Читать книгу The Close of the Middle Ages, 1272-1494 - Richard Sir Lodge - Страница 9

Table of Contents

Italy in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries—Causes of Italian disunion—The Guelfs and Ghibellines—The Italian towns—The House of Anjou in Naples—The Sicilian Vespers—The Popes and their States—Celestine V. is succeeded by Boniface VIII.—The last of the Mediæval Popes—The difficulties of Benedict XI. and Clement V.—The retirement of Clement V. to Avignon and beginning of the ‘Babylonish Captivity’—The condition of Tuscany—The Florentine Constitution—Genoa and Milan—The Venetian Constitution—Henry VII. makes an Expedition into Italy—Its failure—Death of Henry VII.

The two centuries which are treated in this volume constitute |Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.| the most brilliant period in Italian history since the age of Augustus. The absence of any central authority, which disappeared even more completely in Italy than in Germany, opened the way for the growth of a number of political organisations, whose history is as fascinating as their variety is bewildering. In addition to the great dynasties of Anjou, Visconti, and Medici, we have to watch the fortunes of the great republics of Venice, Florence, and Genoa, of the temporal states of the Church, and of a number of lesser families, such as the House of Este in Ferrara, the della Scalas in Verona, the Gonzagas in Mantua, the Montefeltri in Urbino, whose kaleidoscopic changes are narrated with such wealth of detail in the volumes of Sismondi. But what gives its special importance to the history of this period is that in it Italy becomes the teacher of Europe. It is to Italy that we trace that great movement, known as the Renaissance, which began with the revival of classical learning, but led on to the growth of national literatures, to the rise of a new spirit in the arts of painting and sculpture, and to the enfranchisement of human thought from the fetters of superstition, routine, and the formulas of scholasticism. In the fifteenth century, Italy originated the art of writing history as distinguished from the compilation of mediæval chronicles. And finally, Italy instructed Europe in politics as well as in letters and art. The foremost European rulers of the sixteenth century learnt the maxims of government from Italian princes and Italian writers: the great states of modern times learnt from Italy the practices of diplomacy and the theory of the balance of power. Political science, which had made no progress since the days of Aristotle, was revived by the writings of Machiavelli and Guicciardini.

Yet Italy profited less than any other state from the lessons which she taught. France, England, and Spain, all of them the pupils of Italy, became strong, united, and wealthy states, while Italy herself, in the very middle of an intellectual and artistic activity which has remained the wonder of the world, subsided into political insignificance, and only finds a place in subsequent history as the stage on which other nations fight out their quarrels. The solution of this crucial problem, the combination of intellectual progress with political decadence, can only be found in a careful study of the conditions which |Causes of Italian disunion.| prevented the people of Italy from following the normal tendencies of the period, and becoming a nation. The causes of disunion are too numerous and deep-seated to be summed up in a few sentences. But it may be instructive to form a clear conception, at starting, of some of the most notable conditions which influenced the course of Italian history in the period which we have to consider. In the first place, geography in Italy, as in Greece, tended to disunion. The Apennines cut off the Lombard plain from the rest of Italy, and divided the latter into two unequal parts which were again split up by the lateral offshoots into divisions, not quite so small as those of Greece, but almost equally marked off. The nominal subjection to an elective emperor, who was also king of Germany, rendered impossible the rise of any strong native power which could weld together the separate political units. The influence of the Papacy, which in the thirteenth century combined the sovereignty of an Italian state with the spiritual headship of Latin Christendom, proved almost as great an obstacle as the Empire to national union. The great length of Italy, by increasing isolation, hindered the growth of common interests. The leagues occasionally founded for common aims, such as the Lombard league against Frederick Barbarossa and the league of Venice against Charles VIII., were never more than temporary alliances, and fell to pieces as soon as their immediate object was gained.

The long quarrel between the Popes and the Hohenstaufen |Guelfs and Ghibellines.| Emperors bequeathed a fatal heritage to Italy in the party feuds of Guelfs and Ghibellines. These famous factions not only set one state against another, but also gave rise to violent discord within each state. And the parties lasted long after the original cause of quarrel had come to an end. When the Hohenstaufen had perished with Manfred and Conradin, when Rudolf of Hapsburg had abandoned all imperial claims over central and southern Italy, when the Papacy itself had quitted Italy to find a home on the further boundary of Provence, it seemed as if party feuds must inevitably die out for want of the fuel which had originally kindled them. But the blaze of mutual hatred continued to rage as fiercely as ever. The famous strife of the Bianchi and Neri in Florence, which drove Dante into exile from his native city, was fought out when Albert I. and Boniface VIII. were in close alliance. These stereotyped and quasi-hereditary feuds were not only destructive of all sense of nationality, but they were strong enough to overpower the far stronger and more local sentiment of common citizenship.

