The Two First Centuries of Florentine History. Pasquale Villari
who no longer respected the distinctions of class or race, and often departed to rejoin their friends. They frequently emigrated in such numbers that the citizens suffered injury by it, and issued decrees forbidding their exodus. The Pope gave encouragement to the communes, because the reduction of his prelates' temporal power did not displease him, and the abasement of the Empire was indispensable to his aims. Thus the struggle of the working classes against feudalism finally began, and with it the real history of our communes.
But it should not be thought that the Commune arose to champion the rights of man or in the name of national independence. Nothing of the kind. The Empire was still held to be the sole and universal fount of right. Almost to the close of the fifteenth century, in fact, all cities, whether Guelph or Ghibelline, foes or friends of the Empire, continued to indite their State papers in its name.12 The revived republics always acknowledged its supremacy, and their own dependence, almost, one might say, as though in claiming a new and more general exemption, they only sought to be, as it were, their own dukes or counts. They combated the nobles and combated the Empire; but victory once assured, they recognised the authority of the emperor, and prayed him to sanction the privileges they had won. Nor was the destruction of the Empire at any time desired by the Popes; its protection was often indispensable to them, and they too recognised it as the legitimate heir of ancient Rome, and consequently as the only source of political and civil rights. Their purpose was to subject the temporal to the spiritual power. Therefore, during the rise of the Commune, theocracy and feudalism, Papacy and Empire, still subsisted together and always in conflict. The Commune had to struggle long against obstacles of all kinds; but it was destined to triumph, and to create the third estate and people by whom alone modern society could be evolved from the chaos of the Middle Ages. This constitutes the chief historical importance of the Italian Commune.
CHAPTER I.
THE ORIGIN OF FLORENCE.
I.
THE origin of Florence is wrapped in great obscurity, and little light is to be derived from chroniclers, who either avoided the subject altogether or clouded it over with legends. Much has been written of late touching these chroniclers and on the value and varying credibility of their accounts. But in endeavouring to ascertain everything, and push research too subtly, long and learned disputes have sometimes arisen on particulars which can never, perhaps, be verified and are scarcely worth knowing, while more significant and easily investigated points have been left untouched. By this method some risk is incurred of building up from those writers a species of occult science for the sole benefit of the initiated, whereas all that is absolutely known of the origin of Florence may be expressed in a few words.
The Florentine Commune being of tardier birth than many others, its historians and chroniclers were likewise of later date, since no commune possesses a written history until conscious of its own personality. Thus, it was only in the twelfth century that yearly records were first started, registering some of the more important events of Florence, giving dates, and names of places and persons, while, at the same time, lists were made of the Consuls, the first magistrates of the Commune, and afterwards supplemented with the names of the Podestà, who succeeded to the Consuls. These magistrates being changed yearly, and even more frequently, this catalogue served as a chronological guide, and was soon converted into a register of contemporaneous events in the town.
THE ARNO RIVER-GOD.
(Bas-relief now in the Etruscan Museum, Florence.)
[To face page 39.
A very early fragment of these annals is preserved in the Vatican, and is written on the back of a sheet forming part of a codex13 of Longobard laws. It contains eighteen records, running from 1110 to 1173, in different handwritings, all, however, of the twelfth century, with some blunders and no chronological arrangement. Nevertheless these records are of much importance, being the earliest we possess. A similar and longer series of records of much later date, running from 1107 to 1247, is to be found in a thirteenth-century MS.14 in the National Library at Florence.
Both collections have been recently republished and illustrated by Dr. Hartwig, under the title of "Annales florentini," i. and "Annales florentini," ii.15 The Codex containing the second series also comprises the oldest list extant of Consuls and Podestà, from 1196 to 1267, and has been rendered more complete by the results of fresh research.16
Other and similar records must have been certainly made, first in Latin, then in Italian, and, in passing from this family to that, from hand to hand, enlarged, revised, and altered according to the taste, or even the fancy, of their transcribers. But, from the remains of those records and all matter copied from them by the chroniclers, it may be inferred with almost absolute certainty that they told little or nothing of the origin of the Commune. We are therefore inclined to believe that this was neither the outcome of virulent conflict nor of downright revolution, for either would have been undoubtedly registered in the annals, but that it gradually evolved and developed amid struggles of secondary importance.
If in these days we desire to ascertain the origin of the Florentine Commune, it is only natural that older generations should have felt even a keener interest in the theme. They, however, lacked the art and critical method enabling us to track and often lay bare the darkest and most remote periods of history by means of public documents, although many now perished must have been at their disposal. But our forefathers were readier to draw on their own imagination, and thus a legend regarding the origin of the city was created, and soon became widely diffused.
The primary germ from which this legend was developed and expanded must date from the twelfth century, seeing that it was known and recorded by the chronicler Sanzanome, who wrote during the first years of the thirteenth century. It cannot be much older than this, seeing that the events and dates to which it alludes, in however vague and shadowy a fashion, carry it down beyond the eleventh century. Several inedited copies of this legend are still to be found in Florentine libraries,17 and it has been published in three different compilations. The most ancient of these, in Latin, is contained in a codex dating from the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century.18 The second, in Italian, is in a Lucchese MS.,19 compiled between 1290 and 1342; at one point it gives a record of 1264,20 and was probably written at that time. The third and later version, known as the "Libro fiesolano", is comprised in an Italian codex dated 1382, in the Marucellian Library at Florence, was discovered by Signor Gargani and published by him in 1854.21 Dr. Hartwig discovered the second, which is identical, save in language, with the first, and published all three under the title of "Chronica de Origine Civitatis,"22 found in the Lucca MS.; although in other MSS. it is styled "Memoria del Nascimento di Firenze."
Such was the material at the service of the old chroniclers, and all they had to rely upon regarding the origin of Florence. The earliest chronicler of whom any remains are extant is the judge and notary Sanzanome, who, as already noted by us, wrote his "Gesta Florentinorum" at the beginning of the thirteenth century. We find him mentioned more than once in Florentine documents from 1188–1245.23 Although we cannot be certain that this name always referred to the same individual, it is certain that the same chronicler records his presence in the war of Semifonte in the year 1202, and in that of Montalto in 1207. Besides, his work is found in a Florentine codex of the thirteenth century, and if not in his own hand, in the character of about the same period.24 This first attempt at Florentine history, written in Latin by a judge and notary, supposed by Milanesi and Hartwig to have been a native of a neighbouring town, but resident in Florence, has a stamp of