IMPLUVIUM OF ROMAN HOUSE, FLORENCE.
ROMAN CALIDARIUM, FLORENCE.
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From the very beginning, it is true, we find that even Florence possessed some families that may be called noble. Such were the Donati, Caponsacchi, Uberti, Lamberti, and others whose names were included on the lists of the judges and soon to be found on those of the Consuls. These were the ruling, governing families at the head of the city. But they were neither counts, marquises, nor dukes; they were not as the Counts Cadolingi, Guidi, and Alberti, who dwelt in the outlying territory or contado; nor did they belong to those Cattani Lombardi so-called at the time, in remembrance of their Germanic descent. Rather than veritable nobles, they were "worthies" (boni homines), "great ones" (grandi),97 owning no feudal titles; natives of the city risen to high fortune, or scions of petty feudal lines, who, unable to hold their own against greater neighbours of the country side, had sought safety within the town. They quickly amalgamated with the people, sharing and taking the lead in all the latter's expeditions against the strongholds outside the city. Nor, as will be shown, was it a rare case, later on, to find some of these nobles engaged in trade, or heads of trade guilds, as soon as the latter became more firmly established. And it is by no means an insignificant fact that during disturbances at Pisa, Sienna, and elsewhere, we often see the names of real citizen-nobles, counts, viscounts, and so on, never to be met with in Florence. In documents concerning the Florentines the word nobiles seldom occurs, whereas it is often used in speaking of the Pisans, Siennese, &c. The term milites, it is true, frequently occurs in Florentine records; but although the milites could not be popolani, since the lower classes were not then admitted to knighthood, neither could they be feudal nobles in Florence: they were the leading citizens who exercised no trade, the grandi, in fact, to whom we have previously alluded. They were members of Matilda's courts, were employed by her in various ways; they commanded the municipale praesidium, probably filled the office of praeses, and they were leaders of the army. Richer, more cultivated and better fitted than other citizens for politics and warfare by their freedom from daily toil, they were the boni viri, the sapientes, the milites found more or less in all cities, but of a separate stamp in Florence.
Notwithstanding our knowledge of this preside and presidio and of these Florentine tribunals, very little is known as to the government and administration of the social body already beginning to prosper and to have varied interests of its own. Matilda's sway in Florence must have been of a shadowy kind, when the city was able to start wars on its own account and to its own profit, albeit still undertaken in her name. As its commercial prosperity increased and Matilda became more absorbed in her struggle with the Empire, the city must have been left more to itself. Consequently this is the time when the associations serving to classify and organise the citizens were formed, which we presently find flourishing and strongly established. Thus, being almost without a central government, a local one could assert its existence, and the strength of the Commune be developed long before its independence was proclaimed. The same fact explains why the Commune, its individuality once declared, should have made such rapid progress and leapt to the headship of Tuscany. At any rate, by the second half of the twelfth century we find on the one side the grandi, or nobles—if we prefer to give them that name—formed in Societies of Towers (Società delle torri), with statutes soon to be made known to us; while, on the other we find trade guilds or associations not only in existence, but sometimes with sufficient political importance to entitle them to the honour of representing the Republic. Can we possibly suppose that such results could be achieved without a long, preliminary course of preparation? Did not the scholae, progenitors of the guilds, survive during the Lower Empire and throughout the Middle Ages? do we not find them dividing all society, including both the soldiery and foreigners in Rome and in Ravenna? How could they be destroyed by barbarians ignorant of crafts which were nevertheless indispensable to their own needs?
Florentine commerce and industry undoubtedly increased during the rule of Countess Matilda. This has been proved by the patent of 1081, and the first wars undertaken by the Florentines in the interest of their trade afford sure confirmation of the fact. Were we to exclude trade associations from the conditions of the period, we should have to admit the existence, at that day, of the modern workman, isolated and independent: a decided impossibility in the Middle Ages. Those were times in which every trade was exercised by distinct groups of families, and handed down by them as a tradition from father to son. Frequently, even offices of the State were the monopoly of certain families. It was from a society split into groups and castes that the Commune eventually developed the modern State, but in old times the very idea of the latter was unconceived. It is absurd to suppose—though a few writers accept the notion—that the guilds only began when they had regular statutes. These statutes only formulated what had already existed for some time, and undoubtedly in Florence everything conduces to the belief that the associations of the trades and of the towers, though still embryonic, must have preceded the formation of the Commune evolved in their midst.
IV.
For on all sides, if in diverse modes, we perceive that a long period of incubation was needed to form the Commune, which naturally owed its birth to pre-existing elements. The celebrated agreement or concordia made at Pisa by Bishop Daiberto, about 1090, or even, perhaps, a year or so earlier,98 shows that the nobles were organised and waging fierce war against one another from their towers. The bishop induced them to partly demolish these towers, and solemnly vow never to carry them above the height of thirty-six braccia (about one hundred feet), as previously decreed by the patent of Henry IV. in 1081.99 And the agreement proceeded to set forth that any man believing his houses to have been unjustly damaged was to bear his complaint ad commune Colloquium Civitatis; nor could the dwelling of the offender be demolished without the general consent of the citizens.100
MOUTH OF ROMAN FURNACE,
Discovered beneath the Mercato Vecchio.
CALIDARIUM.
Ibid.
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The whole tenor of this document not only proves that the Pisan nobles were already an organised body, but that they also boasted a civic importance never attained by the nobles of Florence.101 Evidently Pisa had no Consuls as yet, or they would have been certainly mentioned in the document. But all the elements destined to make it a far more aristocratic commune than that of Florence were already existent.102 We see that there was a commune consilium of sapientes or boni homines, which was a species of senate, and a commune colloquium, a general assembly of all the citizens, afterwards developing into a parliament or arrengo. Five sapientes, whose names are given, sat in council with the bishop.103 These were the immediate precursors or, as Pawinski rightly calls them, the vorbilder of the Consuls, who are actually mentioned