magistrates elected in almost all of them, | bouring state, as their general, their crimwhen they first began to shake off the inal judge, and preserver of the peace. jurisdiction of their count or bishop, were The last duty was frequently arduous, styled consuls; a word very expressive and required a vigorous as well as an upto an Italian ear, since, in the darkest right magistrate. Offences against the ages, tradition must have preserved some laws and security of the commonwealth acquaintance with the republican govern- were during the middle ages as often, ment of Rome. The consuls were al- perhaps more often, committed by the ways annual; and their office compre- rich and powerful, than by the inferior hended the command of the national mili- class of society. Rude and licentious tia in war, as well as the administration manners, family feuds and private reof justice, and preservation of public or- venge, or the mere insolence of strength, der; but their number was various; two, rendered the execution of criminal jusfour, six, or even twelve. In their legis- tice, practically and in every day's expelative and deliberative councils, the Lom-rience, what it is now in theory, a necesbards still copied the Roman constitution, sary protection to the poor against opor perhaps fell naturally into the form pression. The sentence of a magistrate most calculated to unite sound discretion against a powerful offender was not prowith the exercise of popular sovereignty. nounced without danger of tumult; it was A council of trust and secrecy (della cre- seldom executed without force. A condenza) was composed of a small number victed criminal was not, as at present, the of persons, who took the management stricken deer of society, whose disgrace of public affairs, and may be called the his kindred shrink from participating, and ministers of the state. But the decision whose memory they strive to forget. Imupon matters of general importance, trea-puting his sentence to iniquity, or gloryties of alliance or declarations of war, ing in an act which the laws of his felthe choice of consuls or ambassadors, low-citizens, but not their sentiments, belonged to the general council. This condemned, he stood upon his defence appears not to have been uniformly con- amid a circle of friends. The law was to stituted in every city; and, according to be enforced not against an individual, but its composition, the government was a family; not against a family, but a facmore or less democratical. An ultimate tion; not perhaps against a local faction, Sovereignty, however, was reserved to but the whole Guelf or Ghibelin name, the mass of the people; and a parliament which might become interested in the or general assembly was held to deliber- quarrel. The podestà was to arm the ate on any change in the form of consti- republic against the refractory citizen; tution.† his house was to be besieged and razed to the ground, his defenders to be quelled by violence: and thus the people, become familiar with outrage and homicide under the command of their magistrates, were more disposed to repeat such scenes at the instigation of their passions.*

About the end of the twelfth century, a new and singular species of magistracy was introduced into the Lombard cities. During the tyranny of Frederick I. he had appointed officers of his own, called podestàs, instead of the elective consuls. It is remarkable that this memorial of The podestà was sometimes chosen in despotic power should not have excited a general assembly, sometimes by a insuperable alarm and disgust in the free select number of citizens. His office republics. But, on the contrary, they al- was annual, though prolonged in peculiar most universally, after the peace of Con-emergencies. He was invariably a man stance, revived an office which had been abrogated when they first rose in rebellion against Frederick. From experience, as we must presume, of the partiality which their domestic factions carried into the administration of justice, it became a general practice to elect, by the name of podestà, a citizen of some neighLandulf the younger, whose history of Milan extends from 1094 to 1133, calls himself publiconum officiorum particeps et consulum epistolarum dictator.-Script. Rer. Ital., t. v., p. 486. This is, I believe, the earliest mention of those magistrates. -Muratori, Annali d'Italia, A. D. 1107.

+ Muratori, Dissert. 46 and 52. Sismondi, t. i., P. 385.

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of noble family, even in those cities which excluded their own nobility from any share in the government. He received a fixed salary, and was compelled to remain in the city, after the expiration of his office, for the purpose of answering such charges as might be adduced against his conduct. He could neither marry a native of the city, nor have any relation resident within the district, nor even, so great was their jealousy, eat or drink in

* Sismondi, t. iii., p. 258, from whom the substance of these observations is borrowed. They may be copiously illustrated by Villani's history of Florence, and Stella's annals of Genoa,

the house of any citizen. The authority | nation against tyranny, put himself at the of these foreign magistrates was not by head of the people. any means alike in all cities. In some he seems to have superseded the consuls, and commanded the armies in war. In others, as Milan and Florence, his authority was merely judicial. We find, in some of the old annals, the years headed by the names of the podestàs, as by those of the consuls in the history of Rome.

