Starting out as an ill-advised prank at a party, the feud between the Guelfs and the Ghibellines in Florence forever changed the city’s history. It would wrap Florence up in the struggle between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, eventually toppling the city’s aristocratic republic and creating something rather new in its place, the Primo Popolo.
Transcript
Let’s go back in time to a humble little village called Campi, which is today a municipality in the Florentine metro area but was in the twelfth century six miles outside Florence. There two of the most powerful noble families in Florence, the Uberti and the Buondelmonti, were present to celebrate the knighting of a young nobleman. The Buondelmonti and the Uberti were rivals with their own networks of allies among the various noble families, many of whom were present, so tensions were high. During the banquet, a jester, either on his own initiative or at someone’s malicious suggestion, grabbed a plate of food that Uberto dell’Infangati was just about to dig into. This caused a fight to break out, during which Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti, who wasn’t even involved in the original altercation, stabbed Oddo Arrighi.
The noble families held a conference and decided to try to make peace through arranging a marriage between Oddo’s niece, who is never named in any of the accounts, and Buondelmonte. However, Madonna Gualdrada, who was married to the patriarch of the Donati family, talked with Buondelmonte privately and convinced him not to go through with the marriage, playing on his aristocratic sense of honor by suggesting that submitting to a marriage out of fear would disgrace him. Her real motive wasn’t to spare Buondelmonte any shame, though, but to get him to marry her own daughter. Not only did he vow to do so, but he stood up his original intended bride, leaving her waiting at the doors of the cathedral.
This enraged the nobles who were not only connected to Oddo Arrighi, but the ones who were involved in arranging the marriage. One day, they were debating over whether or not to kill him or simply hurt him. The deciding opinion came from Mosca dei Lamberti, who uttered the famous words, “Cosa fatto capo ha”, which can be translated as, “What’s done is at an end”, but proverbially means “Now’s not the time for half-measures.” Giovanni Villani, writing in his “Chroncile of Florence”, describes these as the “evil words” that sealed the fate of Buondelmonte. During his own wedding procession in 1216, celebrating his marriage to the daughter of Madonna Gualrada, he was pulled from his horse and beaten to death with a mace by Oddo Arrighi. His bride supposedly insisted that the procession continue through the city, with her groom’s bloodied head in her lap. Sadly but unsurprisingly we don’t know her name either.
This incident is first reported in an anonymously written thirteenth-century chronicle, but is reported, sometimes with new details, by different sources, including Villani’s “Chronicle of Florence”, “The History of Florence” by Machiavelli – yes, that Machiavelli -, and even by Dante, who puts Mosca dei Lamberti in Hell. Mosca appears in the eighth circle of Hell, among other sowers of discord. There he is described as “one of the blackest souls in Hell” and is condemned with the others to be hacked and mutilated by a demon for all eternity.
Dante writes:
And one who walked with both his hands hacked off,
while lifting up his stumps through the dark air,
so that his face was hideous with blood,
cried out: “You will remember Mosca, too,
who said—alas—’What’s done is at an end,’
which was the seed of evil for the Tuscans.”
I added: “—and brought death to your own kinsmen”;
then having heard me speak, grief heaped on grief,
he went his way as one gone mad with sadness.”
The reason this event had such infamy was that it was generally agreed to have been the start of a large factional civil war that would dominate the history of Florence for generations, the war of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. As Dante says, the war would bring Florence unrest and bloodshed for decades. It was also a pivotal chapter in the story of the downfall of the old Florentine nobility and the rebirth of Florence as an oligarchical republic.
I couldn’t resist starting with that story, which is one of my favorites from medieval Italian history, but let me fill in a few blanks, mainly involving Florence, which is as big a star in our narrative as the Medici will be themselves. By the time Dante wrote his Divine Comedy, Florence was the top dog in Tuscany, and well on its way to becoming one of the major cities in all of Europe. But that’s a topic for the next episode. For now, let’s talk about how Florence got to that point.
