Thus had the city of Florence, when the fifteenth century entered on its fourth decade, developed in both severe and graceful beauty, under the influence of an art which, notwithstanding foreign traditions, was, nevertheless, in its peculiarity and luxuriance, the growth of its own soil. In external appearance, likewise, Florence was the city of a rich, active, sovereign republic, which sought its honour rather in the grandeur and brilliancy of its public buildings, both for ecclesiastical and secular purposes, than in the luxury of private houses. The city was at once munificent and thrifty, and, through all change, however precipitate, held firmly by old tradition, as was expressed by the prevailing similarity of the character of the architecture, notwithstanding the development of successive styles. Most of the streets were and remained narrow, the number of large squares was inconsiderable, but these streets were well paved, when in Rome people waded for years longer in the deep mire and dust of streets provided only with a tile causeway on each side. The greater number of houses were built of massive stone. The number of projecting upper storeys which darkened the streets had lessened more and more in the course of years. Some restriction was put on this mode of building by the imposition of a tax, which in Giovanni Villani’s time brought in 7,000 florins. Subsequently, however, it was expressly forbidden by law, and under the first Duke many of the projecting storeys were pulled down, so that their number is now proportionally small. A greater evil was the projection of the roofs over the street, but this was not removed till 1766. Although no fortress was assigned to the chief magistrate of the city, he was provided with a secure residence, and one befitting the dignity of his position. The boundary wall of Florence was a remarkable work. It enclosed the foremost height on the left bank of the river, and was fortified with towers. The gates were magnificent, among which that of St. Nicolò, with its projecting double storey, offers an example of its kind as the only one in complete preservation since the transformation undertaken in the sixteenth century.
The frame to the beautiful picture was afforded by the environs. As at the present day, so in late mediæval times, the city seemed to extend on every side into the plain, as well as up into the neighbouring mountains which skirted the flowery plain watered by the Arno. At the gates were hospitals and lazarettos for the sick and for pilgrims, particularly for all whose residence in the city seemed unadvisable, such as lepers and other sufferers from skin diseases. These charitable institutions were founded chiefly in the fourteenth century, and owe their origin to the benevolence of wealthy citizens and the companies. There were, moreover, convents, which were increased in number and extent from year to year, some of them situated immediately before the walls, some on the hills by the bridges leading across the streams and brooks of Mugnone, Terzolle, Mensola, Ema, and Greve. Celebrated names are connected with the history of many of these foundations. We may mention that of Cardinal Ottaviano degli Ubaldini, who founded in 1260 the nunnery of Monticelli, opposite the Porta Romana; also that of his relative, the saintly Chiara, who was its first abbess. We may likewise allude to the family of the Acciaiuoli, who, both in politics and in Church history, played so great a part in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Even in Dante’s time numerous villas had risen, and one of these reminds us of the poet himself—the one in possession of his family before Porta Pinti, where the ground rises towards Fiesole; while the graceful narrator of the fourteenth century brings country life in the Florentine environs in bright pictures before us. The number of villas already foreshadowed the time in which Ludovico Ariosto sang; they would exceed a twofold Rome if enclosed by a wall. The necessities of the period converted many convents and villas into fortresses, and many have retained their castellated character, as San Miniato, the Charterhouse, and Passignano, the villa of Petraja, the former villa of Salviati at the base of the hill of Fiesole, Castle Pulci on the left bank of the Arno below the town, and Torre del Gallo on the hill of Arcetri; not to speak of the mountain fortresses of a more ancient period, as Castle Vincigliata on the eastern hills, which has been restored in modern times. Such fastnesses rendered good service when, in 1363 and 1364, the Pisans pressed up to the walls with their foreign mercenaries, and stormed the gates. While the German mercenaries under the lord of Bongard, and the English under Hawkwood, at that time an adversary, saw the villas on the hills of Montughi, Bellosguardo, Arcetri, and Pozzolatico perish in flames, they could not touch the Charterhouse; and from the strong tower of Petraja the Brunelleschi, the possessors of the villa, courageously repulsed the attack of the English. In March 1397, the Abbot of Passignano withstood the troops of Alberigo of Barbiano, who had come to Pisa in the service of the Visconti, and laid waste the Florentine territory. Even in later times security from surprise was as much considered in the construction of a villa as picturesque effect and artistic adornment.