From this time we scarcely find any mention of dissensions among the two orders, till after the peace of Constance; a proof, however defective the contemporary annals may be, that such disturbances had neither been frequent nor serious. A schism between the nobles and people is noticed to have occurred at Faenza in 1185. A serious civil war of some duration broke out between them at Brescia in 1200. From this time mutual jealousies interrupted the domestic tranquillity of other cities, but it is about 1220 that they appear to have taken a decided aspect of civil war; within a few years of that epoch, the question of aristocratical or popular command was tried by arms in Milan, Piacenza, Modena, Cremona, and Bologna.*

torians of the time are seldom much disposed to elucidate, and which they saw with their own prejudices. A writer of the present age would show little philosophy, if he were to heat his passions by the reflection, as it were, of those forgotten animosities, and aggravate, like a partial contemporary, the failings of one or another faction. We have no need of

The effects of the evil spirit of discord, And dissen- that had so fatally breathed sions. upon the republics of Lombardy, were by no means confined to national interests, or to the grand distinction of Guelf and Ghibelin. Dissensions glowed in the heart of every city, and as the danger of foreign war became distant, these grew more fierce and unappeasable. The feudal system had been established upon the principle of territorial aristocracy; it maintained the authority, it encouraged It would be vain to enter upon the merthe pride of rank. Hence, when the ru-its of these feuds, which the meager hisral nobility were compelled to take up their residence in cities, they preserved the ascendency of birth and riches. From the natural respect which is shown to these advantages, all offices of trust and command were shared among them; it is not material whether this were by positive right or continual usage. A limited aristocracy of this description, where the inferior citizens possess the right of se-positive testimony to acquaint us with lecting their magistrates by free suffrage from a numerous body of nobles, is not among the worst forms of government, and affords no contemptible security against oppression and anarchy. This regimen appears to have prevailed in most of the Lombard cities during the eleventh and twelfth centuries; though, in so great a deficiency of authentic materials, it would be too peremptory to assert this as an unequivocal truth. There is one very early instance, in the year 1041, of a civil war at Milan between the capitanei, or vassals of the empire, and the plebeian burgesses, which was appeased by the mediation of Henry III. This is ascribed to the ill treatment which the latter experienced; as was usual indeed in all parts of Europe, but which was endured with inevitable submission everywhere else. In this civil war, which lasted three years, the nobility were obliged to leave Milan, and carry on the contest in the adjacent plains;† and one of their class, by name Lanzon, whether moved by ambition or by virtuous indig

the general tenour of their history. We know that a nobility is always insolent, that a populace is always intemperate; and may safely presume that the former began as the latter ended, by injustice and abuse of power. At one time the aristocracy, not content with seeing the annual magistrates selected from their body, would endeavour by usurpation to exclude the bulk of the citizens from suffrage. At another, the merchants, grown proud by riches, and confident of their strength, would aim at obtaining the honours of the state, which had been reserved to the nobility. This is the inevitable consequence of commercial wealth, and indeed of freedom and social order, which are the parents of wealth. There is in the progress of civilization a term at which exclusive privileges must be relaxed, or the possessors must perish along with them. In one or two cities a temporary compromise was made through the intervention of the pope, whereby offices of public trust, from the highest to the lowest, were divided, in equal proportions or otherwise, between the nobles and the people. This also is no bad ex

* Sismondi, t. ii., p. 444. Muratori, Annali d'Italia, A. D. 1185, &c.

