Italian Renaissance. John Addington Symonds

and be the rival of their own authority. Therefore they espoused the cause of the free burghs against Frederick, and when the North was devastated by his Vicars, they preached a crusade against Ezzelino da Romano. In the convulsions that shook Italy from North to South the parties of Guelf and Ghibelline took shape, and acquired an ineradicable force. All the previous humors and discords of the nation were absorbed by them. The Guelf party meant the burghers of the consular Communes, the men of industry and commerce, the upholders of civil liberty, the friends of democratic expansion. The Ghibelline party included the naturalized nobles, the men of arms and idleness, the advocates of feudalism, the politicians who regarded constitutional progress with disfavor. That the banner of the Church floated over the one camp, while the standard of the Empire rallied to itself the hostile party, was a matter of comparatively superficial moment. The true strength of the war lay in the population, divided by irreconcilable ideals, each eager to possess the city for itself, each prepared to die for its adopted principles. The struggle is a social struggle, played out within the precincts of the Commune, for the supremacy of one or the other moiety of the whole people. A city does not pronounce itself either Guelf or Ghibelline till half the burghers have been exiled. The victorious party organizes the government in its own interest, establishes itself in a Palazzo apart from the Commune, where it develops its machinery at home and abroad, and strengthens its finance by forced contributions and confiscations.[1] The exiles make common cause with members of their own faction in an adverse burgh; and thus, by the diplomacy of Guelfs and Ghibellines, the most distant centers are drawn into the network of a common dualism. In this way we are justified in saying that Italy achieved her national consciousness through strife and conflict; for the Communes ceased to be isolated, cemented by temporary leagues, or engaged in merely local conflicts. They were brought together and connected by the sympathies and antipathies of an antagonism which embraced and dominated the municipalities, set Republics and Regno on equal footing, and merged the titular leaders of the struggle, Pope and Emperor, in the uncontrollable tumult. The issue was no vulgar one; no merely egotistic interests were at stake. Guelfs and Ghibellines alike interrogated the oracle, with perfect will to obey its inspiration for the common good; but they read the utterances of the Pythia in adverse senses. The Ghibelline heard Italy calling upon him to build a citadel that should be guarded by the lance and shield of chivalry, where the hierarchies of feudalism, ranged beneath the dais of the Empire, might dispense culture and civil order in due measure to the people. The Guelf believed that she was bidding him to multiply arts and guilds within the burgh, beneath the mantle of the Pope, who stood for Christ, the preacher of equality and peace for all mankind, in order that the beehive of industry should in course of time evolve a civil order and a culture representative of its own freely acting forces.

[1] It is enough to refer to the importance of the Parte Guelfa in the history of Florence.

During the stress and storm of the fierce warfare carried on by Guelfs and Ghibellines, the Podestà fell into the second rank. He had been created to meet an emergency; but now the discord was too vehement for arbitration. A new functionary appears, with the title of Captain of the People. Chosen when one or other of the factions gains supreme power in the burgh, he represents the victorious party, takes the lead in proscribing their opponents, and ratifies on his responsibility the changes introduced into the constitution. The old magistracies and councils, meanwhile, are not abrogated. The Consiglio del Popolo, with the Capitano at its head, takes the lead; and a new member, called the Consiglio della Parte, is found beside them, watchful to maintain the policy of the victorious faction. But the Consiglio del Comune, with the Podestà, who has not ceased to exercise judicial functions, still subsists. The Priors form the signory as of old. The Credenza goes on working, and the Gran Consiglio represents the body of privileged burghers. The party does but tyrannize over the city it has conquered, and manipulates the ancient constitution for its own advantage. In this clash of Guelf with Ghibelline the beneficiaries were the lower classes of the people. Excluded from the Popolo of episcopal and consular revolutions, the trades and industries of the great cities now assert their claims to be enfranchised. The advent of the Arti is the chief social phenomenon of the crisis.[1] Thus the final issue of the conflict was a new Italy, deeply divided by factions that were little understood, because they were so vital, because they represented two adverse currents of national energy, incompatible, irreconcilable, eternal in antagonism as the poles. But this discordant nation was more commercial and more democratic. Families of merchants rose upon the ruins of the old nobility. Roman cities of industry reduced their military rivals of earlier or later origin to insignificance. The plain, the river, and the port asserted themselves against the mountain fastness and the barrackburgh. The several classes of society, triturated, shaken together, leveled by warfare and equalized by industry, presented but few obstacles to the emergence of commanding personalities, however humble, from their ranks. Not only had the hierarchy of feudalism disappeared; but the constitution of the city itself was confused, and the Popolo, whether 'primo' or 'secondo or even 'terzo,' was diluted with recently franchised Contadini and all kinds of 'novi homines.'[2] The Divine Comedy, written after the culmination of the Guelf and Ghibelline dissensions, yields the measure of their animosity. Dante finds no place in Hell Heaven, or Purgatory for the souls who stood aloof from strife, the angels who were neither Guelf nor Ghibelline in Paradise. His Vigliacchi, 'wretches who never lived,' because they never felt the pangs or ecstasies of partisanship, wander homeless on the skirts of Limbo, among the abortions and offscourings of creation. Even so there was no standing-ground in Italy outside one or the other hostile camp. Society was riven down to its foundation. Rancors dating from the thirteenth century endured long after the great parties ceased to have a meaning. They were perpetuated in customs, and expressed themselves in the most trivial details. Banners, ensigns, and heraldic colors followed the divisions of the factions. Ghibellines wore the feathers in their caps upon one side, Guelfs upon the other. Ghibellines cut fruit at table crosswise, Guelfs straight down. In Bergamo some Calabrians were murdered by their host, who discovered from their way of slicing garlic that they sided with the hostile party. Ghibellines drank out of smooth, and Guelfs out of chased, goblets. Ghibellines wore white, and Guelfs red, roses. Yawning, passing in the street, throwing dice, gestures in speaking or swearing, were used as pretexts for distinguishing the one half of Italy from the other. So late as the middle of the fifteenth century, the Ghibellines of Milan tore Christ from the high-altar of the Cathedral at Crema and burned him because he turned his face to the Guelf shoulder. Every great city has a tale of love and death that carries the contention of its adverse families into the region of romance and legend. Florence dated her calamities from the insult offered by Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti to the Amidei in a broken marriage. Bologna never forgot the pathos of Imelda Lambertazzi stretched in death upon her lover Bonifazio Gieremei's corpse. The story of Romeo and Juliet at Verona is a myth which brings both factions into play, the well-meaning intervention of peace-making monks, and the ineffectual efforts of the Podestà to curb the violence of party warfare.

[1] The history of Florence illustrates more clearly than that of any other town the vast importance acquired by trades and guilds in politics at this epoch of the civil wars.

[2] This is the sting of Cacciaguida's scornful lamentation over Florence Par. xvi.

      Ma la cittadinanza, ch' è or mista

       Di Campi e di Certaldo e di Figghine,

       Pura vedeasi nell' ultimo artista.

       Tal fatto è fiorentino, e cambia e merca,

       Che si sarebbe volto a Semifonti,

       Là dove andava l' avolo alia cerca.

       Sempre la confusione delle persone

       Principio fu del mal della cittade,

       Come del corpo il cibo che s' appone.

So deep and dreadful