Perhaps the strongest of all the disruptive forces in Italy was the development, in the northern and central provinces, of the municipality or commune as the normal |The Commune as a political unit.| unit of political life. This applies not only to the republics proper, but also to those cities whose liberties were overthrown by the rise of some dominant family. The subjection of lesser cities by more powerful neighbours did not create a state in which all subjects stood in an equal relation of submission to a despotic government, but one in which subject communes were enslaved by a dominant commune, and were excluded by it from all voice in the government. The citizens of Pavia and Cremona were not the direct subjects of the Visconti on a level with the Milanese themselves. They were the subjects of Milan, and were ruled by Milanese governors, just as Pisa and Pistoia were ruled by Florentines. The absorption of the lesser cities continued, until in the fifteenth century Italy practically consisted of five dominant states—Naples, Milan, Venice, Florence, and the Papacy. The result was the creation of a large subject population, deprived of that share in politics which Italian citizens had learnt in earlier times to consider their dearest right, and constituting a permanent and dangerous element of discontent. It was from this population that the condottieri recruited those mercenary armies to which Italian writers agree in attributing the disasters that befel their country, and it was this population which welcomed foreign invasion as a chance of escaping from domestic oppressions. Commines tells us that the Italians ‘welcomed as saints’ the French army that followed Charles VIII. to Naples, and the phrase is significant of the unsoundness of the political condition of Italy and of the utter absence of any sense of nationality.

The quarrel between Frederick II. and the Popes had been embittered by the former’s possession of Naples and Sicily, which brought him into threatening proximity to the territories in central Italy which the Popes claimed to rule. To drive the Hohenstaufen from Italian soil the Popes did not hesitate to call in foreign assistance. After a vain attempt to draw England into the quarrel, the crown of Sicily was offered as a papal fief to |The House of Anjou in Naples.| Charles of Anjou, the brother of Louis IX., and Count of Provence through his wife Beatrix. At the battle of Grandella near Benevento (February 26, 1266) Manfred, the illegitimate son of Frederick II., was slain; and the still more famous battle of Tagliacozzo (August 23, 1268) was followed by the capture and execution of Conradin, the last male representative of the House of Hohenstaufen. These two victories secured Charles’s possession of Naples and Sicily, though the marriage of Manfred’s daughter, Constance, to Peter III. of Aragon created a rival claim which proved a source of subsequent danger.

As the acknowledged head of the Guelf party, which was for the moment supreme, Charles of Anjou seemed likely to establish his ascendency over the greater part of Italy. The Pope, claiming supremacy during the Interregnum, appointed him imperial vicar and senator of Rome, while a number of cities in Tuscany and Lombardy acknowledged his lordship. But his ambitious schemes were suddenly checked by the very power of which he posed as the champion. The Papacy discovered that it had called in a protector who might prove as dangerous a neighbour as the Hohenstaufen. Gregory X. and Nicolas III., secured in their position by the concessions of Rudolf of Hapsburg, did not hesitate to oppose the further progress of the Neapolitan kings by a policy of mediation between the Guelfs and Ghibellines. The election of Martin IV. (February 24, 1281), a creature of Charles, seemed to offer a new opportunity for Angevin aggression. The ascendency of the Guelf faction was revived, and Charles was planning an enterprise against Constantinople, when he was arrested by the news of a great disaster. The |Sicilian Vespers, 1282.| Sicilians had long resented the harshness of French rule, and John of Procida, an old partisan of the Hohenstaufen, had returned from his refuge in Aragon to encourage the malcontents and to secure for them foreign assistance. His plans were still incomplete, when a sudden rising at Palermo was provoked by a brutal insult offered to a woman by a French soldier during a procession on Easter Monday (March 30, 1282). The people rose with shouts of ‘Death to the French!’ and more than four thousand men, women, and children were massacred that evening. The whole of Sicily joined in the rebellion, and offered the crown to Peter III. of Aragon. When Peter arrived in August he found that Charles, thirsting for vengeance, had already laid siege to Messina. But the Catalan |House of Aragon in Sicily.| fleet under Roger di Loria, the most distinguished naval commander of his time, was too formidable to be faced by the mere transport vessels with which Charles was provided. Sicily was perforce evacuated, and was never recovered by the House of Anjou. The Sicilian Vespers gave rise to a twenty years’ struggle, which concerns the history of France and Spain as well as Italy. The Pope decreed Peter’s deposition, both in Sicily and in Aragon, and offered the latter crown to Charles of Valois, the second son of Philip the Fair. But papal bulls failed to overcome Aragonese obstinacy and Sicilian devotion. In 1283 Charles’s son of the same name was captured in a naval battle by Roger di Loria, and remained a prisoner for the next five years. In 1285 Charles I. of Anjou died (January 7), after a career which had known no failure till towards its close. The same year witnessed the successive deaths of Pope Martin IV. (March 12) and of Peter III. (November 11). The latter was succeeded in Aragon by his eldest son Alfonso, and in Sicily by his second son James. In 1288 the mediation of Edward I. of England resulted in the conclusion of a treaty by which Charles II. of Anjou was released to take possession of the Neapolitan crown, and Sicily was confirmed to the House of Aragon. But the treaty was never observed. No sooner was Charles II. free than Nicolas IV. absolved him from his obligations, recognised him as king of the Two Sicilies on the same terms as his father, and renewed the excommunication against James. The war continued without a break. In 1291 Alfonso died, and James succeeded to the crown of Aragon. Wearied of the long struggle, and anxious to free his Spanish kingdom from the attacks of Charles of Valois, James agreed to renounce the crown of Sicily. But the Sicilians refused to return to French rule, and raised to the throne Frederick, the youngest son of Peter III., who continued the struggle even in opposition to his own brother. At last, in 1302, after an unsuccessful attack on Sicily by Charles of Valois, peace was concluded. Frederick was to marry Charles II.’s sister Eleanor, and to retain the kingdom of Sicily during his lifetime, but on his death it was to revert to the House of Anjou. This last stipulation was never fulfilled, and Sicily and Naples remained under separate rulers till 1435, when they were reunited under an Aragonese king. The only other notable event in the reign of Charles II. of Naples was the acquisition of the Hungarian crown by his grandson, Carobert, which has been already narrated (see p. 15). In 1309 Charles II. died, and the crown of Naples passed to his second son, Robert, the superior hereditary claims of Carobert of Hungary being passed over. For the next thirty-four years Robert was the acknowledged head of the Guelf party in Italy.

