175-6:
“nemini
licere beneficia, que a suis senioribus
habet, absque eorum permissu distrahere.
habet, absque eorum permissu distrahere.
Cambridge Medieval History - v5 - Contest of Empire and the Papacy
224 (#270) ############################################
224
Conquest of the contado
early in the twelfth century. With their multiplication, the nobility did
not grow less oppressive to their serfs; in fact, poorer by reason of their
numbers, they were the more inclined to heap abuse on abuse (new ex-
action, uncustomary, ab usu)' on their serfs. But these, too, were more
numerous and restive, more inclined and able to resist, if their lords were
not too great dignitaries. Hence, there is a double stream of immigration
to the cities : one of lesser nobles, seeking a new way of livelihood, such
as the historic Buondelmonti who thus joined the original city-nobility,
the Uberti and others, at Florence; the other of peasants, contadini,
lured by the comparative freedom of the town. For some cities this
voluntary adhesion of the countryside nobles continued to be the chief
means of gaining control of the contado. The greatest lords round
Pisa, the Gherardesca and the Upezzinghi, along with a crowd of lesser
feudatories, were glad to be enrolled, whether as vassals of the arch-
bishop or without an intermediary, as Pisan citizens.
But there were motives which urged the communes to forcible ex-
pansion as well. There was the city food-supply to be assured; there
was the security of the citizens, new and old, and their lands outside the
walls; there were inherited feuds and claims, ecclesiastical and secular;
there were the freedom and safety of roads, the abolition of tolls and
blackmail, and the exit and entrance of the commerce, which took an
ever larger share in the city's thoughts; there was the independence of
the city itself to be preserved from ancient or invented feudal claims. If
lesser nobles could be both troublesome neighbours and a tempting prey,
it was the surviving greater houses, strong in fiefs and vassals, who were
most dangerous. For many years Florence waged war with her neigh-
bours, the Counts Guidi, heirs in some degree of Matilda, and the
Alberti of Prato, thus gaining by slow progresses, and the capture of
castle after castle, the control of her immediate surroundings. Siena
slowly mastered the powerful counts around her in the same twelfth
century. One usual condition of peace enforced by the victorious commune
was the compulsory citizenship and partial residence within the walls, say
for three months a year, of her vanquished enemies. This was only doing
by compulsion what so many nobles had done and were doing of their
free will, but while it gave the commune a stronger hold on the country-
side, it also, as we shall see, intensified the native disorder prevalent
among the half-feudal clans of the city.
Thus, as the twelfth century wore on, the great communes were
securing control of the greater part of their diocese or contado. It was
the commune which superintended in the last resort justice and peace,
and levied its vassals for war. There did not thence follow any difference
in the status of the serf, who remained subject to his immediate lord, or
the city which succeeded him. Nevertheless, a very considerable change
1 An ab-usus was a regular new exaction, a supra-usus, a capricious one.
1
## p. 225 (#271) ############################################
The rural communes
225
was taking place over tracts of the countryside in North Italy. The in-
habitants of the castelli or fortified townships, and even of lesser places,
were forming communes of their own, arising out of the necessary co-
operation between compossessing lords and vicini. As early
As early as 1093 the
Counts of Biandrate in Lombardy shared the jurisdiction over their town
of Biandrate with twelve consuls of the habitatores, appointed seemingly
from the ranks of the rustici, the peasants. They made a separate grant
to vassal nobles, milites, but these submitted to the consuls' jurisdiction.
All through the twelfth century we find petty communes arising and de-
veloping in Tuscany. They might begin from groups of lesser vassals or
freeholders or of freed masnadieri, organised in a community known as
Lombards—in this fashion we find the commune of the men of San Ger-
vasio in Val d'Era assenting to the sale of their castello and curtis by the
count whose fief it was to the Bishop of Lucca. They might be similar
associations of the villani or serfs of a vicinia or of a whole pieve. The two
communities often subsisted together in the same district, but they end
in being united as a communis et populus. With an infinite variety of
constituents and history, they were approaching throughout the twelfth
century a common type, the rural commune of landholders of different
status, governed by its elected consuls. It was rather local administration,
land-rights, and cultivation, than politics proper which formed the subject
of these township-communities. What was in process was the decease of
feudalism as an economic and administrative system, and its replacement
by co-operative arrangements which drew their origin eventually from
immemorial methods of using and sharing the land, all quickened to new
growth by a new prosperity.
To sum up this aspect of the theme: towards the close of the twelfth
century North Italy was subdivided into a considerable number of city-
states, the great communes, for the most part, though not all, ancient
episcopal sees. They were rapidly growing in wealth and population,
how rapidly may be gathered from the new and wider circuits of walls
they were constrained to build. Pisa already had her new walls by 1081,
Piacenza before 1158; Florence was building her Second Circle in
1172-4, Modena in 1188, and Padua in 1195; and the fact implies the
existence of important suburbs outside the old walls for some time pre-
viously. These vigorous towns were in perpetual strife with one another
and with the surviving great feudal lords, who like the Pelavicini, the
Estensi, the Marquesses of Montferrat in Lombardy, the Malaspina in
Lunigiana, or the Aldobrandeschi in Tuscany, held out amid the
mountains and the marshes. With these exceptions, they were ruling in
various ways and degrees their contado, the county and diocese sur-
rounding them, ruling from one point of view over a strange medley of
feudal vassals, freemen, and serfs of all degrees, from another over an
assemblage of petty communities, all illustrations of that method of self-
management by association and league, which was necessary for safety,
C. MED. H. VOL. V. CH. V.
15
## p. 226 (#272) ############################################
226
Inter-city wars. Development of commerce
which was dictated by tradition and material circumstances, and which
was provoked by the decadence and abuses of outworn feudalism.
The energies of the communes were far from being wholly absorbed
in self-government, in internal production, and in the annexation of their
contadi. The inter-city wars went on with unceasing fury from year to
year, it might be said from century to century. Not till Siena was an-
nexed by Cosimo of Florence in 1557, was their series over. In some
degree these conflicts had their rise in sheer antipathy and jealousy. The
strongly-marked character of each commune, its intense local patriotisin,
made its neighbours its enemies. Old disputes over diocesan boundaries,
as between Pisa and Lucca, Siena and Arezzo, or over feudal claims of
superiority, as between Milan and Lodi, furnished grounds for dispute
where sentiment had free play. The moral shortcomings of each Italian
town are enshrined in civic proverbs and in Dante. But far more im-
portant were the causes of strife which arose from the mutual relations
of towns depending on commerce for their prosperity and independence.
Geography and trade in combination were the most explosive compound
of nature and art. Seaports were rivals in a narrow but profitable
market, when piracy and trading went hand in hand. By land there was
the outlet to the sea, or a toll-free road by land, as well as rivalry in
manufacture, to create discord. Commercial competition for the pro-
tection of home-industry or the possession of the carrying-trade was the
staple of these city-wars.
Effective though the Crusades were in making the Italian seaports
European powers, in increasing their wealth and the scope of their enter-
prise, and in enlarging the mental horizon of all Europe, they did not
begin the career of the maritime republics. The trade of these was of
natural growth, and it was rather in the pre-crusading wars with the
western Saracens, in the abolition of Muslim piracy, and in the opening
of sea-routes to the Ponent (the West) and the Levant (the East), that
they secured their pre-eminence. Venice, by taming the Slav pirates of
Dalmatia and defeating the Sicilian Muslims at Bari in 1002, was in a
way to become queen of the Adriatic. Pisa, sacked by Saracens in 1004
and 1011, could yet defeat them near Reggio in 1005 and, in concert
with Genoa, rescue Sardinia from Mujāhid of Denia in 1016. This
victory began the long wars of Pisa and Genoa, fought for the trade of
the Mediterranean and more especially for the exploitation of Sardinia
and Corsica. They were still allies against their common enemy, the
Saracens, but their joint capture (1087) of Mahdiyah in Barbary from
Tamim the Zairid, and the famous temporary conquest (1113-15) of the
Balearic Isles by the Pisans and Christian allies from the neighbouring
coasts (with the exception of Genoa), together with the Norman conquest
of Sicily (1061-1091), established Christian supremacy in the Ponent.
Thereafter, Pisans and Genoese fought one another with little relaxation
in East and West. Amalfi, once first in the Levantine trade, faded under
## p. 227 (#273) ############################################
The Tuscan communes
227
its Norman masters, and its sack in 1135 by the Pisans, in the service of
Pope and Emperor, hastened its decline. But the bull (1133) of
Innocent II which assigned Sardinia and half Corsica to the Pisan sphere
of ecclesiastical influence, and the rest of Corsica to the new Genoese
archbishopric, only resulted in a truce. The two cities fought for influence
in Sardinia, for trade with Sicily and the Ponent, and in the East there
was a three-cornered struggle between them and Venice. The strife of
Pope and Emperor, the Crusades, were incidents in and opportunities for
this civic rivalry. If Pisa at first took the lead and was predominant in
Sardinia at the close of the twelfth century, she was, nevertheless, fatally
hampered by her open contado and strong Tuscan neighbours. Genoa,
once she had subdued her Riviera, was secured by the Apennines from
inland rivalry; and during the thirteenth century Pisa slowly lost ground.
The geography of Tuscany was largely responsible for the inland
rivalries of the province. Across the encircling Apennines came all-
important roads from the north. By the Monte Bardone (now the
Pontremoli) Pass came the Via Francigena from Parma (joined by the
land-route from Genoa) to Lucca. Then it crossed the River Arno near
Fucecchio and struck south to Siena and Rome. From Bologna, the chief
junction-city on the Emilian Way, came two roads, one through Pistoia,
the other straight across the Apennines to Florence. From Florence
again two roads led to Rome, one westerly to Poggibonsi, where it joined
the Via Francigena and also a direct route from Pisa, through Volterra,
to Siena, and the other, the ancient Via Cassia, easterly, past Arezzo,
down the valley of the Chiana, under Montepulciano, to Orvieto and
Rome. From Florence, too, flowed the natural artery to the sea, the
River Arno, with its port at Pisa. To these trade-route factors should be
added finally the lure of fertile stretches of countryside for food, for
produce, and for men. Each commune was anxious for trade-outlets
under its own control, the power of controlling the outlets of its neigh-
bours, and for a wide subject-territory. Nowhere was the theory of
territorial corridors better understood than in medieval Tuscany.
As a result Pisa and Lucca were early mortal enemies. There were
disputed tracts of fertile contado. Lucca held both the northern outlet
of the Via Francigena and its crossing at the Arno. Pisa held its gate,
and that of most Tuscany, to the sea. Pisa fought to gain a footing on
the Via Francigena before it reached Lucca, to control the mouth of the
Lucchese river, the Serchio, and to remove Lucca's grip on the middle
Arno at Fucecchio. The Lucchese sought to compel all trade from the
north to halt in their city and pay dues there, and to prevent a Pisan
wedge intervening between them and Siena. Already in 1003 the two
cities, not yet communes, were fighting. Early in the twelfth century,
the struggle took a more permanent form, and the Lucchese became the
born allies of the Genoese in their war with Pisa.