There’s some controversy over the origins of Florence, mainly because the Renaissance historians of Florence wanted to give their native city as much cred as possible. As such, some claimed that Florence really began as a town founded by the Etruscans, the people who gave Tuscany its name, and then was reestablished by the Romans. The consensus more or less now is that the city was founded by Julius Caesar as a settlement for veterans of his army, although the debate still continues. What can be said is that the nearby town of Fiesole, which is also today part of the greater Florence metro area, was an Etruscan settlement predating the founding of Florence.
Like many of the northern Italian cities I mentioned in the last narrative episode, Florence was not a major town until about the eleventh century. The city of Lucca was the de facto capital of Tuscany until Matilda of Tuscany moved her main residence to Florence. She might have just liked the look of the city, but it was probably mainly an acknowledgment of the city’s growing importance as a major economic hub. Florence lied inland along the River Arno, giving it a vital position on the major trade route to and from the port city of Pisa. By the 1170s, a few decades after Matilda’s death, Florence had grown large enough it had to expand beyond the old city limits it had in the days of the Roman Empire, with a population of about 30,000. It would grow by another 15,000 by just the end of the next century.
Historians can actually still see the ramifications this had for political life in the city, through the decrees and other official documents in the archives. In the early days of the commune, citizens who served the government had to almost be jacks of all trades, engaging in whatever administrative roles the city needed at the time. Over time, however, we start to see more specialized bureaucrats appear in the records, dedicated to specific roles like managing the distribution of grain, the handling of taxes, or the regulation of commerce within the city. And, as mentioned last time, legislative and advisory councils start to develop, filling the needs of an organically growing government.
Also, sometime around 1200, the office of consul was abolished or was allowed to quietly die out. As happened in almost every town and city in Italy in this era, the consuls were replaced by a new, single magistrate, the podesta. See, conflicts like the death feud Buondelmonte had with Orrighi were bad for political business, especially because the office of consul itself became one of the prizes noble families started killing each other over. The podesta was meant to be kind of a professional moderator. Your city would call him in from another city or town in northern Italy and he would be given just enough executive authority to make sure that the legislative decisions of the councils were carried out. He was actually a professional, trained in the law, and often moved on to another city once his time of service was up. There were even handbooks written for podestas like John of Vierbo’s “Book of Civic Government” and Ofrino da Lodi’s “Government and Legal Wisdom.” Today we love to call politicians we don’t like “professional politicians”, but here was the real deal.
As you might guess, as with most attempts to encourage civility and bipartisanship in democratic government, it didn’t work. Feuds between rival families continued, and while the podesta was technically a neutral party, he would inevitably end up at the mercy of whatever noble faction was in power at the time. These factional conflicts between aristocrats only got worse, as petty local grievances and family power plays got all mixed up with the wider conflict between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, as reportedly happened with the murder of poor Buondelmonte. It was Buondelmonte’s family and their sympathizers that would take the mantle of the Guelphs in the upcoming conflict between the Ghibellines and the Guelphs.
So in one corner were the Ghibellines. They were the pro-empire party, composed mainly but not exclusively of what was left of the rural nobility and their clients. Their name was an Italianization of Waiblingen, a town in Stuttgart in southwest Germany that was the hometown of the Hohenstauffens, the dynasty then ruling the Holy Roman Empire. In the other corner were the Guelfs. Their name was another Italianization, this time of Welf, the name of a powerful German dynasty who were the rivals of the Hohenstauffens for control of the empire. We met one of them as the poor young husband of Matilda of Tuscany who allegedly couldn’t perform that well or at all. Also, for you fans of royal genealogy out there, they were the direct ancestors of the Hanoverans, the family that gave Great Britain King George III and Queen Victoria. Anyway, their leaders tended to be city nobles.
But it’s hard to break this down to just neat and tidy categories, though. Different noble families and even entire commune governments sided with one of the factions or the other, not because they gave a damn about the Holy Roman Empire or the Pope. It’s just that these were convenient alliances that could give cover to all kinds of national, familial, and even individual grudges and agendas.