To the north of the kingdom of Naples lay the temporal |The Papal States.| dominions which the Popes claimed by virtue of real or pretended donations from Emperors and others. These territories had by this time reached the boundaries which they retained to the present century. They included the whole of Romagna, the Pentapolis, the March of Ancona, and the Patrimony of St. Peter, with the city of Rome and the Campagna. The concordat with Rudolf of Hapsburg abolished all imperial suzerainty over these districts, and thus secured to the Papacy a territorial principality which Frederick II. had threatened to annihilate. But the victory, great as it appeared, was in reality deceptive. It had been won with the aid of the House of Anjou, whose protection might easily be converted into an oppressive patronage. And the difficulties of temporal rule were a serious addition to those of the spiritual oversight of Christendom, especially as the Popes were usually elected in advanced years, and their tenure of office was necessarily brief. More than two centuries elapsed before papal suzerainty in central Italy developed into direct papal government; and during that period the absorption in secular interests not only diverted the attention of the Popes from their higher duties, but also tended to lower their estimation in the eyes of Europe. The localisation of the Papacy in central Italy, while it gave some appearance of security to the papal power, really degraded it, just as the identification with the German monarchy degraded the dignity of the Empire.

There is little reason to linger over the history of the |The Popes, 1272-1290.| individuals who fill the papal chair from the end of the Interregnum till the departure to Avignon. Gregory X. (1271-1276), elected after a vacancy of nearly three years, was a man of high character and ability, but he did not rule long enough to accomplish any great ends. He set himself to restore order in Germany, to put an end to party strife in Italy, and to check the arrogant ambition of Charles of Naples. The council which he held at Lyons in 1274 is chiefly notable for the regulations drawn up to prevent delays and external intervention in papal elections. Ten days after the death of a Pope, the cardinals present on the spot were to be shut up in conclave, and were to remain excluded from intercourse with the outside world until they had agreed on the choice of a successor. Gregory’s short-lived successors were mainly occupied with their relations with Naples, with party struggles in Italy, and with the growth of the noble families in Rome. Temporal dominion, in which hereditary succession was impossible, brought with it the vice of nepotism, the desire to make the most of a short tenure of office for the aggrandisement of relatives. Nicolas III. (1277-1280) bestowed lavish grants on the great House of Orsini, to which he belonged; Martin IV. (1281-1285) was a mere puppet of Charles of Anjou, and resided in his company at Viterbo; Honorius IV. (1285-1287) was a Savelli, and exalted his family at the expense of the Orsini; while Nicolas IV. (1288-1292) raised the Colonna as a counterpoise to the other two families. From this time the history of Rome was filled with the feuds of these great baronial houses, and they exercised a most disastrous influence on the spiritual as well as on the temporal position of the Popes.