While her manufactures, chiefly of cloth, were of small account,
CH. V.
15-2
## p. 228 (#274) ############################################
228
Florence. Umbria
Florence was seldom Pisa's enemy. They were not next-door neighbours
and Lucca's hold on the Arno was vexatious to both. As late as 1171
they allied against Genoa and Lucca, at the price of free trade and equal
opportunity for the Florentines in Pisa. But the terms were burdensome
to Pisa, and the Florentine advance southward was causing an opposition
of interests. Florence was endowed with a large contado and was anxious
to extend it, but was also anxious to free her roads to Rome and the
west. Thus she was hostile to Arezzo, a backward feudal hill-town, and
still more to Siena. Florence wished for the Val Chiana and its road,
and for Monte Pulciano, which would give her free exit to Orvieto and
Rome. She was also eager to wrest the cross-roads at Poggibonsi from
Siena, so as to have a footing on the Via Francigena and the road to
Pisa. The wars caused by this enmity, pursued through the twelfth
century, led to Florence ousting the Sienese from Poggibonsi in 1208 and
repelling them from Monte Pulciano. With these minor communes in
the Florentine sphere of influence, with the Florentine acquisition of
Empoli on the lower Arno in 1182, with the rapid increase of Florence's
manufacture, wealth, and power, the Pisans could no longer favour their
new rival's prosperity. The Italian communes, no more than ancient
Greek cities, were able to live and let live; their passionate patriotism
was wholly local; their institutions, sprung from small local units and
dictated by local needs, were by nature incapable of territorial ex-
tension; their interests were sharply antagonistic. No city could share
its freedom with another; rather, full freedom and independence were
only obtainable by the depression or even subjection of rivals. Thus we
find Pisa, which had of late immensely profited by its services to the
Empire, holding aloof in 1197, together with threatened Pistoia, from
the Tuscan League of San Genesio, which was led by Florence and pro-
moted by the Papacy so as to reduce the imperial interference, lately
made so real by Henry VI, in the province. Rupture and war with
Florence did not come till 1218, but it thenceforward continued with
intervals till the fall of Pisa in 1405. In the thirteenth century, the foes
of Florence are the Ghibelline Pisa, Siena, Pistoia, and Arezzo, Ahose
neighbouring communes in fact whose submission was requisite and
whose rivalry was to be dreaded for the free development of her com-
merce. Lucca was a faithful friend, but to Pisa's enemy.
The circumstances of the central band of Italy, of the Roman Cam-
pagna, the Duchy of Spoleto, and the March of Ancona, seem altogether
more primitive than those of the great commercial cities of the north.
Besides the Tuscan roads to Rome, the chief commercial and military
routes were the coast-road (Via Apruntina) past Ancona to the south,
and that roughly in the line of the ancient Flaminian Way which crossed
the Apennines from Fano and led by two main tracks past a string of
cities, like Perugia, to Rome. But these small towns fought rather for
land than for commercial supremacy. They were cramped for room in
1
## p. 229 (#275) ############################################
Lombardy
229
their narrow Umbrian valleys. Yet even in Umbria there appears a
tendency for the cities in connexion with the western route to group
round its central town, Perugia, in hostility to the cities on the old
Roman Way, with their leader, Spoleto.
It was partly disputes over their respective boundaries, partly the
desire for free, or rather preferential, outlets for their trade, which made
the communes so frequently enemies of their immediate neighbours and
allies of the city from which they were divided by those neighbours; and
these tendencies were increased by the fact that while a petty commune
not unusually accepted cheerfully a great city's overlordship and pro-
tection, those of middle size fought desperately for their full autonomy
and all autonomy could give. These characteristics are marked when we
turn to the geography and politics of Lombardy and the Romagna.
The whole of Lombardy between the Alps and the Apennines was
linked together by its natural artery, the River Po and its tributaries,
with the assistance of a few subsidiary streams, like the Adige, to the
east. Along these waterways the commerce of the land had arisen; they
remained the cheapest form of transit. The commercial outlets to the
north were by a series of Alpine passes: the Mont Cenis and Mont Genèvre,
debouching into the plain at Susa in the territory of the Count of Savoy;
the Great St Bernard coming from Savoyard Aosta to Ivrea; the Splugen,
the Septimer, and the Stelvio entering Italy at Como; the Brenner,
whence routes ran to Verona and Brescia; and the less known Strada
d'Alemagna reaching to Vicenza and Padua. To the south the chief outlets
were the ports of Venice and Genoa. At Venice was the meeting-place of
the trade from the Po and the Brenner and that from the Levant. At
Genoa the sea-trade similarly met that from the western Alpine passes,
focussed on the way at Asti and Vercelli. But there were also the land-exits
to the south. From Piacenza on the Po the Emilian Way went through
a series of wealthy cities till it reached Rimini on the Adriatic. Leading
from it there were the Via Francigena, branching off at Parma, the roads
to Florence, branching off at Bologna, and the Flaminian Way from
Rimini to Rome. Favourable positions on all these routes brought
wealth and greatness. It was the aim of every city to control as long
stretches of them as possible, and if possible to control exits over the
mountains and by the sea.
To the west Genoa was fortunate in an early domination of her
narrow Riviera and in the formidable barrier of the Apennines in her
rear. Her cue was merely to be sure that trade flowed steadily from the
inland emporiums which needed her more than she needed them. Asti
was mainly preoccupied in securing free transit from the passes ; her chief
enemies were the feudal marquesses (the Aleramids of Montferrat,
Saluzzo, etc. ) who survived in backward Piedmont; it became her ambition
to dominate the little communes which sprang up in the twelfth century
on the routes to the Western Alps, as it had previously been to enlarge
CH. V.
## p. 230 (#276) ############################################
230
Milan. Emilia. The Trevisan March
her direct contado. Milan, in the centre, was a more potent focus of dis-
turbance. An ancient capital, populous and powerful as the centre of a
wide champaign, a seat of manufacture at the meeting-place of almost
every route, she had every temptation for aggression. First, she is seen
gaining outlets ; she conquers and reconquers in 1118 and 1127 Como,
which blocked the way to the Alps', and Lodi (1027, 1107-11), which
lay between her and the Po. Almost at the same time began her enmity,
soon to become traditional, with the other capital, Pavia, and Cremona,
rival centres these of the transit commerce, and keys of the Po, no mere
entrances to it. Milan's natural allies were Crema and Tortona,
threatened respectively by Cremona and Pavia with the same fate which
Lodi and Como had undergone from Milan. By the usual chequer-pattern
of these feuds, Brescia and Piacenza were inclined to Milan, Bergamo and
Novara to Pavia. The oft-repeated wars were still being waged when
Barbarossa entered Italy and by his claims and actions gave rise to the
Lombard League.
Along the Emilian Way, for the same reasons, each city was the
enemy of its immediate neighbours. Piacenza and Reggio were at odds
with Parma, Cremona, and Modena. Through Piacenza and Cremona
this southern system was related to the central wars and alliances; through
Modena with feuds farther east. For Modena stood in dread of and
enmity with Bologna. Docta Bolonia, the centre of legal studies, was
great not only through her university but through her cross-roads. She
was eager to increase her contado, and eventually to dominate the minor
Romagnol cities to the coast, an aim which for a while she achieved in
her best days in the thirteenth century. This, however, was not yet.
She had not even entered on the wars connected with Venetian ambitions,
which gave some consistency to the politics of the Trevisan, or Veronese,
March. Venice aimed at controlling all exits to the sea from Ravenna
northwards at least, if not from Ancona. Against her, but severed by
their own disputes, stood Padua, Treviso, Ferrara, and Ravenna. But
Padua and Treviso were likewise on uneasy terms with their northern
neighbours and outlets, Verona and Vicenza, as well as at some variance
with the branch of the Otbertine marquesses who, being eliminated from
Milan, had their chief possessions round the small town of Este, and
thence were soon to take their title and surname. Mantua, impregnable
amid her marshes, was on her side at war with Verona over the important
limits of their respective contadi. To sum up, when the Hohenstaufen came,
there were systems of alliance and enmity ready-made, to be decorated
and in some degree inspired by the contest of Papacy and Empire. It
was in spite of these ingrained feuds, and as a testimony to the desire for
1 Most Lombard towns seem to have aided Milan in this long war, a fact which
shews how important the three northern passes were to them.
2 1110 for Cremona, c. 1129 for Pavia, but cf. supra, p. 219 for Milan's earlier
rivalry with Pavia.
## p. 231 (#277) ############################################
The regalia. Imperial diplomas
231
their city-autonomy and to aversion for an effectual foreign rule, that
the Lombard Leagues were made; it was because of them that the Leagues
were never complete, and so ready to dissolve.
The communes obtained their jurisdiction in their own cities in some
degree by the exercise of functions, like that of arbitration or of garrison,
which lay outside the customary sphere of State-authority, but for the
most part they occupied or usurped rights which the State-authorities
had long neglected or were forced to resign. These regalia, or State-rights
vested immemorially in the kings, included both coinage, tolls and customs
of all kinds, and the functions of police, justice, and war, enfeoffed to the
mostly hereditary marquesses and counts. Large numbers of tolls and
the like dues had been granted formally to bishops and lay nobles, and
the bishops of many Lombard towns' had also received the countship
over their city and its environs, or even over the whole contado. Hardly
ever had jurisdiction or even tolls been granted to the citizens themselves',
and never over the surrounding contadi. The citizens governed themselves
in the first instance in the collapse of the kingship during the Wars of
Investiture, and gained dominion in the contadi by a series of private
agreements with greater or lesser feudatories very commonly made in the
name of the bishop. For the first usurpation they could indeed claim
the tacit consent of the kings. Henry V, Lothar III, and Conrad III in
his rebel days, had acquiesced in the city-communes, and on the rare
occasions when they were asked and no bishop's rights stood in the way
had granted vague diplomas, the language of which referred to the
“ liberties” of the Lombard towns in general. But to the alienation of
fiefs in the contado to a new suzerain they had never consented ; in fact
Lothar III in 1136 by a Constitutio forbade the alienation of fiefs by
under-vassals without the consent of their lord". This, however, was
ineffectual, even when not disregarded, for the tenants-in-chief too
1 Acqui, Alba, Albenga, Asti, Bergamo, Brescia, Cremona, Feltre, Ivrea, Lodi,
Mantua, Modena, Novara, Padua, Parma, Piacenza, Ravenna, Reggio, Savona,
Tortona, Trent, Treviso (? ), and Vercelli, at Barbarossa’s accession; and, in Tus-
cany, Arezzo, Fiesole, Luni, and Volterra.
? To Pisa in 1081 the confirmation by Henry IV of the Consuetudines quae habent
de Muri implies the power to enforce them.
