Of no less importance, and perhaps hardly less ancient than the cloth manufactures, was the weaving of silk, which, after its introduction into Sicily by King Roger, had been in a short time transplanted to Central Italy, if, indeed, it was not previously cultivated in Lucca. Of all the great branches of industry of the Middle Ages, this is the only one which has preserved a certain importance down to our day. The Arte della Seta was usually called the Por Sta. Maria, after the St. Mary’s Gate, or Porta Regina, opposite the Ponte Vecchio, at the entrance of the street still called Via di Por Sta. Maria (usually Mercato Nuovo), where the former guild-hall still stands, near the church of Sta. Maria sopra Porta, in the Via di Capaccio, distinguished by the coat of arms, a closed red door in a white field. The silk-weavers appear already, in the twelfth and oftener still in the thirteenth century, as a corporation in public acts and treaties, in the conclusions of peace and other compacts. In the list of the masters of the guild in the year 1225 their number is given as more than 350, and probably they had even then statutes; but the oldest still extant date from 1335, and therefore from a time when this industry seems to have attained considerable importance under the Guelfs from Lucca, who had emigrated to Florence in great numbers in 1316. The dyeing of silk was pursued here with great skill, and in particular the crimsoned tissue stood in high reputation in the fourteenth century. We shall speak later of the most brilliant epoch, the fifteenth century. The Vicolo della Seta, in the vicinity of the former hall, and the Via de’ Velluti, on the left bank of the river, near Via Maggio, where numerous silk-weavers and other mechanics originally lived, and where the still flourishing family of the Velluti took its rise, remind us of their former great activity.[42]
Though the branches of industry we have mentioned contributed much to increase the wealth of the Florentine people, and make their name famous in foreign lands, they were not the chief source of national wealth. The business of money-changing seemed thoroughly at home here, and it is not surprising that the invention of bills of exchange, which we first meet with in 1199 in the relations between England and Italy, should be ascribed to Florence. The money trade seems to have flourished as early as the twelfth century, towards the end of which a Marquis of Ferrara raised money on his lands from the Florentines. In 1204 we find the money-changers as one of the corporations. In 1228, and probably from the beginning of the century, several Florentines were settled in London as changers to King Henry III.; and here, as in France, they conducted the money transactions of the Papal chair in conjunction with the Sienese. Their oldest known statute, which established rules for the whole conduct of trade (Statuto dell’Università della Mercatanzia) drawn up by a commission consisting of five members of the great guilds, is dated 1280. Their guild-hall was in the Via Calimaruzza, opposite that of the Calimala, and was later included in the buildings of the post-office, on the site of which, after the post-office had been removed to what was formerly the mint, a building was lately erected, similar in architecture to the Palazzo of the Signoria, which stands opposite. Their coat of arms displayed gold coins laid one beside another on a red field. At the end of the thirteenth century their activity, especially in France and England, was extraordinarily great. But if wealth surpassing all previous conception was attained, it not seldom involved loss of repute, and those who pursued the calling ran the risk of immense losses from fiscal measures to the carrying out of which they themselves contributed, as well as those which were caused by insolvency or dishonesty. These losses would indeed have ruined the trade and credit of the Florentines in the fourteenth century, had not their resources been so varied, and their intelligent activity so great. The names of Tuscans and Lombards, and that of Cahorsiens in France, no longer indicated the origin, but the trade of the money-changers, who drew down the ancient hatred upon themselves which the fœneratores had incurred from too frequently confounding usury with rightful gains. It is this which the Divina Commedia describes where it speaks of shadows sitting mournfully shielding themselves from the glow of vapours with their hands, and with bags round their necks on which they feed their eyes.[43] France possessed at this time the greatest attraction for the Florentine money-makers, although they were sometimes severely oppressed, which is sufficient proof that their winnings were still greater than their occasional losses. In 1277, they, with other Italians, were obliged to compound for a sum of 120,000 gold florins, when King Philip III. took advantage of a decree of the Council to proceed against the usurers, a manœuvre which Philip IV. the Fair repeated fourteen years later.