On the death of Nicolas IV. these baronial factions were so |Celestine V., 1294.| predominant and so evenly balanced in the conclave that no election could take place for two years. At last, in 1294, a sudden impulse induced the cardinals to throw aside all secular considerations and to offer the highest ecclesiastical dignity to a man whose only claim was his reputation for sanctity. Celestine V. had for years lived a hermit’s life in a cave near Sulmona. His election was a unique experiment in papal history, and it was unsuccessful. Personal piety was no sufficient substitute for the worldly wisdom and experience required for the occupant of the papal chair. After five months he was persuaded to abdicate, and ultimately died (May, 1296) in a prison to which he was consigned by his successor, Boniface VIII.

The pontificate of Boniface VIII. is by far the most important |Boniface VIII., 1294-1303.| of this period. He has been called the last of the mediæval Popes. He was certainly the last who attempted to exercise that general authority over Christendom which Gregory VII. had claimed and Innocent III. had acquired. His complete failure proved how little the Papacy really profited by its victory over the Empire. In order to weaken the authority of the Emperors, the Popes had encouraged the growing nationality of the outlying kingdoms, forgetful that they were forging a weapon which might be used against themselves. Honorius III. and Innocent IV. had waged a desperate struggle against Frederick II. But the defeat of the Hohenstaufen did not, as they expected, leave the Papacy supreme. Boniface VIII. found equally formidable opponents in Edward I. of England and Philip IV. of France. The Papacy might defeat the Empire, because the latter was opposed to all the tendencies of the age, but it was powerless against the force of national development. To coerce the French and English kings, who refused to submit to his arbitration, Boniface issued the bull Clericis laicos which forbade the clergy to pay taxes to the secular power. Edward I. replied by outlawing the clergy, and forced them to acknowledge their membership of the state and to contribute to its support. Philip IV. retaliated by prohibiting the export of money from France, and thus cut off French contributions to Rome. When the Pope claimed Scotland as a papal fief and forbade any further English invasions, Edward I. brought the bull before a parliament at Lincoln (1301), which decreed that the king should not answer before the Pope on any question concerning his temporal rights. Philip IV. met the exorbitant papal pretensions by a similar protest from the national representatives at a meeting of the States-General (1302). And the French king did not content himself with verbal protests. Taking advantage of the discontent of the Colonnas, French troops entered Anagni, where Boniface was residing, and for a few days kept him a prisoner. This insult was a terrible blow to the proud Pope, and a few weeks later he died (October, 1303).

Benedict XI., the new Pope, had a difficult task to avoid |Benedict XI., 1303-1304.| either a degrading submission to France or a new quarrel with Philip IV. and the Colonnas. To escape intimidation he withdrew to Perugia, and for a time succeeded in maintaining a conciliatory but not dishonourable attitude. At last he found it necessary to issue a bull against the chief authors of the outrage at Anagni (June 29, 1304). Four weeks later the Pope was dead, and contemporaries were almost unanimous in attributing his death to poison. The posthumous reputation of Boniface VIII. was now the vital question at issue, and the cardinals were almost evenly divided into a French party which condemned him, and an Italian party which anathematised his assailants. So irreconcilable were the two parties that the cardinals, though shut up in the palace at Perugia in accordance with the constitution of Gregory X., spent ten months in the vain attempt to choose a new Pope. At last the deadlock was terminated by a strange compromise. The supporters of Boniface were to name three non-Italian prelates, and the hostile party was to choose one of them. One of the three was the Archbishop of Bordeaux, whose diocese lay within the dominions of Edward I. His selection was due to the belief that he was the bitter enemy of the French king. But tradition maintained that Philip IV. contrived to buy him over to his side, |Clement V., 1305-1313.| and he was chosen Pope as Clement V. The coronation ceremony took place at Lyons, and the new Pope never ventured into Italy. His pontificate was one long struggle to avoid or to moderate the concessions which Philip expected from him. The charges against Boniface were ultimately referred to a council at Vienna, which exonerated his memory. But on most points Clement had to follow the wishes of the French king, especially in the condemnation of the Templars. In 1309 Clement V. fixed his residence at Avignon, which was not then a French town, and was probably chosen partly for that reason, and partly for its neighbourhood to the Venaissin, already a papal possession. But Avignon was in Provence, which was held by the House of Anjou, and it was only separated from France by the Rhone. As long as the Popes continued to live there, they were exposed to overwhelming French influence, and could hardly escape the charge, made both from England and Germany, that they were mere vassals of the king of France. It says much for the vitality of the papal system that the ‘Babylonish captivity,’ as the next seventy years have been called, did not result in the complete loss, not only of the Italian provinces, but of all spiritual authority in Europe.