3 Cremona, 1114, “bonos usus”; Mantua, 1116, “eam consuetudinem bonam
et iustam quam quelibet nostri imperii civitas optinet”; Bologna, 1116, “antiquas
etiam consuetudines” (doubtful diploma); Novara, 1116: “omnes bonos usus
illorum. . . et consuetudines. . . Turres quoque, quas pro munitione nostrae ciuitatis
erexerunt”; Turin, 1116: “omnes usus bonos eorum. . . in eadem libertate in que
hactenus permanserunt deinceps permanere. . . ea uidelicet condicione ut nulli mor-
talium deinceps nixi (i. e. nisi) nobis seruiant salua solita iustitia Taurinensis epis-
copi”; ibid. 1136, with significant variations: “eandem quam cetere ciuitates
Italice libertatem habeant. . . saluo. . . iure nostro seu comitis illius cui uicem nostram
comiserimus. "
4 MGH, Constit. 1. pp.
175-6: “nemini licere beneficia, que a suis senioribus
habet, absque eorum permissu distrahere. "
CH. V.
## p. 232 (#278) ############################################
232
Counts, viscounts, and bishops. The arengo
could be compelled by the communes to consent to their own spolia-
tion.
With the local holders of public jurisdiction within the cities there
were diverse methods of dealing. The marquess or count, if he still
existed, was usually simply excluded, which was all the more easy as
his chief interests lay in his estates in the countryside. Thus we find
Count Uberto of Bologna intervening formally to obtain an imperial
charter for the city with whose government he did not meddle. Lucca
had revolted from Countess Matilda c. 1080, Mantua in 1091, with the
Emperor's approval. The Counts of Siena play an obscure part in the
contado in the twelfth century. But the Counts of San Bonifazio, who,
though like so many other “rural counts” they took their title from
their chief castle, were Counts of Verona, became citizens of the com-
mune, and may have retained some feudal dues thereby.
The viscounts, on the other hand, were mainly city-dwellers and took
a large share in forming the communes. Their official rights in the city
seem to have slowly merged in the communal jurisdiction. In the case
of Pisa, where perhaps at first the viscount was a consul by right of office,
he is last known to have exercised jurisdiction in 1116, and after a
sanguinary struggle the compossessing house was in 1153 summarily
deprived of its financial rights and dues derived from the office of gastald
or steward of the royal demesne.
The bishop's position in the city bore commonly some analogy to the
viscount's. If he held by imperial diploma the comital functions, he
would usually enfeoff or merely allow to the consuls a large part of his
powers in the city, reserving some profits or functions for himself, reserva-
tions it was hard to maintain. Thus at Piacenza in 1162 there was made
out a long list of the bishop-count's prerogatives. The bishop shared, at
first at least, in the government of Arezzo and Bologna, nominating one
or more of the consuls. Indeed the communes of these towns thus obtained
something of a legal status. But disputes were very liable to occur, and
the bishop would be made to feel he was a subordinate politically, even
with regard to his domains in the contado. In 1154 the Bishop of Treviso
was compelled to cede a great part of his feudal rights on his church's
lands. Midway in the twelfth century the communes are ceasing to use
their bishop as a legal figurehead for the acquisition of dominion in the
contado. Towards its close the bishop is generally an undisguised, if
sometimes reluctant, subject of the commune for his feudal estates.
At the base of the commune, thus formed and master in its own house,
was the general assembly, the arengo, parlamento, concione. In early days,
summoned sonantibus campanis, by its shouts of fiat, fiat, it legislated,
declared peace or war, ratified treaties, approved the election of consuls.
But these proceedings, save under great excitement, were of a formal
character. There was no debate. The generality of citizens were bound
more to duties than rights. They were to swear obedience to the consuls
## p. 233 (#279) ############################################
The consuls and other officials
233
and thereby to membership of the commune, to attend the assembly, to
serve in the host. And from the mid-twelfth century onwards the mob-like
arengo meets more and more rarely, till once a year is usually sufficient
for the taking of the usual oaths between rulers and ruled. Frequent
meetings become the sign of revolution, for which the arengo provided
an apt and legal means.
The true core of the city-state was formed by the magistracy of the
consuls. The office was practically the monopoly of those families of
notables whose private league had become a State-government. Charac-
teristically, the outgoing consuls had a leading voice in electing their
successors. Their office was almost invariably annual”. The board varied
in numbers not only from city to city, but from year to year in the same
city: at Genoa in 1122 there were four, in 1127 six; at Milan in 1130
there were twenty, in 1172 twelve; the more usual numbers ran from
four to twelve, and in all cases seem fixed with some regard to the quarters
of the city. The functions of the consuls were all-embracing; they led
the host, administered the commune, saw to legislation, justice, and order.
They inherited the voluntary jurisdiction by arbitration which had always
been vested in each body of vicini and naturally included all disputes
arising out of the consuetudines of each town, but they did not delay to
usurp the public placita of count, bishop, or viscount, Subdivision of
duties, however, was soon introduced. At Genoa in 1133 subordinate
Consules de placitis were appointed, and shortly after 1150 Consuls of
Justice (consules iustitiae) appear in most towns to preside in the tribunals
and execute judgment, at first as specialised members of the consular
college, later as a separate institution. Their functions and authority
varied indeed, but their general character was the same.
Other officials of various titles appear as administering departments
under the consuls. The iudices, trained jurists, tried cases under the
consuls, and perhaps on occasion by the fact of appointment by some
imperial authority provided the formal legal link between the upstart
jurisdiction and the old. The notaries were concerned with official
documents. For financial officials the most current title was camerarius
(chamberlain), but at Siena, for instance, the power of the consuls was
early limited by the institution of the Provveditori della Biccherna, to
whom the camerarius was subordinated. The boni homines (soon styled
consuls) of the portae commanded their quarters in the army, and acted
as the lieutenants of the consuls of the commune in the city. The vici-
nanze (town-parishes) were responsible for the roads, canals, etc. within
them. In Bologna they elected their own ministrales contratarum, whose
title shews the antiquity of their office.
After the consuls, however, the most essential organ of city-government
was the Council, most usually called the Consiglio della Credenza (Council
1 At Genoa, however, till 1122 the consuls are elected for periods of three, four,
and finally two, years.
|
CH. V.
## p. 234 (#280) ############################################
234
The Councils. Growth of city-law
sworn to secrecy), although on occasion it was classically named the Senate,
as at Pisa. It was the natural development of the meetings of notables
from which the commune sprang, and we may doubt if the consuls had
ever acted without the advice of the Wise Men (supientes, savië). These
meetings were very soon crystallised as a formal council, the parent of
all later councils of the commune. Its numbers varied from city to city
and from time to time; perhaps from 100 to 150 was the average. Its
object may have been partly to check and advise the consuls, but still
more to express and collect the opinion of the oligarchy of notable families
who ruled the State. This led to complicated developments. At Florence
the meeting (pratica) of Savii merely invited by the government never
went out of use, and was more important for initiative than all the formal
councils. In order to be large enough for legislative purposes, the Cre-
denza by the end of the century had become very generally a numerous
body, the Great Council of the Commune; in the same way, in order to
be small enough for secret business, a certain number of its members had
become the Special or Lesser Council of the Commune. The dates, how-
ever, of these changes differed greatly from town to town and range over
a century. We see a beginning of the process at Piacenza in 1144, when
a city-law is passed, not by the arengo, but by the Council in the presence
and with the consent of many non-councillors. It was not long, in fact,
before the powers of the Council grew, in relation both to the consuls
and to the arengo. They legislated, shared in elections, and guided the
executive, and thus formulated and possibly accentuated the oligarchic
character of the commune. In the late-born commune of Romel even,
the Senate of some fifty-six members” established by the revolution of
1143 did without consuls, though some of them (senatores consiliarii)
served as an executive committee, until Innocent III contrived to replace
the whole body by one or two Senators, resembling the North Italian
podestà.
The law of each commune presented a peculiar mixture, and was en-
larged and developed by different concomitant, yet in the end harmonising,
processes. Omitting the foreign Germanic codes, which soon became
obsolete in Italy, there were two general Laws, the Roman and the Lom-
bard. Of these, the Roman, by its intrinsic superiority, by force of
sentiment, by the studies of the jurists, kept gaining ground, and was
more and more considered the normal law. But the Lombard Law was
strongly rooted in family custom ; in some ways its less civilised dicta were
more suitable to the early Middle Age; and its influence was more lasting
and wide-spread than would be gathered from contemporary statements.
Further, while the Roman Law the jurists spread was that of Justinian's
Code, the traditional Roman Law in the customs of North Italy went
1 See infra, Chap. xi, pp. 369-370.
? Under the Roman Senate there was a body of consiliarii somewhat like the
Great Council of a North Italian commune.
## p. 235 (#281) ############################################
The milites and consorzerie
235
back mostly to the times before Justinian, to the Theodosian Law. Thus,
the third original element, the local consuetudines or usus, besides being
based on local needs and peculiarities, were a blend of Lombard and pre-
Justinian Roman Law; they grew, partly governed by local circumstances,
partly under the influence of Justinianean. jurists. Some of this growth
was spontaneous and merely written down in and added to the usus.
But local legislation was also a factor in development. Special laws were
passed for this or that object in the arengo or the council throughout
the twelfth century, edicts might be issued by the consuls as at Genoa,
and all became part of the body of local law. Lastly, there were the
brevia or oaths of office of the consuls, councillors, and other officials, and
the breve communis, by which the citizens annually swore to perform their
obligations under the commune and to obey the consuls. Current legisla-
tion tended to be taken up into these brevia, dealing with the powers and
duties of office, which became longer and longer, till in the thirteenth
century they were frequently fused into one multifarious code, the Statute
of the Podestà, to which the chief magistrate of the commune swore on
his accession to office. The method of growth was characteristic. A board
of emendatores, arbitri, or the like, was elected at first annually, later at
frequent intervals, and this commission revised the brevia or Statute en
bloc. Thus the stable laws of the city were distinguished, at least in
theory, from the Provisions of temporary application only, emanating
from the councils.
The development of the commune was naturally enough from the
simple to the complex. City law and constitution, however, by no means
regulated all the activities of the citizens. As their wealth and numbers
grew, they more and more found their interest in subordinate associa-
tions. Each group in short, as it became strong enough to be self-
conscious, formed a petty commune. The impulse spread from above
till, so to say, the single-celled state of 1130 became the multiple-celled
community of 1250. While in Milan and a few other Lombard towns
the older subdivision of the nobles into capitanei and vavassors was pre-
served, in most cities we find the inhabitants in the mid-twelfth century
more simply divided into milites and pedites. This classification had a
military basis in the communal army. Men whose property was estimated
at a certain amount were obliged in war-time to attend the levy with
horse and knight's armour; those below the knight's assessment took the
field on foot with a simpler equipment. Roughly speaking, this was a
distinction between noble and plebeian, but the dividing line was drawn
more according to wealth than birth. It was not only that the non-
noble families who early became rich in a city joined the ranks of the
milites without abandoning their merchandise, but many minor or even
greater feudal families added trade to their real property. This was
early a marked feature of Asti and Genoa and Pisa. The Visconti and
other great families never had disdained to arm galleys and combine
CH. V.
