II.
At this time the world began to perceive what results the subtle craft of the Florentines was capable of achieving. The art of secretly becoming masters of the State, that, at a later period, gave Cosimo and Lorenzo dei Medici such triumphant supremacy in the Republic, enabling them to hold sovereign rule while remaining private citizens in the eyes of the law, this art was now discovered by the nobles. It consisted in leaving republican institutions untouched, and showing no desire to be concerned in them, yet contriving that none save personal adherents should be admitted to power. The offices of the Guelph Society afforded an efficacious means to this end, for, as we know, the nobles were eligible to those offices, and when holding them could declare any citizen a Ghibelline, confiscate his property, and exclude him from the government at their own pleasure. Thus, without being members of the Signory, they had found a more or less legal method of preventing their worst enemies from entering it. Giano della Bella was fully awake to this danger, and had tried to avert it; but the nobles had frustrated his purpose by compassing his expulsion from the city.
As another useful means of regaining their forfeited power, the nobles managed to obtain the right of choosing the magistrates, in order to exercise a personal influence over them. Many of the magistrates were foreigners who came provided with foreign notaries, chancellors, and subordinate judges, while certain others, as, for instance, the Podestà and the Captain of the People, were necessarily bound to be knights—that is to say, nobles. They gave judgment in political as well as civil and criminal cases. In fact, it was the function of the Podestà and Captain, in junction with the Gonfalonier, to enforce the enactments; and besides this, political and common law were so intermixed at the time, that it was impossible to separate the one from the other. Originally, as we have already seen, the Podestà was the virtual head of the Commune. He commanded the army, signed treaties of peace; and even as ancient historians recorded Roman events in the name of the Consuls in office, so the Florentine chroniclers registered the events of their city under the name of its Podestà and even occasionally of its Consuls. But towards the close of the thirteenth century things were changed. With the destroyal of feudalism, the development of civil equality and increased recognition of Roman law, the political importance of those offices was lessened. The Podestà and Captains of the People were gradually lowered to the status of ordinary high judges. Hence both they and their subordinates steadily declined in authority and strength; and being worse paid and less feared, became more open to bribery, and more easily subjected to the influence of the nobles. Many of these officers came from Romagna, and the Marches, and the greater number from Gubbio. Reared under tyrannical governments and trained to Roman law in the school of Bologna, they had no previous knowledge of the real significance of party conflicts in Florence, and seldom succeeded in acquiring it; hence they also failed to discern the true meaning of laws such as the Enactments of Justice, which were mainly political laws. All this contributed to render them easily and blindly subservient to those desiring to use them as tools. In fact, the whole literature of the period teems with fierce invectives against "the wicked, accursed, and perverted judges bringing ruin upon cities."[490]
Thus by favour of the lower class and the mob, by the unjust verdicts of the Captains of the Guelph Society and the corruption of alien judges, the nobles endeavoured to regain their lost ground and again seize possession of the government. Nor was it an altogether impossible plan, seeing that at this moment (as will be presently shown) they received powerful foreign aid. But unity was indispensably required, and no unity was to be secured among a party composed of not only different, but heterogeneous elements. Accordingly it was already easy to foresee that, sooner or later, the fiercest discord must inevitably break out in their midst.
Dino Compagni remarks in his Chronicle, that "the powerful citizens were not all nobles by birth, but were sometimes styled Grandi for other reasons."[491] The Grandi, in fact, were composed of ancient aristocratic families, despoiled of feudal privileges and titles; of old-established burghers raised to a higher position on the score of their wealth and of those proclaimed Grandi by the people for the sole purpose of subjecting them to the penalty of exclusion from power. Naturally the old aristocracy were full of distrust and contempt for new-comers, who often continued (if not personally, by means of their kinsmen) to carry on trades and manufactures, and thus maintain their relations with the rich burghers opposed to the lower classes, whereas the latter were more in sympathy with the really influential and aristocratic section of the Grandi. Nor was this all. The latter party likewise comprised country nobles, such as the Ubertini, the Pazzi of Valdarno, and more particularly the Ubaldini owning nearly the whole of the Mugello and dominating it with their fortified castles. The fortress of Montaccenico, one of their main strongholds, guarded by a triple circuit of walls, had been founded by the Cardinal Ottavio degli Ubaldini, who has a place in Dante's "Inferno," and who once said, "If I ever had a soul, I have lost it, for the sake of the Ghibelline cause." All these territorial lords clung to their feudal traditions with far greater tenacity than the rest, and being very hostile to the people, were equally opposed to the Republic, which was always at strife with them. When residing in the city they were undoubtedly compelled, like the others, to obey the common laws; but in their own castles they and their kindred still asserted the rights of feudal barons.
In order to sap the strength of the Pazzi and Ubertini, the Florentines, in 1296, established the two colonies of San Giovanni and Castelfranco between Figline and Montevarchi in the Upper Valdarno. All adherents of the nobles willing to settle on these domains were freed from vassalage and exempted from taxation for ten years.[492] But measures of this kind would have been useless against the Ubaldini, and prolonged and sanguinary hostilities had to be engaged with them. By logical rule these territorial lords should have been Ghibellines and imperialists; but the Empire was now distant and feeble, France and the Pope were menacing close at hand. Accordingly they rather tended to combine with the Guelph nobles of Florence, and more particularly with those of ancient descent, thus forming a new element in that curious agglomeration of diverse forces. Also, seeing that private jealousies and hates are always readier to burst into flame when unrestrained by the organic unity and common interest of a well-organised party, it will be easy to understand what confusion and disorder prevailed.