The district of Tuscany, which lies to the north-west of the Papal States, had been split up since the death of the |Tuscany.| Countess Matilda into a number of city states, mostly republics, but which from time to time were subject to native or foreign despots. Siena, which became in the fifteenth century mistress of southern Tuscany, had not yet risen into prominence and never ranked among the great states of Italy. Pisa, hitherto the most powerful of the Tuscan communes and one of the greatest of Italian ports, began to decline when the restoration of the Eastern Empire (1261) established the ascendency of Genoa in the Levant. In the naval struggle which followed, the two republics were fairly evenly balanced; but a great Genoese victory off the island of Meloria (1284) inflicted a blow from which Pisa never recovered, though she retained her independence for another century. Lucca rose to some importance under Castruccio Castracani, and from time to time successfully resisted the aggressions of Florence, but has no continuous history that attracts attention. By far the most important of the Tuscan cities was Florence, destined to be |Florence.| for a brilliant period the chief home of Italian art and literature, to acquire the supremacy over the whole of Tuscany, and to become for a few years in the present century the capital of an Italian kingdom. It is at the end of the thirteenth century that the foundation was laid of the Florentine constitution, which has always attracted special attention on account both of its own peculiarities and of the greatness of the city in which it grew up.

No city in Italy had been more convulsed than Florence |Constitution of Florence.| by the struggle between Guelfs and Ghibellines, and these factions were the more embittered against each other by their coincidence with class distinctions. The feudal nobles, although by no means united, were preponderantly Ghibelline, while the wealthy burghers were inclined to the cause of the Papacy and Charles of Anjou. After the defeat of Manfred in 1266 the supremacy of the Guelfs was established, and was never overthrown from that date. For some years the government was moderate and pacific, but the news of the Sicilian Vespers in 1282 frightened the Guelfs into an attempt to secure their power by constitutional changes. The existing magistrates were superseded |The ‘Priori.’| by the ‘Priori delle Arti,’ at first three and afterwards six in number. These constituted the signory and held the chief executive power. They were chosen from the seven greater guilds (arti maggiori) and held office for two months at a time, re-election being forbidden (divieto) until after an interval of two years. The greater guilds, which had long existed as trade corporations before their rise to political importance, consisted of the Calimala, or cloth merchants, the wool-weavers, the bankers, the silk manufacturers, physicians, furriers and lawyers. About the same time a number of lesser guilds (arti minori) were organised, and their number increased within the next sixteen years to fourteen. Henceforth we can trace the existence of four main divisions of the people of Florence: (1) the grandi, or nobles; (2) the popolo grasso, the members of the seven greater guilds; (3) the popolo minuto, or members of the fourteen lesser guilds; (4) the ciompi, though this name is of later origin, including those citizens who had no guild organisation, and therefore no machinery either for self-government or for influencing the conduct of public business.

By the constitution of 1282 the nobles were not excluded from office, but if they wished to qualify themselves for it they had to enter a guild. Many of them fulfilled this condition, and several nobles held the office of prior during the next ten years. But class jealousies continued to create domestic quarrels, and in 1293 Giano della Bella, himself of noble origin, proposed and carried the famous |Ordinances of Justice, 1293.| ‘Ordinances of Justice.’ To qualify for office a man must really practise the trade or craft to which he belonged. The grandi were not only to be excluded from any share in the government, but they were subjected to serious social disqualifications. In time of disorder they were confined to their houses on penalty of exile. A noble could not accuse a citizen or bear witness against him without the consent of the signory, and the severest penalties were imposed on a noble who wounded or killed a citizen. The duty of enforcing these ordinances was intrusted to a specially created official, the gonfalonier of justice, who |The Gonfalonier.| was to be appointed every two months and was to be a member of the signory. The gonfalonier, who was intrusted with the command of a large force of infantry, became the most dignified officer of the state, though his actual powers were not greater than those of the priors. From this time one of the harshest penalties was to confer nobility upon a political offender, and the greatest reward that could be conferred upon a deserving grande was to degrade him to the rank of a citizen. To protect the signory from attack a fortified Palazzo Pubblico was built for their reception, a building which is now famous as the Palazzo Vecchio.

Although the actual government of Florence from 1293 may be considered to be a plutocracy, in that the actual conduct of affairs was monopolised by the wealthy burghers, yet the constitution possessed a real democratic basis. The ultimate power of making any constitutional change rested with the parlamento, a mass meeting |The Parliament.| of all citizens in the great piazza. Such a meeting could at any time appoint a balia, i.e. a committee with full powers to alter the laws; and it was by this method that most of the revolutions in Florentine history were accomplished.