## p. 236 (#282) ############################################
1
236
The pedites and gilds
1
a carrying-trade with war and piracy. Their shipping gave them a
greater hold on their respective communes than their like possessed
elsewhere. But this mainly feudal origin gave a definite stamp to the
whole class of milites. The persistence of the Germanic kinship, modified
in some degree by the Roman patria potestas, was seen in the strict
maintenance of the agnatic family groups, linked together by com-
possession and the duty of blood-revenge (vendetta). A family could
increase with extreme rapidity—in a century the agnates descended
from one man could number from 50 to 100 men—and further the
agnatic group could be extended by voluntary alliance with one or more
others. Thus in the noble's life the consorzeria, the family group, was
the leading factor. The consortes placed their houses side by side; if
the family was very great, it would have a covered loggia in the midst
for festivities and meetings; in any case it would compossess a lofty
tower for attack and defence, and thus the Italian medieval town shewed
a forest of towers within its walls, the rallying-points of the incessant
blood-feuds of the consorzerie. Organisation did not, however, cease
here. There grew up leagues of consorzerie, the Societies of the Towers
(Società delle Torri), and in the last half of the twelfth century we find
all the milites of a city grouped under consuls of their own, who in
treaties are already recognised as state-functionaries. To sum up, by
the year 1200, the milites form a sharply separate class, marked off not
so much by birth or the source of their wealth as by traditions and
habits of life. They, or their principal families, have the chief say in
the commune.
The pedites or plebeians appear at first as less organised than the
higher ranks, or rather the local organisation of vicinanze and portae
was sufficient for them while the volume of trade was still small. Men
of the same craft dwelt almost wholly in the same quarter or even vici-
nanza, and, although in the once Byzantine cities of Ravenna and Rome
some ancient gilds (scholae) seem to have continued, it needed a period
of prosperity to incite craftsmen in general to tighten their trade, as
opposed to their local, inter-connexion. The first to emerge separately
were naturally the merchants (mercatores or negotiatores), who for the
most part were concerned with import and export and the transit trade.
It was for them the profits were largest and the dangers greatest; they
most needed corporate action and influence for their wealth and for mere
safety in their voyages and journeys. Accordingly, half-way through
the twelfth century, we find consuls of the merchants recognised officials
in the communes of Pisa, Piacenza, and Milan, and every decade added
evidence of their appearance in other cities. The Merchants and Money-
changers (campsores, cambiatores), however, were like their allies the
Jurists (iudices, notarii) largely drawn from the ranks of the milites, the
composite nobility of the commune. They form a class through their
particular economic interests. More closely connected with the plebeians
## p. 237 (#283) ############################################
Internal strife
237
were the more specialised manufacturing, craft, and retail gilds, which
sprang up in their footsteps, and gained at the close of the twelfth
century recognition or toleration from the commune. Certain crafts
were then outrunning the others in the race for wealth, and beside the
Merchants there appear according to the various circumstances of each
city such gilds as those of Wool (Arte della Lana), the Apothecaries
and Spicers (Speziali), the Furriers (Pelliciai). The most common term
for them is Art (Arte), although Mestiere (ministerium) and schola are
also used. They were organised on the model of the commune, with a
general meeting of masters, a council, and consuls and subordinate
officials. The community of interest in each Art, its strict supervision
of its members, and their close mutual association in daily life, soon
made the Arts as a whole the bodies with greatest inner solidarity in
the communes.
Both the emergence of new classes, with the reassortment of members
of the old, and the exasperation of the inner divisions, partly social,
partly merely old blood-feuds, in the ruling oligarchies, seem to have
caused the gradual complication and development of the city-constitu-
tions. Thus the consuls of the Merchants and of the Milites become!
powerful officials of the State; they take part in treaties, perform State-
functions; in their wake, e. g. at Florence in 1193, we find the chiefs of
a federation of more specialised handicraft Arts, whose trade was local,
sharing in the government. At Florence the inner feuds of the aristocracy
seem to have hastened the movement; in 1177 civil war broke out
between the Uberti and the group of consular families then in power.
At Milan, and generally in Lombardy, distinctly class warfare was the
cause of change. In Milan itself we find the lesser traders, butchers,
bakers, and the like, forming a league, the Credenza di Sant'Ambrogio,
which combined with the Motta, or association of the wealthier traders,
to wrest a share of power from the Credenza dei Consoli in which the
capitanei, strengthened perhaps by the war with Barbarossa, were
dominant. The merchants of Milan seem still to have retained their
association. Elsewhere, the struggle is between milites, whether traders
or not, and the pedites, whose wealth, if yet acquired, was new. The
expulsion of the milites from the city, which had occurred in the pre-
communal age, began to reappear as a feature of class-warfare.
The immediate result of these broils and social changes, however
caused and carried on, was the institution of a new single executive, the
Podestà (Potestas). An occasional single ruler, called by the vague title
of Rector or Potestas, was no novelty. From 1151 to 1155 Guido da Sasso
so ruled Bologna, and during the foundation of the Roman commune
Jordan Pierleoni ruled with the title of Patrician. But after Barba-
rossa's institution of imperial Podestàs', evidences of a tendency to
1 Cf. infra, Chap. XII.
An official in each town to exercise and exact the
regalia recovered by the crown in 1158.
CH, V.
## p. 238 (#284) ############################################
238
The Podestà
munes.
supersede the board of consuls by a single man multiply. At Pisa a
rector is regarded as possible from 1169; at Milan the first known is of
1186, at Florence of 1193. At first an exceptional magistrate, as at
Piacenza in 1188, the Podestà grew to be a permanent institution. The
consuls who alternated with him were elected more and more rarely,
and about the year 1210 he had become the normal ruler in all com-
By then the office had acquired a definite character. Though
native Podestàs appear and are usually dangerous to liberty, the typical
Podestà is a foreigner, i. e. from another city. He must be a knight,
i. e. a noble; he brings with him his familia or household of knights and
jurists; he is held strictly to account by a syndicate at the close of his
year's or half-year's office, and is carefully segregated from the social
and faction life of the city. Nor, partly through the natural elabora-
tion of the State, partly from jealousy of power, was he allowed the full
functions of the native consuls, He led the army, summoned the
Councils, supervised police and criminal justice; but legislation, finance,
and foreign policy were withheld from him, while in his own sphere he
was surrounded by a Special Council, which often had direct connexion
with the Consulate, and he was guided by the Great Council, which had
now become the central organ of the commune. Even so the Podestà
had to be a man of great natural gifts for rule and of elaborate training
in law and affairs. A special tract, the Oculus Pastoralis, was written as
a guide to his duties. For a century it was a kind of profession for the
ablest city-nobles. They went from commune to commune, adminis-
tering, warring, judging among an infinite variety of routine, of debate,
and of emergencies, and such men as Brancaleone the Bolognese, and
Corso Donati the Florentine, give much of its brilliance to Italian
history in the thirteenth century.
It has been much debated what party had its way in the institution
of the Podestà in the later twelfth century. First of all, undoubtedly
the State: for the unity of the executive enabled the commune to survive
the feuds and amateurishness and dissensions of the board of consuls;
nor was self-government lessened, since the Great Council became the
directing body of the commune. Next, we may probably say, the pedites,
for affairs were no longer transacted by an oligarchic, quasi-hereditary
board, but by the single foreign official and a Council in which the
milites were no more than preponderant. It was in fact a step, like the
admission of the wealthier Arts to a share in government, towards a
wider basis for the State. But it was not a long step; the nobles were
still dominant, and their lesser members benefited, perhaps, most by the
supersession of the narrow ring of consular families. The further develop-
ment, by which the non-nobles (popolani), or the people (popolo), erected
a fresh organisation, the popolo, and secured power over the State, belongs
to a later volume.
The Peace of Constance and the niggardly diplomas of the Emperor
## p. 239 (#285) ############################################
Commerce and banking of the cities
239
Henry VI finally admitted the communes into the feudal chain, and it
continued for many generations to be their endeavour to express their
relations of territory and dominion according to the reigning feudal law.
But this should not conceal the fact that the cities by their very nature
were anti-feudal; they and their very nobles were trading, manufacturing,
not chivalrous, in a word they were bourgeois. Their trade, as we have seen,
long ante-dated the Crusades, which gave it so powerful a stimulus.
From the first the exchange of goods between East and West formed a
chief part of it. From Constantinople and the Levant the Italians
brought the much desired spices, sugar, silk and cotton, rare fabrics, dye-
woods, and wine, objects of art and luxury, and soon corn and fish from
the Black Sea. From Africa came gold, ivory, indigo, and lead. In
return they exported metal and building-woods, furs, linen, cloth, and
wool. To the Transalpines they handed on the Oriental and African
products, with a slowly increasing quantity of their own cloth', and
received cloth, wool, hides, and furs in exchange. The chief manufacture
of Italy was to be the finer qualities of dyed cloth. In the later twelfth
century the ascetic, half-heretical fraternity of the Umiliati gave a re-
markable impulse to the cloth industry in Lombardy, and they and their
methods were introduced farther south. In the next century the Art of
the Merchants of Calimala in Florence became specialists in dyeing and
dressing Transalpine cloth, and in almost every town the Arte della Lana
(Gild of Clothmakers) was among the wealthiest.
This trade was vigorously organised. From the seaports caravans
(merchant fleets, escorted by galleys) sailed twice a year to the Levant.
At Constantinople and the Syrian ports existed colonies of Venetians,
Pisans, and Genoese, governed in a fashion we should now call extra-
territorial by consuls or baili, with store-houses (fondachi) for wares
and ship-tackle. It was the aim of each city to gain exclusive privileges
and turn out its rivals, and much of their best energy was spent in these
bitterly-fought commercial wars. One rival they overcame; the Byzantines
faded from the sea and from their own export-trade. In the West, the
merchants trooped by road and river to the great fairs of Champagne, of
which six were held in the year. Here, too, men travelled in caravans;
but there was no question of extra-territoriality, though trade-concerns
might be settled by Law-merchant, the custom of traders. Security and
toll-freedom were the things aimed at, if only very partially obtained.
It was the Transalpine trade which gave the Italians their pre-eminence
and ill-fame in the thirteenth century as bankers and money-lenders.
Merchants whose business stretched from the Levant to England had a
natural advantage in the handling of money and the organisation of
credit. Partners in a firm would reside for long periods abroad; there
was always an agent at least, and money-values could pass from Paris to
Siena by note of hand. Almost all the great merchant houses took up
Salt was a staple export of Venice.
CH. V.
## p. 240 (#286) ############################################
240
Corporate life. The blood-feud
banking and with it usury, from which they reaped in the thirteenth
century enormous profits. The levying of the papal revenue fell into
their hands. They knew and dealt in the coinage of Europe in all its
varieties and degradations.