If Florentines suffered among those prosecuted by this king for ‘money coining on the Seine,’[44] Florentines certainly aided him in other extortions and dishonesties in France and in Flanders, and it was the bank of the Peruzzi which paid the sum by means of which the constables of Philip the Fair, and chief among them the Tuscan knight and financier Musciatto Franzesi, accomplished the attempt on Pope Boniface VIII. in 1303 at Anagni.[45] New oppressions arose under Philip VI., in whose person the line of Valois ascended the French throne. He not only again debased the coinage for the necessities of the English war, but also extorted a heavy forced loan from all foreign merchants and bankers, and furthermore assisted the Duke of Athens, after his expulsion, in his reprisals against the Florentine trade. But notwithstanding all partial losses, and the great catastrophes which befell the Florentine trade in the same century, it remained, even in the following, mistress of the French money transactions, and, in certain respects, of French trade.
The Florentine money market suffered the severest blow from England. At the end of the twelfth century there were already Florentine houses of exchange in London, and if Pisans, Genoese, and Venetians managed the trade by sea in the times of the Crusades, it was the Florentines mostly who looked after financial affairs in connection with the Papal chair, as we have seen. Numerous banks appeared about the middle of the thirteenth century, among which the Frescobaldi, a family of ancient nobility, and as such attainted by the prosecutions against it, took the lead, and were referred to the custom-house of the country for re-imbursement of the loans made to the kings Edward I. and II. Later, the two great trading companies of the Bardi and Peruzzi came into notice, and with their money Edward III. began the French war against Philip of Valois. But even in the first year of this war, which began with an unsuccessful attack upon Flanders, the king suspended the payments to the creditors of the State by a decree of May 6, 1339. The advances made by the Bardi amounted to 180,000 marks sterling, those of the Peruzzi to above 135,000, according to Giovanni Villani,[46] who knew only too well about these things, since he was ruined by them himself to the extent of ‘a sum of more than 1,355,000 gold florins, equivalent to the value of a kingdom.’ Bonifazio Peruzzi, the head of the house, hastened to London, where he died of grief in the following year. The blow fell on the whole city, for, as may be supposed, numerous families were interested in the business of the great houses, which not only counted a number of partners or shareholders, but had also money from all sides, from the city and from foreign countries, to keep as deposits or to invest profitably. The injury to credit was very threatening. In the year 1326, the fall of one of the oldest and most important of the banking companies, that of the Scali, Amieri, and Petri, had occurred just as the war against Castruccio, the lord of Lucca, took an evil turn. But the position of affairs was now far more critical. Both houses began at once to liquidate, and the prevailing disturbance contributed not a little to the early success of the ambitious plans of the Duke of Athens. The real bankruptcy ensued, however, in January 1346, when new losses had occurred in Sicily on account of the measures of the French Government which we have already mentioned. The banks of the Acciaiuoli, Bonaccorsi, Cocchi, Antellesi, Corsini, da Uzzano, Perendoli, and many smaller ones, as well as numerous private persons, were involved in the ruin. ‘The immense loans to foreign sovereigns,’ adds Villani, ‘drew down ruin upon our city, the like of which it had never known.’ There was a complete lack of cash. Estates in the city found no purchasers at a third of their former value; those in the country were disposed of at two-thirds their value, and fell even lower than this. The chronicler who gives us this sad information was imprisoned for debt on account of the failure of the Bonaccorsi, whose partner he was.
