No More Learning

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


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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. It is a testimony to the inflow of the precious
metals into Italy that the Gild of Money-changers (Campsores, Arte del
Cambio), who dealt in banking in their native town, was next in wealth
to the Merchants. The Italian, or "Lombard," banker was indeed hated
abroad, and often at home, for his usury, both fair and unfair. The
risk was great, the monopoly hard to break through, the interest usuriously
high. Then, although a logical series of exceptions and relaxations was
gradually worked out, the trade of money-lending, the taking of interest,
was in principle forbidden by Canon Law. The perplexing limits within
which interest could be taken were always being overstepped, and we
have the curious spectacle of the merchant-class, the factors of the Papacy,
making their living by a mortal sin, as they thought it, and perhaps the
more extortionate because a reasonable profit on a loan was in theory for-
bidden.
The great firms might be either family businesses of many kinsmen,
or as time went on more frequently voluntary partnerships. The several
partners subscribed the capital, traded, travelled, served in the commune's
army, held state-office, met in their gild and religious confraternity,
co-operated in their consorzeria, and in the portae and vicinanze of their
city. It was a full life, and, when citizen and commercial organisation
grew more complicated in the thirteenth century, it is no wonder that
short terms of office and each man taking his turn on council and board
of officials were the rule. The drain on the citizen's time as well as civic
and class jealousy made it necessary. But the citizens also knew well
that unfettered power made the tyrant. The one true single official, the
Podestà, was fettered and supervised in a healthy state. The commune
had begun by association and it lived by corporate action and impersonal
decisions. Personal fame in it is a sign of disease and decay. At its best
we hear only of the commune, the milites and pedites, the consorzeria and
the gild.
These collective units, however, gave ample opportunity for broils,
which always hampered and eventually wrecked the communes. Class-
warfare and its early effects have already been mentioned; it was to
transform the commune. But it was partly caused and its method was
perniciously affected by the blood-feuds which existed from generation
to generation among the consormerie. The nobles, often of Germanic
descent, and always adopting feudal, Germanic traditions, were perhaps
somewhat antipathetic to the thrifty Latin plebeians, although this must
not be pressed far. But it was their turbulent, tyrannous habits that
became ever harder to bear. They rioted in the streets like Capulet and
Montague, they fought round their towers, they were fierce and insolent
to their inferiors. However given to commerce they might be, the


## p. 241 (#287) ############################################

Contrasts in the communes
241
vendetta was a sacred duty, and by its nature it could only end, if it did
end, with the extinction of a stock. Thus, whether the milites fought
among themselves for power or vengeance, or the plebeians took up
arms to tame them, the city was a victim of civil fighting. Now and
again the flimsy wooden houses would be destroyed over parts of the city
by accidental or wilful incendiarism. And these methods became normal.
There was no rage so furious as that of the Italian bourgeois intent on
restoring peace and order.
In fact the intensely strong family and group feeling of the citizens
is in strange contrast to their European trade and policy. Next to the
Roman Curia, they have the widest, most civilised outlook of the Middle
Ages. Strangers from all climes jostle in their streets. They themselves
have a cult of efficiency and energy. They are the most original devisers
of laws and constitutions, the acutest in jurisprudence and organisation,
innovators at last in literature and romance. It is hard to exaggerate
their devotion to their group or their commune. But on the other side
is their narrowness. For his consorzeria the citizen at his best will devote
everything; to his gild he will be staunch; to his city, if these allow,
well-meaning and fiercely loyal. But these associations are exclusive.
City wars down city with relentless rivalry; family, class, and gild
struggle mercilessly for dominion within them. It was only the danger
to the autonomy of all which produced the Lombard League, and in
that perhaps, as in other manifestations, it is the triumphant genius
loci, the immediate character and communal will of each city, which
dominates medieval Italian politics.
C. MED. H. VOL. V. CH. V.
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242
CHAPTER VI.
ISLĀM IN SYRIA AND EGYPT, 750-1100.
With the accession of the first of the Abbasid Caliphs (A. D. 750) it
became clear that the dominions of Islām would consist, henceforth, of a
number of separate and independent Islāmic states. Even in the time of
the Umayyad Caliphs the unity of the Muslim Empire was maintained
with difficulty and was never quite complete. In Arabia, the birthplace
and the original home of the new world-power, there was neither the
military strength nor the political organisation required for the rule of the
conquered lands. The movement of the seat of government to Damascus
under the Umayyads is, in one aspect, a practical acknowledgment of
this fact. For a time the Arabian families who ruled the subject provinces
were a connecting link and a partial bond of unity. But even they adopted
and so perpetuated the national governments of Persia and Syria and
Egypt, and thus the Muslim Empire was from the first a loosely-knit
federation of Muslim states. The superiority of Mesopotamia and Persia
over Syria and Arabia was declared by the triumph of the Abbasids. It
was symbolised by a further movement of the capital from Damascus to
Ambār and finally to Baghdad. But, inevitably, this movement of the
capital to the distant east weakened the control of the Abbasid Caliphs
over the lands of the far west. An Umayyad prince became ruler of
Muslim Spain in A. D. 755, and founded a dynasty which afterwards claimed
the Caliphate and assumed the much disputed title of “commander of the
fait! ul ” (A. D. 929). In Morocco Idrīs ibn `Abdallāh, a descendant of
'Ali, established in 788 the first Shitite Caliphate. The dynasty of the
Idrīsites, so established, maintained their power for about 200 years
(788–985). In Tunis Ibrāhīm ibn Aghlab (800–811) was the first of
another line of independent emirs with a brilliant history (800-909).
This process of disintegration continued in all parts of the Muslim
dominion. Every provincial governor was potentially an independent
ruler. National traditions and aspirations reinforced the drift to
separatism. Egypt and Syria and Arabia and Persia once more fell
apart. The Arab conquest created a permanent international brother-
hood of learning, literature, and religion; it achieved a spiritual
federation and affinity between much-divided races and nationalities ; it
encouraged and made easy the migration of individuals from one land to
another ; but it did not permanently obliterate national boundaries and
national rivalries.
Parallel to the development of Islām as a world-power went the