224
Conquest of the contado
early in the twelfth century. With their multiplication, the nobility did
not grow less oppressive to their serfs; in fact, poorer by reason of their
numbers, they were the more inclined to heap abuse on abuse (new ex-
action, uncustomary, ab usu)' on their serfs. But these, too, were more
numerous and restive, more inclined and able to resist, if their lords were
not too great dignitaries. Hence, there is a double stream of immigration
to the cities : one of lesser nobles, seeking a new way of livelihood, such
as the historic Buondelmonti who thus joined the original city-nobility,
the Uberti and others, at Florence; the other of peasants, contadini,
lured by the comparative freedom of the town. For some cities this
voluntary adhesion of the countryside nobles continued to be the chief
means of gaining control of the contado. The greatest lords round
Pisa, the Gherardesca and the Upezzinghi, along with a crowd of lesser
feudatories, were glad to be enrolled, whether as vassals of the arch-
bishop or without an intermediary, as Pisan citizens.
But there were motives which urged the communes to forcible ex-
pansion as well. There was the city food-supply to be assured; there
was the security of the citizens, new and old, and their lands outside the
walls; there were inherited feuds and claims, ecclesiastical and secular;
there were the freedom and safety of roads, the abolition of tolls and
blackmail, and the exit and entrance of the commerce, which took an
ever larger share in the city's thoughts; there was the independence of
the city itself to be preserved from ancient or invented feudal claims. If
lesser nobles could be both troublesome neighbours and a tempting prey,
it was the surviving greater houses, strong in fiefs and vassals, who were
most dangerous. For many years Florence waged war with her neigh-
bours, the Counts Guidi, heirs in some degree of Matilda, and the
Alberti of Prato, thus gaining by slow progresses, and the capture of
castle after castle, the control of her immediate surroundings. Siena
slowly mastered the powerful counts around her in the same twelfth
century. One usual condition of peace enforced by the victorious commune
was the compulsory citizenship and partial residence within the walls, say
for three months a year, of her vanquished enemies. This was only doing
by compulsion what so many nobles had done and were doing of their
free will, but while it gave the commune a stronger hold on the country-
side, it also, as we shall see, intensified the native disorder prevalent
among the half-feudal clans of the city.
Thus, as the twelfth century wore on, the great communes were
securing control of the greater part of their diocese or contado. It was
the commune which superintended in the last resort justice and peace,
and levied its vassals for war. There did not thence follow any difference
in the status of the serf, who remained subject to his immediate lord, or
the city which succeeded him. Nevertheless, a very considerable change
1 An ab-usus was a regular new exaction, a supra-usus, a capricious one.
1
## p. 225 (#271) ############################################
The rural communes
225
was taking place over tracts of the countryside in North Italy. The in-
habitants of the castelli or fortified townships, and even of lesser places,
were forming communes of their own, arising out of the necessary co-
operation between compossessing lords and vicini. As early
As early as 1093 the
Counts of Biandrate in Lombardy shared the jurisdiction over their town
of Biandrate with twelve consuls of the habitatores, appointed seemingly
from the ranks of the rustici, the peasants. They made a separate grant
to vassal nobles, milites, but these submitted to the consuls' jurisdiction.
All through the twelfth century we find petty communes arising and de-
veloping in Tuscany. They might begin from groups of lesser vassals or
freeholders or of freed masnadieri, organised in a community known as
Lombards—in this fashion we find the commune of the men of San Ger-
vasio in Val d'Era assenting to the sale of their castello and curtis by the
count whose fief it was to the Bishop of Lucca. They might be similar
associations of the villani or serfs of a vicinia or of a whole pieve. The two
communities often subsisted together in the same district, but they end
in being united as a communis et populus. With an infinite variety of
constituents and history, they were approaching throughout the twelfth
century a common type, the rural commune of landholders of different
status, governed by its elected consuls. It was rather local administration,
land-rights, and cultivation, than politics proper which formed the subject
of these township-communities. What was in process was the decease of
feudalism as an economic and administrative system, and its replacement
by co-operative arrangements which drew their origin eventually from
immemorial methods of using and sharing the land, all quickened to new
growth by a new prosperity.
To sum up this aspect of the theme: towards the close of the twelfth
century North Italy was subdivided into a considerable number of city-
states, the great communes, for the most part, though not all, ancient
episcopal sees. They were rapidly growing in wealth and population,
how rapidly may be gathered from the new and wider circuits of walls
they were constrained to build. Pisa already had her new walls by 1081,
Piacenza before 1158; Florence was building her Second Circle in
1172-4, Modena in 1188, and Padua in 1195; and the fact implies the
existence of important suburbs outside the old walls for some time pre-
viously. These vigorous towns were in perpetual strife with one another
and with the surviving great feudal lords, who like the Pelavicini, the
Estensi, the Marquesses of Montferrat in Lombardy, the Malaspina in
Lunigiana, or the Aldobrandeschi in Tuscany, held out amid the
mountains and the marshes. With these exceptions, they were ruling in
various ways and degrees their contado, the county and diocese sur-
rounding them, ruling from one point of view over a strange medley of
feudal vassals, freemen, and serfs of all degrees, from another over an
assemblage of petty communities, all illustrations of that method of self-
management by association and league, which was necessary for safety,
C. MED. H. VOL. V. CH. V.
15
## p. 226 (#272) ############################################
226
Inter-city wars. Development of commerce
which was dictated by tradition and material circumstances, and which
was provoked by the decadence and abuses of outworn feudalism.
The energies of the communes were far from being wholly absorbed
in self-government, in internal production, and in the annexation of their
contadi. The inter-city wars went on with unceasing fury from year to
year, it might be said from century to century. Not till Siena was an-
nexed by Cosimo of Florence in 1557, was their series over. In some
degree these conflicts had their rise in sheer antipathy and jealousy. The
strongly-marked character of each commune, its intense local patriotisin,
made its neighbours its enemies. Old disputes over diocesan boundaries,
as between Pisa and Lucca, Siena and Arezzo, or over feudal claims of
superiority, as between Milan and Lodi, furnished grounds for dispute
where sentiment had free play. The moral shortcomings of each Italian
town are enshrined in civic proverbs and in Dante. But far more im-
portant were the causes of strife which arose from the mutual relations
of towns depending on commerce for their prosperity and independence.
Geography and trade in combination were the most explosive compound
of nature and art. Seaports were rivals in a narrow but profitable
market, when piracy and trading went hand in hand. By land there was
the outlet to the sea, or a toll-free road by land, as well as rivalry in
manufacture, to create discord. Commercial competition for the pro-
tection of home-industry or the possession of the carrying-trade was the
staple of these city-wars.
Effective though the Crusades were in making the Italian seaports
European powers, in increasing their wealth and the scope of their enter-
prise, and in enlarging the mental horizon of all Europe, they did not
begin the career of the maritime republics. The trade of these was of
natural growth, and it was rather in the pre-crusading wars with the
western Saracens, in the abolition of Muslim piracy, and in the opening
of sea-routes to the Ponent (the West) and the Levant (the East), that
they secured their pre-eminence. Venice, by taming the Slav pirates of
Dalmatia and defeating the Sicilian Muslims at Bari in 1002, was in a
way to become queen of the Adriatic. Pisa, sacked by Saracens in 1004
and 1011, could yet defeat them near Reggio in 1005 and, in concert
with Genoa, rescue Sardinia from Mujāhid of Denia in 1016. This
victory began the long wars of Pisa and Genoa, fought for the trade of
the Mediterranean and more especially for the exploitation of Sardinia
and Corsica. They were still allies against their common enemy, the
Saracens, but their joint capture (1087) of Mahdiyah in Barbary from
Tamim the Zairid, and the famous temporary conquest (1113-15) of the
Balearic Isles by the Pisans and Christian allies from the neighbouring
coasts (with the exception of Genoa), together with the Norman conquest
of Sicily (1061-1091), established Christian supremacy in the Ponent.
Thereafter, Pisans and Genoese fought one another with little relaxation
in East and West. Amalfi, once first in the Levantine trade, faded under
## p. 227 (#273) ############################################
The Tuscan communes
227
its Norman masters, and its sack in 1135 by the Pisans, in the service of
Pope and Emperor, hastened its decline. But the bull (1133) of
Innocent II which assigned Sardinia and half Corsica to the Pisan sphere
of ecclesiastical influence, and the rest of Corsica to the new Genoese
archbishopric, only resulted in a truce. The two cities fought for influence
in Sardinia, for trade with Sicily and the Ponent, and in the East there
was a three-cornered struggle between them and Venice. The strife of
Pope and Emperor, the Crusades, were incidents in and opportunities for
this civic rivalry. If Pisa at first took the lead and was predominant in
Sardinia at the close of the twelfth century, she was, nevertheless, fatally
hampered by her open contado and strong Tuscan neighbours. Genoa,
once she had subdued her Riviera, was secured by the Apennines from
inland rivalry; and during the thirteenth century Pisa slowly lost ground.
The geography of Tuscany was largely responsible for the inland
rivalries of the province. Across the encircling Apennines came all-
important roads from the north. By the Monte Bardone (now the
Pontremoli) Pass came the Via Francigena from Parma (joined by the
land-route from Genoa) to Lucca. Then it crossed the River Arno near
Fucecchio and struck south to Siena and Rome. From Bologna, the chief
junction-city on the Emilian Way, came two roads, one through Pistoia,
the other straight across the Apennines to Florence. From Florence
again two roads led to Rome, one westerly to Poggibonsi, where it joined
the Via Francigena and also a direct route from Pisa, through Volterra,
to Siena, and the other, the ancient Via Cassia, easterly, past Arezzo,
down the valley of the Chiana, under Montepulciano, to Orvieto and
Rome. From Florence, too, flowed the natural artery to the sea, the
River Arno, with its port at Pisa. To these trade-route factors should be
added finally the lure of fertile stretches of countryside for food, for
produce, and for men. Each commune was anxious for trade-outlets
under its own control, the power of controlling the outlets of its neigh-
bours, and for a wide subject-territory. Nowhere was the theory of
territorial corridors better understood than in medieval Tuscany.
As a result Pisa and Lucca were early mortal enemies. There were
disputed tracts of fertile contado. Lucca held both the northern outlet
of the Via Francigena and its crossing at the Arno. Pisa held its gate,
and that of most Tuscany, to the sea. Pisa fought to gain a footing on
the Via Francigena before it reached Lucca, to control the mouth of the
Lucchese river, the Serchio, and to remove Lucca's grip on the middle
Arno at Fucecchio. The Lucchese sought to compel all trade from the
north to halt in their city and pay dues there, and to prevent a Pisan
wedge intervening between them and Siena. Already in 1003 the two
cities, not yet communes, were fighting. Early in the twelfth century,
the struggle took a more permanent form, and the Lucchese became the
born allies of the Genoese in their war with Pisa.