PART 1.1

ITALY.

the calamities of Italy, than the bitterness
with which an unsuccessful faction was
thus pursued into banishment. When
the Ghibelins were returning to Flor-
ence, after a defeat given to the prevail-
ing party in 1260, it was proposed among
them to demolish the city itself which
had cast them out; and, but for the per-
suasion of one man, Farinata degl' Uberti,
their revenge would have thus extinguish-
ed all patriotism.* It is to this that we
must ascribe their proneness to call in

pedient, and proved singularly efficacious | have we need to ask any other cause for in appeasing the dissensions of Rome. There is, however, a natural preponderance in the popular scale, which, in a fair trial, invariably gains on that of the less numerous class. The artisans, who composed the bulk of the population, were arranged in companies according to their occupations. Sometimes, as at Milan, they formed separate associations, with rules for their internal government." The clubs, called at Milan la Motta and la Credenza, obtained a degree of weight not at all surprising to those who consid-assistance from every side, and to invite er the spirit of mutual attachment which any servitude for the sake of retaliating belongs to such fraternities; and we shall upon their adversaries. The simple love see a more striking instance of this here- of public liberty is in general, I fear, too after in the republic of Florence. To so abstract a passion to glow warmly in the formidable and organized a democracy, human breast; and, though often invigothe nobles opposed their numerous fam-rated as well as determined by personal ilies, the generous spirit that belongs to animosities and predilections, is as frehigh birth, the influence of wealth and quently extinguished by the same cause. Independently of the two leading differestablished name. The members of each distinguished family appear to have lived ences which embattled the citizens of an in the same street; their houses were Italian state, their form of government fortified with square massive towers of and their relation to the empire, there commanding height, and wore the sem- were others more contemptible, though blance of castles within the walls of a not less mischievous. In every city the city. Brancaleon, the famous senator of quarrels of private families became the Rome, destroyed one hundred and forty foundation of general schism, sedition, of these domestic intrenchments, which and proscription. Sometimes these blendwere constantly serving the purpose of ed themselves with the grand distinctions civil broils and outrage. Expelled, as fre- of Guelf and Ghibelin; sometimes they quently happened, from the city, it was were more nakedly conspicuous. This in the power of the nobles to avail them- may be illustrated by one or two promiselves of their superiority in the use of nent examples. Imilda de Lambertazzi, cavalry, and to lay waste the district, till a noble young lady at Bologna, was surweariness of an unprofitable contention prised by her brothers in a secret interreduced the citizens to terms of com-view with Boniface Gieremei, whose fampromise. But, when all these resources ily had long been separated by the most were ineffectual, they were tempted or inveterate enmity from her own. forced to sacrifice the public liberty to had just time to escape: while the Lamtheir own welfare, and lent their aid to abertazzi despatched her lover with their poisoned daggers. On her return she foreign master or a domestic usurper. In all these scenes of turbulence, wheth-found his body still warm, and a faint er the contest was between the nobles hope suggested the remedy of sucking the and people, or the Guelf and Ghibelin venom from his wounds. But it only factions, no mercy was shown by the communicated itself to her own veins; conquerors. The vanquished lost their and they were found by her attendants homes and fortunes, and, retiring to other stretched lifeless by each other's side.. cities of their own party, waited for the So cruel an outrage wrought the Giereopportunity of revenge. In a popular mei to madness; they formed alliances tumult the houses of the beaten side were with some neighbouring republics; the frequently levelled to the ground; not Lambertazzi took the same measures; perhaps from a sort of senseless fury and after a fight in the streets of Bologna which Muratori inveighs against, but on of forty days' duration, the latter were account of the injury which these forti-driven out of the city, with all the Ghibefied houses inflicted upon the lower citiThe most deadly hatred is that which men, exasperated by proscription and forfeiture, bear to their country; nor

zens.

She

* G. Villani, 1. vi., c. 82. Sismondi. I cannot

forgive Dante for placing this patriot trà l'anime
più nere, in one of the worst regions of his Inferno.

