CHAPTER IV. THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
[1197-1218 A.D.]
The death of Henry VI was followed by a general war throughout the empire, which gave fresh activity to the passions of the Italian nobles, and greater animosity to the opposing parties. The two factions in Germany had simultaneously raised to the empire the two chiefs of the houses of Guelf and Ghibelline. Philip I, duke of Swabia, and brother of Henry VI, had been named king of the Romans by the Ghibellines; and Otto IV, son of Henry the Lion, duke of Bavaria and Saxony, by the Guelfs. Their contest was prolonged to the 22nd of June, 1208, when Philip was assassinated by a private enemy. The Germans, wearied with eleven years of civil war, agreed to unite under the sceptre of his rival, Otto IV, whom they crowned anew. The following year he passed into Italy, to receive from the pope the golden crown of the empire.
But though Otto was the legitimate heir of the Guelfs of Bavaria, so long chiefs of the opposition to the imperial prerogatives, yet now wearing himself the crown, he was desirous of possessing it with these disputed rights; every one was denied him, and all his actions controlled by the pope. There was soon a declared enmity between the emperor and the pontiff who, rather than consent to any agreement, or to abate any of his pretensions, raised against the Guelf emperor the heir of the Ghibelline house, the young Frederick II, grandson of Frederick I, hardly eighteen years of age, and till then reigning under the pope’s tutelage over the Two Sicilies only. Frederick, excited and seconded by the pope, boldly passed through Lombardy in 1212, and arrived at Aachen, where the German Ghibellines awaited, and crowned him king of the Romans and Germans. Otto IV in the meantime returned to Germany, and was acknowledged by Saxony.
The civil war, carried on between the two chiefs of the empire, lasted till the 19th of May, 1218, when Otto died, without any attempt by either party to despoil his rival of his hereditary possessions. It was this civil war that caused the names of Guelf and Ghibelline to be exclusively substituted for those of party of the church and party of the empire. In fact, each noble family, and each city, seemed to consult only their hereditary affection, and not their political principles, in ranging themselves under either standard. The Guelfs placed themselves in opposition to the pope, to repel his Ghibelline candidate; and Milan, Piacenza, and Brescia braved even excommunication to resist him; while, on the contrary the Ghibellines of Pavia, Cremona, and of the marches armed themselves with zeal against an emperor of the Guelf blood.
During this period, while the minority of Frederick II left so much time to the cities of Italy to consolidate their independence, and to form real republics, the person most influential and most prominent in history was the pope, Innocent III, who reigned from 1197 to 1216. He caused his power to be felt in the remotest parts of Christendom, but he suffered to be constituted at Rome, under his own eye, a republic, the liberty of which he respected, and over which he assumed no authority. The thirteen districts of Rome each named annually four representatives or caporioni; their meeting formed the senate of the republic, who, with the concurrence of the people, exercised the sovereignty, with the exception of the judicial power. This power belonged as in other republics to a foreign military chief, chosen for one year, and assisted by civil judges, dependent on him, but bearing the name of senator, instead of podesta. We have still extant the form of oath taken by the first of these senators, named in 1207. By it he engages to guarantee security and liberty to the pope as well as to his brothers the cardinals, but promises no submission to him for himself.
In the beginning of the pontificate of Innocent III, two German generals, to whom Henry VI had given the titles of duke of Spoleto and marquis of Ancona, held in dependence and subjection the provinces nearest Rome. Innocent, to revive the spirit of liberty, sent thither two legates; and by their interference, the cities of these provinces, built for the most part in the mountains, and without any means of becoming either wealthy or populous, threw off the German yoke, and made alliance with those cities which from the preceding period had entered into the league of Lombardy; thus two Guelf leagues were formed, under the protection of the pope; one in the marches, comprehending the cities of Ancona, Fermo, Osimo, Camerino, Fano, Jesi, Sinigaglia, and Pesaro; the other in the duchy, comprehending those of Spoleto, Rieti, Assisi, Foligno, Nocera, Perugia, Agubbio, Todi, and Città di Castello. These leagues, however, in accustoming the cities of these two provinces to regard the pope as their protector, led them afterwards to submit without resistance to the sovereignty of the church.
Other legates had been about the same time sent into Tuscany by the pope; they convoked at St. Ginasio, a borough situated at the foot of the mountain of San Miniato, the diet of the towns of that country. These provincial diets were in the habit of assembling frequently, and had till then been presided over by an officer belonging to the emperor, in memory of whom the castle in which he resided is still called San Miniato al Tedesco. These diets settled the differences which arose between cities, and had succeeded in saving Tuscany from the civil wars between the Guelfs and Ghibellines. Pisa, which had been loaded with favours by the sovereigns of the house of Hohenstaufen, and which had obtained from them the dominion of sixty-four castles or fortified towns on the shores of Tuscany, and over the isles of Corsica, Elba, Capraia, and Pianosa, proclaimed its determination of remaining faithful to the Ghibelline party, and its consuls withdrew from the diet convoked at St. Ginasio; but those of the cities of Florence, of Siena, of Arezzo, of Pistoia, and of Lucca accepted the protection of the pope, offered by his two legates, and promised to coalesce in defence of their common liberty.[b]
Florence