If this sounds like gang warfare but on a much wider scale, well, you’re not wrong. Guelphs and Ghibellines could recognize each other by their clothes, the type of feather in their hats, or through watchwords. Conflicts between them spanned from street fights to actual wars between city-states. For Florence, it was probably the major driver of their internal politics and foreign policy throughout the entire thirteenth century.
It is true that Florence was never a member of or officially allied with the Lombard League that fought against Frederick I. Instead its foreign policy focused on making itself the dominant power in Tuscany through subjugating smaller cities like Fiesole and Certaldo. Still, though, the government of Florence tended to be pro-Guelph, although there was a strong Ghibelline presence in the city. It was Florence’s Ghibelline party that, in 1237, welcomed Emperor Frederick II with open arms.
Now it’s taking more will power than you realize for me not to just make this whole episode about Frederick II, who is easily one of the most fascinating people out of medieval Europe. Frederick was not only a Hohenzollern who had a claim to Germany and the title of Holy Roman Emperor, but his mother Constance was the heir to the Kingdom of Sicily that controlled, well, Sicily as well as most of southern Italy. This left both the papacy and the communes of northern Italy stuck in a rather awkward place, as that big white space in the map of Frederick’s empire that was just begging to be filled in.
Frederick II went to war with the Second Lombard League, which had the support of the papacy. Rather than being a rerun of what happened with his ancestor Fredriech I and the First Lombard League, Fredriech II crushed the league and papal forces, forcing total surrender from the members of the League and annexing a good chunk of the territory of the Papal States. His most dedicated enemy, Pope Innocent IV, called him a heretic and even accused him of being the instigator behind a mysterious and possibly entirely fictional document called The Treaty of the Three Impostors, which purportedly that Moses, Jesus, and the Prophet Muhammad were all essentially con-artists. The Pope also delighted in accusing Frederick II of becoming sympathetic to Muslims when he was off on the Sixth Crusade to Jerusalem. In one particularly memorable rant, he claimed Frederick had established his own harem, guarded by eunuchs even!
In any case, Florence surrendered to Fredriech II without a fight, even allowing him to appoint their new podesta, who by s dytsnhr coincidence just happened to be his illegitimate son, Fredriech of Antioch. Fredriech was also given authority over all of Tuscany as imperial viceroy. Despite the obvious simony, Fredriech was actually an effective ruler, although of course he couldn’t help but raise tensions with the Guelphs just by existing and continuing to rule. The Guelphs were violently driven out of the city by the Ghibelline families and their supporters by February of 1248, but this victory was short-lived. Two years later in the summer of 1250, as fighting between the papal and imperial forces raged, an army comprised of papal soldiers and Guelf exiles defeated Fredriech of Antioch’s forces near the city. Then something happened that literally changed everything: Frederick II had caught a nasty case of dysentery and died in a monastery in southeastern Italy. The emperor was so celebrated and so notorious some people refused to believe he died, or at least died of something as mundane as dysentery, and called him the “wonder of the world.” I also can’t help but leave this obituary by a papal chaplain, Nicholas of Carbio:
“The tyrant and son of Satan died horribly, deposed and excommunicated, suffering excruciatingly of dysentery, gnashing his teeth, frothing at the mouth and screaming…”
The Hohenzollern house of cards wouldn’t collapse right away after Fredriech’s death, but it was doomed all the same. In fact, when news of his father’s death reached him, Fredriech of Antioch fled Florence completely to support his half-brother Conrad, who had claimed their father’s titles. After Conrad died suddenly of malaria just four years later, the fate of the Hohenzollerns was sealed. The papacy offered the kingdom of Sicily over to Charles of Anjou, a French prince. Of the last two Hohonzollern princes, one, another Conrad who was the son of the last one, was beheaded at the instigation of the ironically named Pope Clement IV. The last, another illegitimate son of Frederick II named Manfred, managed to take the Sicilian throne but died trying to defend his kingdom from Charles and papal forces. At least, Frederick of Antioch didn’t live to see this final defeat, dying of disease shortly before the fall of Manfred.