As the first result of these misfortunes was the impoverishment of numerous families, the community at large was soon involved in it; as the revenues diminished quickly with the public affluence, money was only to be obtained at unheard-of usurious interest, and the prestige of the Florentine trade lost considerably in foreign countries. The famine and pestilence of 1347 and 1348, the oppressions of the mercenary bands and the heavy expenses caused by them, the cost of the war against Pope Gregory XI., and finally the tumult of the Ciompi, left Florence no peace for a long time. The aristocracy, which came into power in 1382, at last succeeded in restoring the equilibrium, opening new resources to industry and trade, and rendering the old connections again secure. Thus, at the beginning of the fifteenth century industry was again flourishing in all its branches in Florence, financial operations were extended, and foreign countries filled with Florentine banks and mercantile houses. After the fall of Pisa the last restrictions on navigation were removed, and it was no longer necessary, as in past times, to hire French vessels in Aiguesmortes for conveyance to the insecure and small roadsteads of Motrone or Pietrasanta, or to conclude treaties with the Sienese for the use of the bad and pestilential harbour of Talamone. The number of Florentine settlements and offices had been already very considerable a century earlier. In London the most important firms had their representatives, Bruges was the chief place for Flanders, and we shall see how these connections lasted to the time of the greatest splendour of the Medici. France is frequently mentioned. The official representatives of the Florentine nation resided in the capital, while numerous houses established themselves in Lyons, in Avignon (since the removal of the Papal chair to this town), in Nismes, Narbonne, Carcassonne, Marseilles, &c. Large transactions were made in Upper Italy at Venice and Genoa, at Castel di Castro in Sardinia, in Apulia, Barletta, and at Palermo in the island of Sicily; Rome and Naples saw in the fifteenth century the greater part of the banking business and a considerable portion of other trade in Florentine hands. There were Florentine colonies in Majorca, at Tunis, at Chiarenza in the Morea, in Rhodes under the supremacy of the Knights of St. John, and in Cyprus under that of Guy de Lusignan; while Florentine merchants carried trade into Asia Minor, Armenia, the Crimea, far into Central Asia and Northern China. The house of the Peruzzi alone had sixteen counting-houses in the fourteenth century, from London to Cyprus.
The prudence and careful calculation which were in general characteristic of the Florentine trade prevailed in everything relating to the transmission and receipt of money and the term of payments. Not only have we general rules from Balducci Pegolotti, in the first thirty years of the fourteenth century, as to how they should proceed in calculating the money to be paid abroad, but detailed notes on the fluctuations of the money market in consequence of fairs, expeditions of galleys, regular proceedings of the State, purchase of wool, etc., in the most important places, as Naples, Genoa, Bologna, Venice, Avignon, Paris, Bruges, Barcelona, etc. The Papal court, with which such extensive business was pursued—whether Rome or Avignon, or for the time another town, were its residence—seemed to the experienced Florentine to deserve especial remark. ‘Wherever the Pope goes, money is dear, because from all sides one has to pay so much to him. When he goes away, an ebb sets in, because the members of his court, if they are not rich, must borrow.’ The times when the bills fell due were regulated generally by the distance. An order drawn at Florence on Pisa or Venice was due on the fifth day after the money was paid in; in Rome and Genoa it was the fifteenth day; in Naples the twentieth; in Provence, Majorca, and France, the sixtieth; in Flanders the seventieth; in England the seventy-fifth; and in Spain, after three months. The contracting parties could, however, make arrangements at will.[47] According to the report of an annalist,[48] seventy-two exchange houses and tables were counted in Florence, in the Mercato Nuovo and its vicinity, in the year 1422, and the sum of money in circulation was calculated at two millions of gold florins; while the value of the wares, the letters of credit, and other property defied calculation.
While industry and trade had accumulated great wealth in Florence, the spirit of the community accorded well with it. In spite of the many wars and other disturbances the city rose to such prosperity in the first decades of the fourteenth century (when its territory included only Pistoja, Colle, and Arezzo, and therefore scarcely a third of Tuscany in later times) that Giovanni Villani could remark in 1336-1338 that her revenues exceeded those of the kings of Naples, of Sicily, and of Aragon. With all the changes after the rise of the new wealthy families at the beginning of the century the style of living had remained simple, and even continued so after the luxury of the court of Anjou, partly supported by Florentine money, had affected Florentine manners unfavourably; yet there was no stinting for public works. The citizens were in general beneficent: the number and importance of the charitable institutions prove it. As with the Government, so with the corporations, a lively sense was always displayed of the dignity and grandeur of the city and community. And even if that oft-mentioned decree of the republic of the year 1294,[49] according to which the architect Arnolfo shall be charged to design the model of a cathedral church ‘of such splendour that human power should be unable to invent anything grander or more beautiful, in consideration that a people of noble origin ought so to arrange its affairs that even in the exterior works a wise and lofty mind may be recognised’—even if this decree appears to be a production of the sixteenth instead of the thirteenth century, there are not wanting reliable records which announce the same spirit, and, still more, works which testify to it. In the year 1296, legacies in aid of this church were made a duty for every one; notaries were obliged to enjoin them in drawing up wills, and omissions were punished.