Early in the fourteenth century the Florentine constitution assumed the main features which it retained till the fall of the republic. In 1321 a disastrous war with Castruccio Castracani discredited the signory, and displayed the weakness of a government which changed every two months. To remedy this, a council of twelve |The ‘Buonuomini.| buonuomini was created, two from each sesto or district. They were to hold office for six months instead of two, and the signory was to take no important step without consulting them. Two years later a far more important change was made, when the system of filling offices by lot was introduced. Hitherto the members of the outgoing administration had elected their successors. But the city was disquieted by factious quarrels at each election, and there was no security for that equality which was rapidly becoming a passion among the Florentines. In 1323 it was determined to hold a squittinio, or scrutiny, every two |The ‘Squittinio,’ 1323.| years in place of the elections every two months. A committee was formed of the signory for the time being with the councils of the greater guilds and other influential citizens. A list was drawn up of all citizens qualified for office by age and by being clear of debt to the state (netti di specchio). Their names were then put up to ballot in the committee. The voting was by black and white beans, the former being in favour of the candidate. All the names which received not less than two-thirds of the black beans were placed in bags (imborsare), and from these bags they were drawn to fill vacancies as they arose. When the bags were empty a new squittinio became necessary. It resulted from this system that qualified citizens had a fairly equal chance of selection, but there was no security that offices would go to the most capable, and the arrangement was liable to serious abuses. The party which could obtain a majority in the selecting committee (balia), was certain to secure most of the offices for its own partisans for at least two years.

By 1323 the Florentine constitution had assumed a fairly definite shape. At its head stood the gonfalonier of justice and the six priors, who had the chief conduct of affairs and the right of initiating legislation. Then came the twelve buonuomini, who were a sort of privy council to the signory, and served as a check on its power. Next in rank were the capitano del popolo, once the chief magistrate of the city, and the sixteen gonfaloniers of companies, who were responsible for police and military arrangements. These were known as the three greater offices (i tre maggiori). In critical times special magistracies were sometimes created for a limited time, such as the eight of war (otto di guerra), or the ten of the sea (dieci del mare). There were two legislative councils: the consiglio del popolo, three hundred in number, containing only popolani; and the consiglio del commune, numbering two hundred and fifty, to which nobles were also admitted. Besides the regular municipal magistracies, there was an |The ‘Parte Guelfa.’| important body, the parte guelfa, which exercised very great political influence. This corporation, which had its own captains and council, had been formed after the great Guelf victory of 1267 to administer the confiscated property of the exiled Ghibellines. Its great wealth and efficient organisation were employed for the assiduous maintenance of Guelf ascendency, and in later times for resisting the claims of the lower classes to a voice in the government.

Of the northern states only three deserve special mention |Genoa.| at this time. Genoa, isolated in the north-western corner and surrounded by mountains, plays a very slight part in the general history of Italy, though it has some considerable importance as commanding the direct route from Provence to the peninsula. The energies of its citizens were mainly absorbed in the acquisition of wealth by eastern trade, in maintaining wars with Pisa and Venice, and in the incessant feuds of the great families of Doria and Spinola. Milan, which had long held a predominant position among |Milan.| the Lombard towns, was already beginning to lose its republican independence. There, as in Florence, class divisions were mixed up with the quarrels of factions. In 1259 the Guelf leader, Martino della Torre, headed the citizens in a successful struggle against the Ghibelline nobles, and took advantage of his victory to assume the lordship of the city. The neighbouring towns of Lodi, Como, Vercelli, and Bergamo fell one after another under the rule of the Della Torre. But in 1277 a revolution was effected by the Ghibellines under the Archbishop of Milan, Otto Visconti, to whom the lordship of the city was transferred, and from whom it passed on his death in 1295 to his nephew Matteo Visconti, the ancestor of the later dukes of Milan. But the Visconti dynasty was not yet permanently established, and in 1302 a Guelf league was formed among the chief Lombard towns which forced Matteo to withdraw, and Guido della Torre became the ruler of Milan.

Venice, the last of the important northern states, was even |Venice.| more isolated from Italy than Genoa, both by geography and by its absorbing interests in the Levant. The overthrow of the Greek Empire in 1204 had given Venice a commanding position in the east, but the restoration of 1261 had raised a very formidable rival in Genoa, and for more than a century the two republics were engaged in a series of costly and exhausting wars. But the main interest of Venetian history at this time lies in the building up of that oligarchical constitution which gave to Venice a vigour and consistency of political action quite unique in Italy, and enabled her in the fifteenth century to establish a very formidable power on the mainland.