Back in Florence, without Frederick of Antioch and the imperial army to protect them, in December of 1250 the Guelphs swarmed on the Ghibellines. This time, it was their turn to go into exile. After this victory, the people of Florence marched through the streets, shouting “Viva il popolo!” The Florentines saw this as not only a victory for the Guelphs, but for the growing class of merchants, bankers, and lawyers over the old nobility. The new government was even called “il primo popolo”, which you could translate as “the first government of the people.” A new political office, captain of the people, was created. Like the podesta, the captain of the popolo would be a neutral foreigner, who would also be in charge of the army and share executive authority with the podesta. A new legislative council of twelve, called the priors, was formed with representatives from every district in the city. To cap things off, a new flag was designed for Florence, a red lily on a white field, which remains the modern flag of the city today. Although the flag did have associations going all the way back to the days of the Roman Empire, it was basically a middle finger to the Ghibellines, whose own flag was a white lily on a red field. Also a new public building was constructed, called the Palazzo del Popolo, which would later become known as the Bargello.
The new government did keep to the old foreign policy of controlling the entire region of Tuscany, though. Siena still dominated the trade in and out of the region, so Florence extended its influence by bringing towns like Poggibonsi and Volterra to heel, forcing them to either demolish their walls or accepting Florentine citizens as their podestas. Eventually, though, it was perhaps inevitable that Florence and Siena would face each other in open combat with war breaking out in the fall of 1260. The fact that Siena had a history of being pro-Ghibelline was really just a cover for the fact that the two cities were facing each other for total economic dominion.
The Sienese were outnumbered and had to rely on mercenaries sent from southern Italy by their ally, the still reigning King of Sicily, Manfred. Still, though, at the Battle of Montaperti, fought on September 4 near Siena, the Sienese forces managed to ambush the Florentine army. It was a total disaster…for the Florentines. The pendulum swung back with the Ghibelline exiles invited back to the city. Manfred’s brother-in-law, a Tuscan nobleman named Count Guido Novello, was made podesta. However, when Manfred was defeated by Charles of Anjou, all of the Ghibellines’ support from abroad evaporated overnight.
However, for the Florentines, there was no going back to the Il Primo Popolo. Charles of Anjou was, much like Frederick II, a very ambitious man. As the youngest of the four sons of King Louis VIII of France and was originally marked for a career in the Church, he was determined to carve out a kingdom for himself. In fact, he came close to using the Kingdom of Sicily as a springboard for conquering the wheezing Byzantine Empire. So why would he let a rich prize like Florentine slip out of his grasp? Charles of Anjou actually arranged to have himself chosen as the city’s new podesta, although in practice, since he was rarely in the city, things were run by a series of his representatives.
As you might expect by this point, though, all the Florentines had to do was wait and let medieval Italian politics take their course. On March 30, 1282, a fight broke out between Charles’ French soldiers and the natives in the Sicilian city of Palermo. In a revolt known as the Sicilian Vespers, named for the sunset prayer that is part of the traditional observance of Easter, thousands of French soldiers and even civilians on the island were massacred. Charles of Anjou was forced to flee and give up his dream of imperial glory, and the Sicilians found themselves a new monarch, the daughter of Manfred, Constance II.
Charles of Anjou managed to keep control of the kingdom’s territories in mainland Italy, which became known as the Kingdom of Napes. Still, though, Charles’ dreams of a great eastern Mediterranean empire now had no chance of becoming reality, and the Florentines immediately shook off his influence. Also, following the destruction of the Hohenstauffen dynasty, the Holy Roman Empire was left without anyone who could fill the void. Called the Great Interregnum, for thirteen years the office of emperor would be argued over by a series of princes from foreign royal families and German nobles who lacked a strong power base, none ever gaining enough support to have a real claim. At long last, then, Florence was free to reinvent itself.
So I planned for this to be the last of the prelude episodes, but this went too long, and I think what Florence was actually like when the Medici started to come to power deserves its own episode. So join us next time when we talk about how the city-states of Italy got along – spoiler: not well –, how the new government of Florence worked, and how much the fourteenth century was a golden age for Florence. Thank you for listening and buona notte.
The Medici Podcast 