## p. 243 (#289) ############################################

Disintegration of the Caliphate
243
development of the Caliphate, its highest dignity. On the political side
this office was an adaptation to new conditions of the ancient city govern-
ments of Mecca and Medina. Yet its holder was, essentially, a successor of
the Prophet and so the supreme head of Islām. Local traditions and needs
were bound to yield to this pre-eminent fact. When the Caliphs ceased to
reside in Arabia, their local functions were soon practically abrogated.
Only the restriction that they must be descended from the ancient ruling
families of Mecca long remained to mark their political ancestry? The
sovereign power inherent in the Caliphate was most fully realised in the
case of the Umayyad princes. After them, in the Abbasid period, the
authority of the office was circumscribed and diminished by the existence
of rival Caliphates and by the disappearance of the political unity of Islām.
The Caliphs of Baghdad drifted towards the condition of being a line of
Muslim princes with a specially venerable ancestry. From this destiny
they were partly saved by a further transformation of their position.
They surrendered their political authority, even in their own territories
and capitals, first to Persian and then to Turkish sultans, whose mere
nominees they became. The Caliphate was now a dignity conferred by
certain Muslim princes upon the descendants of an old Arabian family,
which had formerly ruled Islām and still had a recognised hereditary
right to its position. Some forms of power remained to it, which ex-
pressed respect for an ancient tradition and occasionally decided the
course of events. The case of the Frankish kings of the seventh century,
who ruled by the grace of the mayors of the palace, may be referred to
as a parallel
. It may not be superfluous to add that in this phase the
Caliphate cannot be described as having been reduced to a purely spiritual
function. The office is not a kind of Papacy. In name, if not in fact, the
Caliphs have always been great Muslim sovereigns. The separation of
Egypt and of Syria from the jurisdiction of the Abbasid Caliphs and
the subsequent conflicts between them and their Fāțimite rivals, to be
narrated in this chapter, are essentially a sequence of military and
political events
The distinctive principles and the historical origin of the Shī'ite party,
who supported the exclusive claims of 'Alī to the Caliphate, have been
explained in a previous chapter. Having failed to secure the succession
for one of 'Ali's descendants when the Umayyads were overthrown, they
turned their intrigues and plots with increased energy against the Abbasid
usurpers. Two branches of this Shitite agitation, with apparently a
1 The restriction was observed until the Ottoman Sultans assumed the title of
Caliph (circa a. d. 1517). The legitimacy of their Caliphate has been challenged and
its authority widely rejected by Muslims on the ground that it did not possess this
hereditary qualification.
? It should be borne in mind that the successive phases through which the
Caliphate has passed make it difficult, perhaps impossible, to sum up its essential
character satisfactorily in any brief statement.
CH. VI.
16-2


## p. 244 (#290) ############################################

244
Shi'ite dynasties
or
common origin, have a notable influence on the history of Egypt and
Syria in the ninth and tenth centuries. One of the Shi'ite sects is known
as the Ismāʻīlian, because its adherents believed that the Mahdi, who was
to establish their cause and set the world right, would be a son
descendant of the seventh Imām, Ismāʻīl. About the middle of the ninth
century a certain 'Abdallāh ibn Maimūn, a Persian, gained a position of
great influence among these Ismāʻīlians, and directed a wide-spread pro-
paganda from Salamiyah, his headquarters in northern Syria. At least
two of his descendants, Aḥmad ibn 'Abdallāh and Sa'id ibn Husain,
succeeded him as the heads of the organisation which he established. In
the beginning of the tenth century the supporters of Sa'id gained
sufficient power in North Africa to enable them to overthrow and depose
the last of the Aghlabite emirs. In 909 they proclaimed a certain
'Ubaidallāh ibn Muḥammad as the Mahdi and the first of the Fāțimite
Caliphs (909–934)'.