The institutions of Venice, though sufficiently alien from |Constitution of Venice.| modern usages, were simplicity itself as compared with those of Florence. This simplicity is due primarily to the entire absence in Venice of a landed nobility, whose power had to be overthrown in other Italian cities by a series of revolts on the part of the citizens, and also to the fact that Venice remained completely untouched by the faction fights of Guelfs and Ghibellines. At the head of the state stood the doge, elected for life, and in early |The Doge.| times possessed of almost autocratic power. But his authority had been gradually limited by the compulsory association of councillors, by the exaction of a solemn oath on election (promissione ducale), and by the creation of new institutions. By the fourteenth century the doge had become an ornamental sovereign, surrounded by great pomp and ceremonial, presiding in all assemblies, but possessed of no power of initiation and of no means of exerting more than personal influence. A doge of strong character might still mould the destinies of Venice, but it was by persuading his colleagues, not by the exercise of any regal authority. The election of the doge rested originally with the whole people. In 1172 a council, which grew into the Maggior Consiglio, was intrusted with the task, which was gradually delegated to small committees chosen in various ways. At last, in 1268, the elaborate system was adopted which lasted till the fall of the republic. All members of the Grand Council over thirty years of age drew balls from an urn, and thirty of these balls were gilt. The thirty who drew the gilt balls were reduced to nine by a second drawing of lots. The nine elected forty, seven votes being a necessary minimum. The forty were reduced by lot to twelve, who elected twenty-five, each receiving at least nine votes. The twenty-five were reduced by lot to nine, who elected forty-five, who must each receive seven votes. The forty-five were reduced to eleven, who chose forty-one, each to receive nine votes. The forty-one then took an oath and proceeded to vote for the vacant office. The voting was repeated until some candidate had received at least twenty-five votes, and he became doge. The form of demanding popular approval of the election did not become obsolete until the election of Francesco Foscari in 1423.

With the doge were associated six ducal councillors, who were necessarily consulted on every subject and without whom the doge could do nothing. In fact, the ducal functions were really discharged, not by the doge, but by a committee of seven of whom the doge was one. The Collegio or cabinet of ministers (savii), conducted the routine work of administration, and prepared all business for the other public bodies. The business of every department passed through the Collegio, in which the six savii grandi presided in weekly terms. The Quarantia, or Forty, was originally created in the twelfth century to act as a permanent senate, but it was gradually limited to judicial functions, and became the great law-court of Venice. The functions of the senate fell to the Pregadi, a body of a hundred and sixty members, whose name was derived from the originally voluntary consultation of prominent citizens by the doge. The Pregadi became a permanent part of the constitution in 1229. Their chief business was the first consideration of all legislative proposals, the appointment of ambassadors, and the general supervision of foreign affairs.

At the basis of the constitution was the Maggior Consiglio, |The Great Council.| which had gradually taken the place of the primary assembly of all citizens. The council was originally elective, and its rise was a natural result of the growth of Venetian population. But in 1297 a law was carried which finally changed the government of Venice from a democracy to a close oligarchy. A list was drawn up of all who had sat in the Great Council for the last four years, and their names were put up to ballot in the Quarantia. All who received twelve votes were to be members of the council. Three electors were to be appointed every year to make a list of any other candidates, and their names, if approved by the doge and his councillors, were to be balloted by the Quarantia. For a few years the addition of names was frequent, though few candidates were successful unless their ancestors had at some time or other had a seat in the council. But in 1315 the names of all eligible candidates were drawn up once for all and placed in a book, and in 1319 the three annual electors were abolished. Henceforth membership of the Great Council became a hereditary privilege, and the admission of a member’s son as soon as he had reached the age of twenty-five was regarded as a matter of course. The serrata del Maggior Consiglio, or closing of the Great Council, divided the Venetian population into two sharply defined classes: the nobles, who had the privilege of membership, and the lower classes, who were for ever excluded from any voice in the government.

Although the abolition of popular election in 1297 was a change to which things had long been tending, it could hardly take place without exciting considerable discontent. Several conspiracies were formed against the new oligarchy, and after the failure of a formidable plot under Bajamonte Tiepolo in 1310, it was determined to devise some new machinery for the detection and repression of future revolts. Ten members were chosen by |Council of Ten, 1319.| the Great Council to act as a sort of committee of public safety. So useful did they prove that they were renewed year after year, and in 1335 they were made a permanent part of the constitution. The Council really consisted of seventeen, as the doge and his six councillors were associated with the Ten. The latter were elected yearly, and could not hold office again till a year had elapsed. The proper function of the Ten was to act as a court of exceptional jurisdiction, somewhat like the Star Chamber in England. In this capacity they served as the efficient bulwark of the Venetian aristocracy, and coerced the inferior citizens into passive acquiescence in the rule of their superiors. As time went on, the Ten became more and more powerful, and began to interfere in the general conduct of affairs. So great became the passion for secrecy in the Venetian government, that in the sixteenth century the Ten began to delegate their functions to a sub-committee, the three Inquisitors of State.