CHAPTER IV.
INDUSTRY, TRADE, AND LIFE IN FLORENCE.
The large sums which were continually expended by the Government as well as the citizens of Florence, from the middle of the thirteenth century, for public objects—such as the enlargement, fortification, and embellishment of the city, for palaces and the residences of officers of the State, bridges and streets, churches and convents, hospitals and charitable institutions—would lead us to infer pecuniary means apparently out of proportion with the extent and resources of the territory and the site of the town, excluded as it was from the unrestricted use of the sea route till far into the fifteenth century. The great industrial activity and unusual intelligence of the inhabitants profited by favourable and conquered unfavourable circumstances so far, that while the Pisans still commanded the port which bore the name of their town, and was afterwards replaced by that of Leghorn—while Lucca possessed the harbour of Motrone, and Siena that of Talamone, and could thus shut out the inland state from the sea—the trade and industry of Florence had long surpassed theirs. The political importance attained by the great guilds so soon after their institution shows how firmly rooted was their power, even at the commencement of their existence, and that they really represented the most respected and affluent part of the community. We are vividly reminded of these corporations when we stand before the magnificent building of Or San Michele, or, at the eastern end of the Piazza della Signoria, gaze upon the arms graven in stone upon the residence of the Magistrate of Trade, who had to decide in all disputes and questions of competition between the magistrates of the different guilds. Four of these guilds come under consideration when we treat of industrial and commercial activity on a large scale—viz., the cloth-weavers, merchants or traders in foreign cloth, silk-weavers, and money-changers.
The woollen manufacture arose perhaps earliest of all, to satisfy one of the most important demands; and though it is doubtful whether native productions are spoken of in a Lucchese document of the year 840 respecting woollen and silk goods, we certainly do not err in the inference that Florence knew and practised this branch of industry at least from the time of her political rise, after the death of the Countess Matilda. In the beginning of the following century, a corporation of cloth-weavers existed, whose consuls signed a treaty of peace between their fellow-citizens and Siena in the year 1202. Thirty-seven years later, this branch of industry received an important accession from the Lombard order of the Humiliates, founded by Bishop Pietro Manadori. They settled first in the neighbourhood of the city, where the extensive buildings and gardens of the Villa San Donato are now to be seen, and finally, removed in 1256, to the monastery of Ognissanti, where they were long actively employed in their own interests and the welfare of the community who protected them, and did much to promote and perfect the woollen manufacture. On the neighbouring banks of the Arno arose workshops, houses for dyeing and washing wool, warehouses and booths of these brethren, who also aided essentially in the draining and cultivation of a somewhat marshy district. By the time the useful activity of the order slackened (about 1330 it entirely ceased), the Florentines had learnt all they could teach, and the city was full of cloth-weavers, as the names of several streets still remind us. From the ordinary kinds of cloth, with which they began, when the finer still came from the Levant, they advanced to better and best qualities, and strict regulations after the fashion of the guilds in the Middle Ages, certainly not to the disadvantage of the producers and their wares, guaranteed their excellence. The extensive sale and higher prices testified to their value. The wool was imported principally from France and Flanders, and also in considerable quantity from England and Scotland, especially from the wealthy abbeys and convents; and in the eighth decade of the thirteenth century we hear of Florentine agents in London buying up the wool for several years in advance. These agents stood in connection with no less than two hundred convents.[38]