While her manufactures, chiefly of cloth, were of small account,
CH. V.
15-2
## p. 228 (#274) ############################################
228
Florence. Umbria
Florence was seldom Pisa's enemy. They were not next-door neighbours
and Lucca's hold on the Arno was vexatious to both. As late as 1171
they allied against Genoa and Lucca, at the price of free trade and equal
opportunity for the Florentines in Pisa. But the terms were burdensome
to Pisa, and the Florentine advance southward was causing an opposition
of interests. Florence was endowed with a large contado and was anxious
to extend it, but was also anxious to free her roads to Rome and the
west. Thus she was hostile to Arezzo, a backward feudal hill-town, and
still more to Siena. Florence wished for the Val Chiana and its road,
and for Monte Pulciano, which would give her free exit to Orvieto and
Rome. She was also eager to wrest the cross-roads at Poggibonsi from
Siena, so as to have a footing on the Via Francigena and the road to
Pisa. The wars caused by this enmity, pursued through the twelfth
century, led to Florence ousting the Sienese from Poggibonsi in 1208 and
repelling them from Monte Pulciano. With these minor communes in
the Florentine sphere of influence, with the Florentine acquisition of
Empoli on the lower Arno in 1182, with the rapid increase of Florence's
manufacture, wealth, and power, the Pisans could no longer favour their
new rival's prosperity. The Italian communes, no more than ancient
Greek cities, were able to live and let live; their passionate patriotism
was wholly local; their institutions, sprung from small local units and
dictated by local needs, were by nature incapable of territorial ex-
tension; their interests were sharply antagonistic. No city could share
its freedom with another; rather, full freedom and independence were
only obtainable by the depression or even subjection of rivals. Thus we
find Pisa, which had of late immensely profited by its services to the
Empire, holding aloof in 1197, together with threatened Pistoia, from
the Tuscan League of San Genesio, which was led by Florence and pro-
moted by the Papacy so as to reduce the imperial interference, lately
made so real by Henry VI, in the province. Rupture and war with
Florence did not come till 1218, but it thenceforward continued with
intervals till the fall of Pisa in 1405. In the thirteenth century, the foes
of Florence are the Ghibelline Pisa, Siena, Pistoia, and Arezzo, Ahose
neighbouring communes in fact whose submission was requisite and
whose rivalry was to be dreaded for the free development of her com-
merce. Lucca was a faithful friend, but to Pisa's enemy.
The circumstances of the central band of Italy, of the Roman Cam-
pagna, the Duchy of Spoleto, and the March of Ancona, seem altogether
more primitive than those of the great commercial cities of the north.
Besides the Tuscan roads to Rome, the chief commercial and military
routes were the coast-road (Via Apruntina) past Ancona to the south,
and that roughly in the line of the ancient Flaminian Way which crossed
the Apennines from Fano and led by two main tracks past a string of
cities, like Perugia, to Rome. But these small towns fought rather for
land than for commercial supremacy. They were cramped for room in
1
## p. 229 (#275) ############################################
Lombardy
229
their narrow Umbrian valleys. Yet even in Umbria there appears a
tendency for the cities in connexion with the western route to group
round its central town, Perugia, in hostility to the cities on the old
Roman Way, with their leader, Spoleto.
It was partly disputes over their respective boundaries, partly the
desire for free, or rather preferential, outlets for their trade, which made
the communes so frequently enemies of their immediate neighbours and
allies of the city from which they were divided by those neighbours; and
these tendencies were increased by the fact that while a petty commune
not unusually accepted cheerfully a great city's overlordship and pro-
tection, those of middle size fought desperately for their full autonomy
and all autonomy could give. These characteristics are marked when we
turn to the geography and politics of Lombardy and the Romagna.
The whole of Lombardy between the Alps and the Apennines was
linked together by its natural artery, the River Po and its tributaries,
with the assistance of a few subsidiary streams, like the Adige, to the
east. Along these waterways the commerce of the land had arisen; they
remained the cheapest form of transit. The commercial outlets to the
north were by a series of Alpine passes: the Mont Cenis and Mont Genèvre,
debouching into the plain at Susa in the territory of the Count of Savoy;
the Great St Bernard coming from Savoyard Aosta to Ivrea; the Splugen,
the Septimer, and the Stelvio entering Italy at Como; the Brenner,
whence routes ran to Verona and Brescia; and the less known Strada
d'Alemagna reaching to Vicenza and Padua. To the south the chief outlets
were the ports of Venice and Genoa. At Venice was the meeting-place of
the trade from the Po and the Brenner and that from the Levant. At
Genoa the sea-trade similarly met that from the western Alpine passes,
focussed on the way at Asti and Vercelli. But there were also the land-exits
to the south. From Piacenza on the Po the Emilian Way went through
a series of wealthy cities till it reached Rimini on the Adriatic. Leading
from it there were the Via Francigena, branching off at Parma, the roads
to Florence, branching off at Bologna, and the Flaminian Way from
Rimini to Rome. Favourable positions on all these routes brought
wealth and greatness. It was the aim of every city to control as long
stretches of them as possible, and if possible to control exits over the
mountains and by the sea.
To the west Genoa was fortunate in an early domination of her
narrow Riviera and in the formidable barrier of the Apennines in her
rear. Her cue was merely to be sure that trade flowed steadily from the
inland emporiums which needed her more than she needed them. Asti
was mainly preoccupied in securing free transit from the passes ; her chief
enemies were the feudal marquesses (the Aleramids of Montferrat,
Saluzzo, etc. ) who survived in backward Piedmont; it became her ambition
to dominate the little communes which sprang up in the twelfth century
on the routes to the Western Alps, as it had previously been to enlarge
CH. V.
## p. 230 (#276) ############################################
230
Milan. Emilia. The Trevisan March
her direct contado. Milan, in the centre, was a more potent focus of dis-
turbance. An ancient capital, populous and powerful as the centre of a
wide champaign, a seat of manufacture at the meeting-place of almost
every route, she had every temptation for aggression. First, she is seen
gaining outlets ; she conquers and reconquers in 1118 and 1127 Como,
which blocked the way to the Alps', and Lodi (1027, 1107-11), which
lay between her and the Po. Almost at the same time began her enmity,
soon to become traditional, with the other capital, Pavia, and Cremona,
rival centres these of the transit commerce, and keys of the Po, no mere
entrances to it. Milan's natural allies were Crema and Tortona,
threatened respectively by Cremona and Pavia with the same fate which
Lodi and Como had undergone from Milan. By the usual chequer-pattern
of these feuds, Brescia and Piacenza were inclined to Milan, Bergamo and
Novara to Pavia. The oft-repeated wars were still being waged when
Barbarossa entered Italy and by his claims and actions gave rise to the
Lombard League.
Along the Emilian Way, for the same reasons, each city was the
enemy of its immediate neighbours. Piacenza and Reggio were at odds
with Parma, Cremona, and Modena. Through Piacenza and Cremona
this southern system was related to the central wars and alliances; through
Modena with feuds farther east. For Modena stood in dread of and
enmity with Bologna. Docta Bolonia, the centre of legal studies, was
great not only through her university but through her cross-roads. She
was eager to increase her contado, and eventually to dominate the minor
Romagnol cities to the coast, an aim which for a while she achieved in
her best days in the thirteenth century. This, however, was not yet.
She had not even entered on the wars connected with Venetian ambitions,
which gave some consistency to the politics of the Trevisan, or Veronese,
March. Venice aimed at controlling all exits to the sea from Ravenna
northwards at least, if not from Ancona. Against her, but severed by
their own disputes, stood Padua, Treviso, Ferrara, and Ravenna. But
Padua and Treviso were likewise on uneasy terms with their northern
neighbours and outlets, Verona and Vicenza, as well as at some variance
with the branch of the Otbertine marquesses who, being eliminated from
Milan, had their chief possessions round the small town of Este, and
thence were soon to take their title and surname. Mantua, impregnable
amid her marshes, was on her side at war with Verona over the important
limits of their respective contadi. To sum up, when the Hohenstaufen came,
there were systems of alliance and enmity ready-made, to be decorated
and in some degree inspired by the contest of Papacy and Empire. It
was in spite of these ingrained feuds, and as a testimony to the desire for
1 Most Lombard towns seem to have aided Milan in this long war, a fact which
shews how important the three northern passes were to them.
2 1110 for Cremona, c. 1129 for Pavia, but cf. supra, p. 219 for Milan's earlier
rivalry with Pavia.
## p. 231 (#277) ############################################
The regalia. Imperial diplomas
231
their city-autonomy and to aversion for an effectual foreign rule, that
the Lombard Leagues were made; it was because of them that the Leagues
were never complete, and so ready to dissolve.
The communes obtained their jurisdiction in their own cities in some
degree by the exercise of functions, like that of arbitration or of garrison,
which lay outside the customary sphere of State-authority, but for the
most part they occupied or usurped rights which the State-authorities
had long neglected or were forced to resign. These regalia, or State-rights
vested immemorially in the kings, included both coinage, tolls and customs
of all kinds, and the functions of police, justice, and war, enfeoffed to the
mostly hereditary marquesses and counts. Large numbers of tolls and
the like dues had been granted formally to bishops and lay nobles, and
the bishops of many Lombard towns' had also received the countship
over their city and its environs, or even over the whole contado. Hardly
ever had jurisdiction or even tolls been granted to the citizens themselves',
and never over the surrounding contadi. The citizens governed themselves
in the first instance in the collapse of the kingship during the Wars of
Investiture, and gained dominion in the contadi by a series of private
agreements with greater or lesser feudatories very commonly made in the
name of the bishop. For the first usurpation they could indeed claim
the tacit consent of the kings. Henry V, Lothar III, and Conrad III in
his rebel days, had acquiesced in the city-communes, and on the rare
occasions when they were asked and no bishop's rights stood in the way
had granted vague diplomas, the language of which referred to the
“ liberties” of the Lombard towns in general. But to the alienation of
fiefs in the contado to a new suzerain they had never consented ; in fact
Lothar III in 1136 by a Constitutio forbade the alienation of fiefs by
under-vassals without the consent of their lord". This, however, was
ineffectual, even when not disregarded, for the tenants-in-chief too
1 Acqui, Alba, Albenga, Asti, Bergamo, Brescia, Cremona, Feltre, Ivrea, Lodi,
Mantua, Modena, Novara, Padua, Parma, Piacenza, Ravenna, Reggio, Savona,
Tortona, Trent, Treviso (? ), and Vercelli, at Barbarossa’s accession; and, in Tus-
cany, Arezzo, Fiesole, Luni, and Volterra.
? To Pisa in 1081 the confirmation by Henry IV of the Consuetudines quae habent
de Muri implies the power to enforce them.