For sixty years Italy had been allowed to take its own course without any attempt at interference on the part of its nominal suzerain in Germany. The news that Henry of |Henry VII. in Italy, 1310-1313.| Luxemburg, elected in 1308, was preparing to visit Italy and to revive the imperial power, made a profound impression in the peninsula, where the Guelf and Ghibelline parties were as active and bellicose as ever. These party names had by this time ceased to express any essential difference of principle. The imperial suzerainty in the north, and the papal suzerainty in the south were equally shadowy, and neither seemed substantial enough to fight for. The idea that the Guelfs were the champions of republican liberty as against aggressive despots, had ceased to have any real foundation in facts. A Della Torre was just as dangerous to the liberties of Milan as a Visconti. Since the Popes had called in the House of Anjou, and especially since a Pope had fixed his residence in Avignon, it was impossible to contend that the Guelfs were the champions of Italian independence against foreign domination. The anomalous relations of Italian parties were reflected in the equally anomalous position of Henry VII. A German prince elected by German princes to the throne of the Hohenstaufen, he seemed destined to revive the principles of Ghibellinism and to assume the headship of a revived Ghibelline faction. On the other hand, Henry was French by education and sympathies, he owed his election to the clerical partisans of France acting under papal influence, and he was accompanied in his march by legates whom the Pope had authorised to confer upon him the imperial crown in Rome. It was no empty pretence of moderation, but the expression of a real policy, when Henry professed that he belonged to neither faction and intended to act as a mediator between them. And his actions corresponded with his professions. As he passed through the Lombard cities he insisted on the return of all political exiles, whichever party they belonged to. In Milan, where he received the iron crown of Lombardy (January 6, 1311), he recalled Matteo Visconti without overthrowing the rule of Guido della Torre. But the Italians themselves had no sympathy with his impartiality. Henry VII., like most of his German predecessors, was in need of money, and the attempt to levy a contribution of 100,000 ducats provoked a rising in Milan. The rising was suppressed, but it resulted in an inevitable alliance between the Emperor and the Ghibellines. Guido della Torre and his family were driven into exile, and an attempted rebellion in the Guelf cities was suppressed. Brescia alone made any lengthy resistance to the German army. Before leaving Lombardy, Henry appointed imperial vicars in the chief cities, and in Milan he intrusted the office to Matteo Visconti, thus finally establishing the dynasty which ruled Milan for a century and a half, and at one time seemed likely to unite the whole of northern Italy under its sway.

From this time the difficulties of Henry VII. rapidly increased. The force of circumstances had compelled him to become a Ghibelline against his will. The hopes which that party built upon his arrival are expressed in the De Monarchia of Dante. Peace could only be bestowed upon Italy by a strong monarchy, and such a monarchy could only be established by a German king with the traditions of the Empire at his back. But the more enthusiastic the Ghibellines became, the more resolute was the opposition of the Guelfs. Robert of Naples, the close ally of Clement V., did not venture to embark on open hostilities, but he was rendered both jealous and uneasy by Henry’s progress, and did not hesitate to intrigue against him. Henry VII. succeeded in obtaining the lordship of Genoa and Pisa, the latter of which was always on the Ghibelline side. But Florence, the leading Guelf city in Tuscany, obstinately refused to admit the German king or his troops, and he was compelled to pass on one side on his journey to Rome. There he found the greater part of the city occupied by the Guelf family of Orsini, assisted by a Neapolitan force. A battle would have been necessary to obtain possession of St. Peter’s, and the coronation ceremony had to take place in the church of St. John Lateran (June 29, 1312). Henry VII. was now convinced that the reduction of Italy to obedience could only be accomplished by force of arms. King Robert had as yet avoided any declaration of war, and it would have been dangerous to attack Naples while the Guelfs in the north were strong enough to cut off communications with Germany. It was decided to strike terror into the Guelfs by the reduction of Florence. The German troops advanced to the city walls in September, 1312, but they found them too strong and too well garrisoned to venture on an attack. Henry retreated to Pisa to await reinforcement. Against Robert of Naples, who was preparing to give active assistance to Florence, he issued the imperial ban, and concluded an alliance with the Aragonese king of Sicily. Henry had commenced his march to meet the Neapolitan troops, when he suddenly died of |Death of Henry VII., 1313.| fever at Buonconvento, twelve miles from Siena (August 24, 1313). The Ghibellines believed that he had been poisoned by a Dominican monk in administering the sacrament. The schemes of Henry VII. were entirely out of date: the Holy Roman Empire, as Dante understood it, was already an anachronism: and the Emperor’s death is only important as marking the failure of the last serious attempt to reduce Italy to obedience to a German king. The forces of disunion were strong enough to break up any monarchy; it was only an added weakness that the monarchy was claimed by a foreigner.