In close and varied connection with the Arte della Lana was that of the Mercatanti, usually called Arte di Calimala, the oldest statutes of which date from 1339. As the native cloth manufacture did not suffice for the demand, and at first only supplied ordinary kinds, French and Flemish cloth was imported from abroad in great quantity, in a raw state, to Florence, where it was dyed, shorn and dressed, and returned to foreign countries, often to the place whence it had come. The skill of the dyers and other workmen in Florence, whose processes long remained a carefully guarded secret, made this profitable trade a monopoly until the rise of manufactures in the western countries of Europe. The guild had its representatives, couriers, settlements, and hostelries in France. It is clear that only the most conscientious honesty could sustain their credit, wherefore the strictest statutes respecting the different qualities of the cloth, the dyeing, and all other things to be taken into consideration, regulated the manufacture as well as the sale. The dyers formed a special guild, which, however, was subordinate to the consuls of Calimala, to whom also, rather singularly, the gold and silver smiths were subject. Another guild belonging to that of the Arte della Lana was that of the washers and combers of wool, which still exists as Compagnia dei Battilani, and has its meeting-place in Via delle Ruote, near Via San Gallo. Its church, whose sacristy is adorned by the portrait of Michele di Lando, was publicly exhibited every year on the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin, the high festival of the company. That such subordinate connections gave rise to misunderstandings in troublous times, and that new guilds arose without being able to maintain themselves permanently, has been already stated.
In the year 1338 the number of workshops (botteghe) of the clothiers’ guild amounted to more than 200, which supplied from seventy to eighty thousand pieces of cloth at the price of 1,200,000 gold florins, the third of which sum at least remained in the city as workmen’s wages, not to mention the profits of cloth merchants. The number of workmen amounted to 30,000. In the first years of this century the number of workshops had been a third more, and that of the pieces of cloth above 100,000; but the quality and price were lower, as they had not then the excellent English wool. The number of the magazines (fondachi) of the Calimala guild amounted to twenty. These imported yearly more than 10,000 pieces of foreign cloth, to the worth of 300,000 gold florins, for sale in the city itself, besides those which were again exported.[39] Among the proprietors of such magazines, we find the names Acciaiuoli, Alberti, Albizzi, Bardi, Buonaccorsi, Capponi, Corsini, Peruzzi, Pucci, Ricci, Ridolfi, Rinuccini—names which are mentioned a hundred times in the annals of the city, and which mostly are still heard there. Even in the second half of the thirteenth century, and therefore some time before their political power, these two guilds were very active in France, and we find their agents in 1281, beside those of the Genoese in Nismes, where, fifteen years later, we meet with the representatives of the trading companies of the Cerchi, Mozzi, Spini, Scali, and Folchi. In 1325, Filippo Villani and Cione di Lapo Ghini conducted the business of the Peruzzi and the Scali as Florentine consuls at Paris. The great fairs of Beaucaire and Forcalquier, with those of Provins, Lagny, Troyes, Bar-sur-Aube, etc., were of the greatest importance for this branch of industry.[40] In Italy, Venice was an important emporium for this trade, for Germany and Hungary as well as for the Levant. Till a few years ago, the extensive barn-like building which served for the dyeing and washing of the wool was still to be seen on the Lung’arno above the Uffizi; and on several palaces we still see the rings for holding the wooden staves on which the woollen fabrics were hung out as an indication that the houses belonged to the guild. The guild-hall of the Arte della Lana was the present Canonica of Or San Michele, where the coat of arms—the lamb with the flag, and the comb with the lily above it, in a blue field—still reminds one of its former destination, as well as an inscription of the date of 1308. The guild-hall of the Calimala, which had as a device a golden eagle standing over a ball of wool in a red field, stood in the little street leading from the Piazza della Signoria to the New Market, which is now called Calimaruzza: though it was converted into private houses after the abolition of the guild, the old devices may still be seen upon them. The street leading from the New to the Old Market still preserves the name Calimala, respecting the origin of which only untenable conjectures exist, and which in its present aspect reminds us as little as does any part of the whole centre of the old city of the former flourishing state of the trade.[41]