3 Cremona, 1114, “bonos usus”; Mantua, 1116, “eam consuetudinem bonam
et iustam quam quelibet nostri imperii civitas optinet”; Bologna, 1116, “antiquas
etiam consuetudines” (doubtful diploma); Novara, 1116: “omnes bonos usus
illorum. . . et consuetudines. . . Turres quoque, quas pro munitione nostrae ciuitatis
erexerunt”; Turin, 1116: “omnes usus bonos eorum. . . in eadem libertate in que
hactenus permanserunt deinceps permanere. . . ea uidelicet condicione ut nulli mor-
talium deinceps nixi (i. e. nisi) nobis seruiant salua solita iustitia Taurinensis epis-
copi”; ibid. 1136, with significant variations: “eandem quam cetere ciuitates
Italice libertatem habeant. . . saluo. . . iure nostro seu comitis illius cui uicem nostram
comiserimus. "
4 MGH, Constit. 1. pp.
175-6: “nemini licere beneficia, que a suis senioribus
habet, absque eorum permissu distrahere. "
CH. V.
## p. 232 (#278) ############################################
232
Counts, viscounts, and bishops. The arengo
could be compelled by the communes to consent to their own spolia-
tion.
With the local holders of public jurisdiction within the cities there
were diverse methods of dealing. The marquess or count, if he still
existed, was usually simply excluded, which was all the more easy as
his chief interests lay in his estates in the countryside. Thus we find
Count Uberto of Bologna intervening formally to obtain an imperial
charter for the city with whose government he did not meddle. Lucca
had revolted from Countess Matilda c. 1080, Mantua in 1091, with the
Emperor's approval. The Counts of Siena play an obscure part in the
contado in the twelfth century. But the Counts of San Bonifazio, who,
though like so many other “rural counts” they took their title from
their chief castle, were Counts of Verona, became citizens of the com-
mune, and may have retained some feudal dues thereby.
The viscounts, on the other hand, were mainly city-dwellers and took
a large share in forming the communes. Their official rights in the city
seem to have slowly merged in the communal jurisdiction. In the case
of Pisa, where perhaps at first the viscount was a consul by right of office,
he is last known to have exercised jurisdiction in 1116, and after a
sanguinary struggle the compossessing house was in 1153 summarily
deprived of its financial rights and dues derived from the office of gastald
or steward of the royal demesne.
The bishop's position in the city bore commonly some analogy to the
viscount's. If he held by imperial diploma the comital functions, he
would usually enfeoff or merely allow to the consuls a large part of his
powers in the city, reserving some profits or functions for himself, reserva-
tions it was hard to maintain. Thus at Piacenza in 1162 there was made
out a long list of the bishop-count's prerogatives. The bishop shared, at
first at least, in the government of Arezzo and Bologna, nominating one
or more of the consuls. Indeed the communes of these towns thus obtained
something of a legal status. But disputes were very liable to occur, and
the bishop would be made to feel he was a subordinate politically, even
with regard to his domains in the contado. In 1154 the Bishop of Treviso
was compelled to cede a great part of his feudal rights on his church's
lands. Midway in the twelfth century the communes are ceasing to use
their bishop as a legal figurehead for the acquisition of dominion in the
contado. Towards its close the bishop is generally an undisguised, if
sometimes reluctant, subject of the commune for his feudal estates.
At the base of the commune, thus formed and master in its own house,
was the general assembly, the arengo, parlamento, concione. In early days,
summoned sonantibus campanis, by its shouts of fiat, fiat, it legislated,
declared peace or war, ratified treaties, approved the election of consuls.
But these proceedings, save under great excitement, were of a formal
character. There was no debate. The generality of citizens were bound
more to duties than rights. They were to swear obedience to the consuls
## p. 233 (#279) ############################################
The consuls and other officials
233
and thereby to membership of the commune, to attend the assembly, to
serve in the host. And from the mid-twelfth century onwards the mob-like
arengo meets more and more rarely, till once a year is usually sufficient
for the taking of the usual oaths between rulers and ruled. Frequent
meetings become the sign of revolution, for which the arengo provided
an apt and legal means.
The true core of the city-state was formed by the magistracy of the
consuls. The office was practically the monopoly of those families of
notables whose private league had become a State-government. Charac-
teristically, the outgoing consuls had a leading voice in electing their
successors. Their office was almost invariably annual”. The board varied
in numbers not only from city to city, but from year to year in the same
city: at Genoa in 1122 there were four, in 1127 six; at Milan in 1130
there were twenty, in 1172 twelve; the more usual numbers ran from
four to twelve, and in all cases seem fixed with some regard to the quarters
of the city. The functions of the consuls were all-embracing; they led
the host, administered the commune, saw to legislation, justice, and order.
They inherited the voluntary jurisdiction by arbitration which had always
been vested in each body of vicini and naturally included all disputes
arising out of the consuetudines of each town, but they did not delay to
usurp the public placita of count, bishop, or viscount, Subdivision of
duties, however, was soon introduced. At Genoa in 1133 subordinate
Consules de placitis were appointed, and shortly after 1150 Consuls of
Justice (consules iustitiae) appear in most towns to preside in the tribunals
and execute judgment, at first as specialised members of the consular
college, later as a separate institution. Their functions and authority
varied indeed, but their general character was the same.
Other officials of various titles appear as administering departments
under the consuls. The iudices, trained jurists, tried cases under the
consuls, and perhaps on occasion by the fact of appointment by some
imperial authority provided the formal legal link between the upstart
jurisdiction and the old. The notaries were concerned with official
documents. For financial officials the most current title was camerarius
(chamberlain), but at Siena, for instance, the power of the consuls was
early limited by the institution of the Provveditori della Biccherna, to
whom the camerarius was subordinated. The boni homines (soon styled
consuls) of the portae commanded their quarters in the army, and acted
as the lieutenants of the consuls of the commune in the city. The vici-
nanze (town-parishes) were responsible for the roads, canals, etc. within
them. In Bologna they elected their own ministrales contratarum, whose
title shews the antiquity of their office.
After the consuls, however, the most essential organ of city-government
was the Council, most usually called the Consiglio della Credenza (Council
1 At Genoa, however, till 1122 the consuls are elected for periods of three, four,
and finally two, years.
|
CH. V.
## p. 234 (#280) ############################################
234
The Councils. Growth of city-law
sworn to secrecy), although on occasion it was classically named the Senate,
as at Pisa. It was the natural development of the meetings of notables
from which the commune sprang, and we may doubt if the consuls had
ever acted without the advice of the Wise Men (supientes, savië). These
meetings were very soon crystallised as a formal council, the parent of
all later councils of the commune. Its numbers varied from city to city
and from time to time; perhaps from 100 to 150 was the average. Its
object may have been partly to check and advise the consuls, but still
more to express and collect the opinion of the oligarchy of notable families
who ruled the State. This led to complicated developments. At Florence
the meeting (pratica) of Savii merely invited by the government never
went out of use, and was more important for initiative than all the formal
councils. In order to be large enough for legislative purposes, the Cre-
denza by the end of the century had become very generally a numerous
body, the Great Council of the Commune; in the same way, in order to
be small enough for secret business, a certain number of its members had
become the Special or Lesser Council of the Commune. The dates, how-
ever, of these changes differed greatly from town to town and range over
a century. We see a beginning of the process at Piacenza in 1144, when
a city-law is passed, not by the arengo, but by the Council in the presence
and with the consent of many non-councillors. It was not long, in fact,
before the powers of the Council grew, in relation both to the consuls
and to the arengo. They legislated, shared in elections, and guided the
executive, and thus formulated and possibly accentuated the oligarchic
character of the commune. In the late-born commune of Romel even,
the Senate of some fifty-six members” established by the revolution of
1143 did without consuls, though some of them (senatores consiliarii)
served as an executive committee, until Innocent III contrived to replace
the whole body by one or two Senators, resembling the North Italian
podestà.
The law of each commune presented a peculiar mixture, and was en-
larged and developed by different concomitant, yet in the end harmonising,
processes. Omitting the foreign Germanic codes, which soon became
obsolete in Italy, there were two general Laws, the Roman and the Lom-
bard. Of these, the Roman, by its intrinsic superiority, by force of
sentiment, by the studies of the jurists, kept gaining ground, and was
more and more considered the normal law. But the Lombard Law was
strongly rooted in family custom ; in some ways its less civilised dicta were
more suitable to the early Middle Age; and its influence was more lasting
and wide-spread than would be gathered from contemporary statements.
Further, while the Roman Law the jurists spread was that of Justinian's
Code, the traditional Roman Law in the customs of North Italy went
1 See infra, Chap. xi, pp. 369-370.
? Under the Roman Senate there was a body of consiliarii somewhat like the
Great Council of a North Italian commune.
## p. 235 (#281) ############################################
The milites and consorzerie
235
back mostly to the times before Justinian, to the Theodosian Law. Thus,
the third original element, the local consuetudines or usus, besides being
based on local needs and peculiarities, were a blend of Lombard and pre-
Justinian Roman Law; they grew, partly governed by local circumstances,
partly under the influence of Justinianean. jurists. Some of this growth
was spontaneous and merely written down in and added to the usus.
But local legislation was also a factor in development. Special laws were
passed for this or that object in the arengo or the council throughout
the twelfth century, edicts might be issued by the consuls as at Genoa,
and all became part of the body of local law. Lastly, there were the
brevia or oaths of office of the consuls, councillors, and other officials, and
the breve communis, by which the citizens annually swore to perform their
obligations under the commune and to obey the consuls. Current legisla-
tion tended to be taken up into these brevia, dealing with the powers and
duties of office, which became longer and longer, till in the thirteenth
century they were frequently fused into one multifarious code, the Statute
of the Podestà, to which the chief magistrate of the commune swore on
his accession to office. The method of growth was characteristic. A board
of emendatores, arbitri, or the like, was elected at first annually, later at
frequent intervals, and this commission revised the brevia or Statute en
bloc. Thus the stable laws of the city were distinguished, at least in
theory, from the Provisions of temporary application only, emanating
from the councils.
The development of the commune was naturally enough from the
simple to the complex. City law and constitution, however, by no means
regulated all the activities of the citizens. As their wealth and numbers
grew, they more and more found their interest in subordinate associa-
tions. Each group in short, as it became strong enough to be self-
conscious, formed a petty commune. The impulse spread from above
till, so to say, the single-celled state of 1130 became the multiple-celled
community of 1250. While in Milan and a few other Lombard towns
the older subdivision of the nobles into capitanei and vavassors was pre-
served, in most cities we find the inhabitants in the mid-twelfth century
more simply divided into milites and pedites. This classification had a
military basis in the communal army. Men whose property was estimated
at a certain amount were obliged in war-time to attend the levy with
horse and knight's armour; those below the knight's assessment took the
field on foot with a simpler equipment. Roughly speaking, this was a
distinction between noble and plebeian, but the dividing line was drawn
more according to wealth than birth. It was not only that the non-
noble families who early became rich in a city joined the ranks of the
milites without abandoning their merchandise, but many minor or even
greater feudal families added trade to their real property. This was
early a marked feature of Asti and Genoa and Pisa. The Visconti and
other great families never had disdained to arm galleys and combine
CH. V.