[50] In 1338 the community granted subsidies for this same building, ‘that a work so beautifully and honourably begun might be continued and completed still more beautifully, and the grants made by the community appear liberal and considerable.’ When a pavement for the Piazza della Signoria was ordered in June 1351 it was especially insisted upon that the dignity and importance of the whole town were concerned, as well as the stateliness and beauty of the palace of the chief magistrate of state. When in August 1373 the public reading and exposition of the Divina Commedia was applied for and permitted, the petitioners assigned as the ground of their request the wish that, even if otherwise unlearned, they themselves, their fellow-citizens, children, and posterity, be instructed in eloquence, guided to virtue, and warned against vice. When in 1409 the fabrication of the bronze gates of the shrine of St. Zanobius was entrusted to Lorenzo Ghiberti, it was said that he must have regard to the ancient veneration for the saint, as well as to the high dignity of the community, and respect to the cathedral in which this work was to have the most honourable place possible allotted to it. At the first mention of the building of the Foundling Hospital, begun in 1421 at the expense of the silk-weavers’ company, it is remarked that ‘this beautiful building is destined for the reception of those whose father and mother have maliciously forsaken them, contrary to the rights of nature.’ As the silk guild here, so was the woollen guild in Sta. Maria del Fiore entrusted with the guidance of the works, beside the regular building committee (Opera del Duomo). The share of the companies in the building and decoration of Or San Michele is repeatedly mentioned. As a matter of course, all that concerned the adornment of the city, the churches not excepted, must be subordinate to the requirements of safety and defence. In 1353, when the people were fighting against Giovanni Visconti, and afterwards, when the enterprise of Cardinal d’Albornoz for regaining Romagna for the Holy See gave a prospect of unsettled times, and the disorder of the freebooters led by the Knight of St. John of Montreal (Fra Moriale) began, the money held in readiness for the bell-tower was employed in enlisting men. As late as October 1368, when the city fell to bickerings with the Emperor Charles IV., which were then, as usual, made use of by the Visconti for the extension of their own power over Tuscany, and when their mercenary bands penetrated to the gates of Florence, a decree was passed that the sums destined for the completion of Sta. Maria del Fiore should be employed for strengthening and repairing the walls. The architects of the church were soon afterwards commanded to build a wall along the river, from the Castell Altafronte, which is still in partial preservation, and which joins the Uffizi, built in the sixteenth century, to the Rubaconte bridge, and to level the road ‘as should appear most suitable to the adornment of the city.’
A people which accomplished such great things must have possessed unusual civic virtues, apart from their more brilliant intellectual qualities, and spite of the weaknesses and faults which the greatest of the sons of Florence has scourged in angry love and loving anger. A despot can in a short time heap splendour on splendour; the activity of spirit of a popular commonwealth is different and more steady. The two free States in which we meet with the most perfect expression of this, Venice and Florence, show that this is not dependent on the form of government, but on a firm will and clear conception. The Florentine people combined these in a high degree. In the midst of political troubles and civil disturbances they constantly advanced; the final gain was greater than the losses through momentary retrogression, however violent. The people were contented, frugal, industrious, and attached at all times to ancient customs. That great changes were gradually made in customs and modes of life was according to the law of all ages, and of natural development, though some aspects of it did not seem the most pleasing. Manners and feelings of those days, which the Paradiso in the ‘Divina Commedia’ describes with such incomparable beauty and at the same time with such melancholy, when ‘in the old encircling walls, Florence was peaceful, moderate, and modest,’ the ‘civic life so calm, so beautiful, the society so reliable,’—a state of things which the poet closes with the time ‘before Frederic had fought out his quarrel,’[51]—they indeed lay far behind him who has lent to their memory form and duration for all future time. But the greatest change was to come after his death. The influence of the numerous foreigners, especially the French and Frenchified Neapolitans who came with the Angevins and their regents, was by no means beneficial; and the various sumptuary laws which were to restrain the women point especially to the example set in 1326, by Charles Duke of Calabria and his consort, Marie of Valois, the parents of the unhappy Joanna I., with their whole court. Then came the times of the Duke of Athens; soon after, the pestilence with its evil results, which are open to all in the stories of the ‘Decamerone.’ Giovanni Villani, who died in the year 1348, says once that the Florentines of the thirteenth century in their simple life and poverty achieved more than those of his time in the midst of their wealth and luxury.