The conversation of the poet with Farinata, cant.
10, is very fine, and illustrative of Florentine his-

Muratori, Dissert. 52. Sismondi, t. iii., p. 262. tory.
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far less elevated in station than Giovanni di
popes or emperors, Fra Giovan- Vicenza.
ni di Vicenza, belongs to these times and
to this subject. This Dominican friar
began his career at Bologna, in 1233,
preaching the cessation of war and for-
giveness of injuries. He repaired from
thence to Padua, to Verona, and the
neighbouring cities. At his command
men laid down their instruments of war,
and embraced their enemies. With that
susceptibility of transient impulse nat-
ural to popular governments, several re-
publics implored him to reform their laws
and to settle their differences. A gen-
eral meeting was summoned in the plain
of Paquara, upon the banks of the Adige.
The Lombards poured themselves forth

lins, their political associates. Twelve thousand citizens were condemned to banishment; their houses razed, and their estates confiscated.* Florence was at rest till, in 1215, the assassination of an individual produced a mortal feud between the families Boundelmonti and Uberti, in which all the city took a part. An outrage committed at Pistoja, in 1300, split the inhabitants into the parties of Bianchi and Neri; and these, spreading to Florence, created one of the most virulent divisions which annoyed that republic. In one of the changes which attended this little ramification of faction, Florence expelled a young citizen who had borne offices of magistracy, and espoused the cause of the Bianchi. Dante Alighieri retired to the courts of some Ghibelin from Romagna and the cities of the princes, where his sublime and inventive mind, in the gloom of exile, completed that original combination of vast and extravagant conceptions with keen political satire, which has given immortality to his name, and even lustre to the petty contests of his time.†

March; Guelfs and Ghibelins, nobles and burghers, free citizens and tenantry of feudal lords, marshalled around their carroccios, caught from the lips of the preacher the illusive promise of universal peace. They submitted to agreements dictated by Fra Giovanni, which contain In the earlier stages of the Lombard little else than a mutual amnesty; whethrepublics, their differences, as well mu- er it were that their quarrels had been tual as domestic, had been frequently ap- really without object, or that he had dexpeased by the mediation of the emperors: terously avoided to determine the real and the loss of this salutary influence point of contention. But power and repmay be considered as no slight evil at-utation suddenly acquired are transitory. tached to that absolute emancipation Not satisfied with being the legislator which Italy attained in the thirteenth century. The popes sometimes endeavoured to interpose an authority, which, though not quite so direct, was held in greater veneration; and, if their own tempers had been always pure from the selfish and vindictive passions of those whom they influenced, might have produced more general and permanent good. But they considered the Ghibelins as their own peculiar enemies, and the triumph of the opposite faction as the church's best security. Gregory X. and Nicholas III., whether from benevolent motives, or because their jealousy of Charles of Anjou, while at the head of the Guelfs, suggested the revival of a Ghibelin party as a counterpoise to his power, distinguished their pontificate by enforcing measures of reconciliation in all Italian cities; but their successors returned to the ancient policy and prejudices of Rome.

and arbiter of Italian cities, he aimed at becoming their master; and abused the enthusiasm of Vicenza and Verona, to obtain a grant of absolute sovereignty. Changed from an apostle to an usurper, the fate of Fra Giovanni might be predicted; and he speedily gave place to those who, though they made a worse use of their power, had, in the eyes of mankind, more natural pretensions to possess it.*

PART II.

State of Italy after the Extinction of the House of Swabia.-Conquest of Naples by Charles of Anjou.-The Lombard Republics become severally subject to Princes or Usurpers.-The Visconti of Milan-their Aggrandizement.-Decline of the Imperial Authority over Italy.-Internal State of Rome.-Rienzi.-Florence-her forms of Government historically traced to the end of the fourteenth Century.-Conquest of Pisa.Pisa-its Commerce, Naval Wars with Genoa, and Decay.-Genoa-her Contentions with Ven

* Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura, t. iv., P. Vil-214 (a verv well-written account). Sismondi, t. ii., p. 484.

ice.-War of Chioggia.-Government of Genoa. I was for a little time able to maintain Venice-her Origin and Prosperity.-Vene- itself, and even to gain ground in the