## p. 236 (#282) ############################################
1
236
The pedites and gilds
1
a carrying-trade with war and piracy. Their shipping gave them a
greater hold on their respective communes than their like possessed
elsewhere. But this mainly feudal origin gave a definite stamp to the
whole class of milites. The persistence of the Germanic kinship, modified
in some degree by the Roman patria potestas, was seen in the strict
maintenance of the agnatic family groups, linked together by com-
possession and the duty of blood-revenge (vendetta). A family could
increase with extreme rapidity—in a century the agnates descended
from one man could number from 50 to 100 men—and further the
agnatic group could be extended by voluntary alliance with one or more
others. Thus in the noble's life the consorzeria, the family group, was
the leading factor. The consortes placed their houses side by side; if
the family was very great, it would have a covered loggia in the midst
for festivities and meetings; in any case it would compossess a lofty
tower for attack and defence, and thus the Italian medieval town shewed
a forest of towers within its walls, the rallying-points of the incessant
blood-feuds of the consorzerie. Organisation did not, however, cease
here. There grew up leagues of consorzerie, the Societies of the Towers
(Società delle Torri), and in the last half of the twelfth century we find
all the milites of a city grouped under consuls of their own, who in
treaties are already recognised as state-functionaries. To sum up, by
the year 1200, the milites form a sharply separate class, marked off not
so much by birth or the source of their wealth as by traditions and
habits of life. They, or their principal families, have the chief say in
the commune.
The pedites or plebeians appear at first as less organised than the
higher ranks, or rather the local organisation of vicinanze and portae
was sufficient for them while the volume of trade was still small. Men
of the same craft dwelt almost wholly in the same quarter or even vici-
nanza, and, although in the once Byzantine cities of Ravenna and Rome
some ancient gilds (scholae) seem to have continued, it needed a period
of prosperity to incite craftsmen in general to tighten their trade, as
opposed to their local, inter-connexion. The first to emerge separately
were naturally the merchants (mercatores or negotiatores), who for the
most part were concerned with import and export and the transit trade.
It was for them the profits were largest and the dangers greatest; they
most needed corporate action and influence for their wealth and for mere
safety in their voyages and journeys. Accordingly, half-way through
the twelfth century, we find consuls of the merchants recognised officials
in the communes of Pisa, Piacenza, and Milan, and every decade added
evidence of their appearance in other cities. The Merchants and Money-
changers (campsores, cambiatores), however, were like their allies the
Jurists (iudices, notarii) largely drawn from the ranks of the milites, the
composite nobility of the commune. They form a class through their
particular economic interests. More closely connected with the plebeians
## p. 237 (#283) ############################################
Internal strife
237
were the more specialised manufacturing, craft, and retail gilds, which
sprang up in their footsteps, and gained at the close of the twelfth
century recognition or toleration from the commune. Certain crafts
were then outrunning the others in the race for wealth, and beside the
Merchants there appear according to the various circumstances of each
city such gilds as those of Wool (Arte della Lana), the Apothecaries
and Spicers (Speziali), the Furriers (Pelliciai). The most common term
for them is Art (Arte), although Mestiere (ministerium) and schola are
also used. They were organised on the model of the commune, with a
general meeting of masters, a council, and consuls and subordinate
officials. The community of interest in each Art, its strict supervision
of its members, and their close mutual association in daily life, soon
made the Arts as a whole the bodies with greatest inner solidarity in
the communes.
Both the emergence of new classes, with the reassortment of members
of the old, and the exasperation of the inner divisions, partly social,
partly merely old blood-feuds, in the ruling oligarchies, seem to have
caused the gradual complication and development of the city-constitu-
tions. Thus the consuls of the Merchants and of the Milites become!
powerful officials of the State; they take part in treaties, perform State-
functions; in their wake, e. g. at Florence in 1193, we find the chiefs of
a federation of more specialised handicraft Arts, whose trade was local,
sharing in the government. At Florence the inner feuds of the aristocracy
seem to have hastened the movement; in 1177 civil war broke out
between the Uberti and the group of consular families then in power.
At Milan, and generally in Lombardy, distinctly class warfare was the
cause of change. In Milan itself we find the lesser traders, butchers,
bakers, and the like, forming a league, the Credenza di Sant'Ambrogio,
which combined with the Motta, or association of the wealthier traders,
to wrest a share of power from the Credenza dei Consoli in which the
capitanei, strengthened perhaps by the war with Barbarossa, were
dominant. The merchants of Milan seem still to have retained their
association. Elsewhere, the struggle is between milites, whether traders
or not, and the pedites, whose wealth, if yet acquired, was new. The
expulsion of the milites from the city, which had occurred in the pre-
communal age, began to reappear as a feature of class-warfare.
The immediate result of these broils and social changes, however
caused and carried on, was the institution of a new single executive, the
Podestà (Potestas). An occasional single ruler, called by the vague title
of Rector or Potestas, was no novelty. From 1151 to 1155 Guido da Sasso
so ruled Bologna, and during the foundation of the Roman commune
Jordan Pierleoni ruled with the title of Patrician. But after Barba-
rossa's institution of imperial Podestàs', evidences of a tendency to
1 Cf. infra, Chap. XII.
An official in each town to exercise and exact the
regalia recovered by the crown in 1158.
CH, V.
## p. 238 (#284) ############################################
238
The Podestà
munes.
supersede the board of consuls by a single man multiply. At Pisa a
rector is regarded as possible from 1169; at Milan the first known is of
1186, at Florence of 1193. At first an exceptional magistrate, as at
Piacenza in 1188, the Podestà grew to be a permanent institution. The
consuls who alternated with him were elected more and more rarely,
and about the year 1210 he had become the normal ruler in all com-
By then the office had acquired a definite character. Though
native Podestàs appear and are usually dangerous to liberty, the typical
Podestà is a foreigner, i. e. from another city. He must be a knight,
i. e. a noble; he brings with him his familia or household of knights and
jurists; he is held strictly to account by a syndicate at the close of his
year's or half-year's office, and is carefully segregated from the social
and faction life of the city. Nor, partly through the natural elabora-
tion of the State, partly from jealousy of power, was he allowed the full
functions of the native consuls, He led the army, summoned the
Councils, supervised police and criminal justice; but legislation, finance,
and foreign policy were withheld from him, while in his own sphere he
was surrounded by a Special Council, which often had direct connexion
with the Consulate, and he was guided by the Great Council, which had
now become the central organ of the commune. Even so the Podestà
had to be a man of great natural gifts for rule and of elaborate training
in law and affairs. A special tract, the Oculus Pastoralis, was written as
a guide to his duties. For a century it was a kind of profession for the
ablest city-nobles. They went from commune to commune, adminis-
tering, warring, judging among an infinite variety of routine, of debate,
and of emergencies, and such men as Brancaleone the Bolognese, and
Corso Donati the Florentine, give much of its brilliance to Italian
history in the thirteenth century.
It has been much debated what party had its way in the institution
of the Podestà in the later twelfth century. First of all, undoubtedly
the State: for the unity of the executive enabled the commune to survive
the feuds and amateurishness and dissensions of the board of consuls;
nor was self-government lessened, since the Great Council became the
directing body of the commune. Next, we may probably say, the pedites,
for affairs were no longer transacted by an oligarchic, quasi-hereditary
board, but by the single foreign official and a Council in which the
milites were no more than preponderant. It was in fact a step, like the
admission of the wealthier Arts to a share in government, towards a
wider basis for the State. But it was not a long step; the nobles were
still dominant, and their lesser members benefited, perhaps, most by the
supersession of the narrow ring of consular families. The further develop-
ment, by which the non-nobles (popolani), or the people (popolo), erected
a fresh organisation, the popolo, and secured power over the State, belongs
to a later volume.
The Peace of Constance and the niggardly diplomas of the Emperor
## p. 239 (#285) ############################################
Commerce and banking of the cities
239
Henry VI finally admitted the communes into the feudal chain, and it
continued for many generations to be their endeavour to express their
relations of territory and dominion according to the reigning feudal law.
But this should not conceal the fact that the cities by their very nature
were anti-feudal; they and their very nobles were trading, manufacturing,
not chivalrous, in a word they were bourgeois. Their trade, as we have seen,
long ante-dated the Crusades, which gave it so powerful a stimulus.
From the first the exchange of goods between East and West formed a
chief part of it. From Constantinople and the Levant the Italians
brought the much desired spices, sugar, silk and cotton, rare fabrics, dye-
woods, and wine, objects of art and luxury, and soon corn and fish from
the Black Sea. From Africa came gold, ivory, indigo, and lead. In
return they exported metal and building-woods, furs, linen, cloth, and
wool. To the Transalpines they handed on the Oriental and African
products, with a slowly increasing quantity of their own cloth', and
received cloth, wool, hides, and furs in exchange. The chief manufacture
of Italy was to be the finer qualities of dyed cloth. In the later twelfth
century the ascetic, half-heretical fraternity of the Umiliati gave a re-
markable impulse to the cloth industry in Lombardy, and they and their
methods were introduced farther south. In the next century the Art of
the Merchants of Calimala in Florence became specialists in dyeing and
dressing Transalpine cloth, and in almost every town the Arte della Lana
(Gild of Clothmakers) was among the wealthiest.
This trade was vigorously organised. From the seaports caravans
(merchant fleets, escorted by galleys) sailed twice a year to the Levant.
At Constantinople and the Syrian ports existed colonies of Venetians,
Pisans, and Genoese, governed in a fashion we should now call extra-
territorial by consuls or baili, with store-houses (fondachi) for wares
and ship-tackle. It was the aim of each city to gain exclusive privileges
and turn out its rivals, and much of their best energy was spent in these
bitterly-fought commercial wars. One rival they overcame; the Byzantines
faded from the sea and from their own export-trade. In the West, the
merchants trooped by road and river to the great fairs of Champagne, of
which six were held in the year. Here, too, men travelled in caravans;
but there was no question of extra-territoriality, though trade-concerns
might be settled by Law-merchant, the custom of traders. Security and
toll-freedom were the things aimed at, if only very partially obtained.
It was the Transalpine trade which gave the Italians their pre-eminence
and ill-fame in the thirteenth century as bankers and money-lenders.
Merchants whose business stretched from the Levant to England had a
natural advantage in the handling of money and the organisation of
credit. Partners in a firm would reside for long periods abroad; there
was always an agent at least, and money-values could pass from Paris to
Siena by note of hand. Almost all the great merchant houses took up
Salt was a staple export of Venice.
CH. V.
## p. 240 (#286) ############################################
240
Corporate life. The blood-feud
banking and with it usury, from which they reaped in the thirteenth
century enormous profits. The levying of the papal revenue fell into
their hands. They knew and dealt in the coinage of Europe in all its
varieties and degradations.
