Middle Ages. It was in the year 1327 that Laura--if such
was really
her name--thus crossed his path. Boccaccio, born at
Certaldo in 1313, the
year of the Emperor Henry's death, was growing
up in Florence, a sharp and
precocious boy. But the city was in a
woeful plight; harassed still by
factious magnates and burghers,
plundered by foreign adventurers, who
pretended to serve her, heavily
taxed by the Angevin sovereigns--the
_Reali_--of Naples. Florence had
taken first King Robert, and then his son,
Charles of Calabria, as
overlord, for defence against external foes (first
Henry VII., then
Uguccione della Faggiuola, and then Castruccio
Interminelli); and the
vicars of these Neapolitan princes replaced for a
while the Podestas;
their marshals robbed and corrupted; their Catalan
soldiers clamoured
for pay. The wars with Uguccione and Castruccio were most
disastrous
to the Republic; and the fortunate coincidence of the deaths
of
Castruccio and Charles of Calabria, in 1328, gave Florence back
her
liberty at the very moment when she no longer needed a
defender.
Although the Florentines professed to regard this suzerainty of
the
Reali di Napoli as an alliance rather than a subjection,--_compagnia
e
non servitu_ as Machiavelli puts it--it was an undoubted relief when
it
ended. The State was reorganised, and a new constitution confirmed
in a
solemn Parliament held in the Piazza. Henceforth the nomination
of the Priors
and Gonfaloniere was effected by lot, and controlled by
a complicated process
of scrutiny; the old councils were all annulled;
and in future there were to
be only two chief councils--the Council of
the People, composed of 300
_popolani_, presided over by the Captain,
and the Council of the Commune, of
250, presided over by the Podesta,
in which latter (as in former councils of
the kind) both _popolani_
and _grandi_ could sit. Measures proposed by the
Government were
submitted first to the Council of the People, and then, if
approved, to that of the Commune. |
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