The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno

by Dante Alighieri

It was a true instinct which led Florence and other cities to side rather with the Pope than with the Emperor in the long-continued struggle between them for predominance in Italy. With the Pope for overlord they would at least have a master who was an Italian, and one who, his title being imperfect, would in his own interest be led to treat them with indulgence; while, in the permanent triumph of the Emperor, Italy must have become subject and tributary to Germany, and would have seen new estates carved out of her fertile soil for members of the German garrison. The danger was brought home to many of the youthful commonwealths during the eventful reign of Frederick Barbarossa (1152-1190). Strong in Germany beyond most of his predecessors, that monarch ascended the throne with high prerogative views, in which he was confirmed by the slavish doctrine of some of the new civilians. According to these there could be only one master in the world; as far as regarded the things of time, but one source of authority in Christendom. They maintained everything to be the Emperor’s that he chose to take. When he descended into Italy to enforce his claims, the cities of the Lombard League met him in open battle. Those of Tuscany, and especially Florence, bent before the blast, temporising as long as they were able, and making the best terms they could when the choice lay between submission and open revolt. Even Florence, it is true, strong in her allies, did once take arms against an Imperial lieutenant; but as a rule she never refused obedience in words, and never yielded it in fact beyond what could not be helped. In her pursuit of advantages, skilfully using every opportunity, and steadfast of aim even when most she appeared to waver, she displayed something of the same address that was long to be noted as a trait in the character of the individual Florentine.

The storm was weathered, although not wholly without loss. When, towards the close of his life, and after he had broken his strength against the obstinate patriotism of Lombardy, Frederick visited Florence in 1185, it was as a master justly displeased with servants who, while they had not openly rebelled against him, had yet proved eminently unprofitable, and whom he was concerned to punish if not to destroy. On the complaint of the neighbouring nobles, that they were oppressed and had been plundered by the city, he gave orders for the restoration to them of their lands and castles. This accomplished, all the territory left to Florence was a narrow belt around the walls. Villani even says that for the four years during which Frederick still lived the Commonwealth was wholly landless. And here, rather than lose ourselves among the endless treaties, leagues, and campaigns which fill so many pages of the chronicles, it may be worth while shortly to glance at the constitution of Florentine society, and especially at the place held in it by the class which found its protector in Barbarossa.

Much about the time at which the Commonwealth was relieved of its feudal trammels, as a result of the favour or the necessities of Matilda, it was beginning to extend its commerce and increase its industry. Starting somewhat late on the career on which Venice, Genoa, and Pisa were already far advanced, Florence was as if strenuous to make up for lost time, and soon displayed a rare comprehension of the nature of the enterprise. It may be questioned if ever, until quite modern times, there has been anywhere so clear an understanding of the truth that public wellbeing is the sum of private prosperity, or such an enlightened perception of what tends to economical progress. Florence had no special command of raw material for her manufactures, no sea-port of her own, and no monopoly unless in the natural genius of her people. She could therefore thrive only by dint of holding open her communications with the world at large, and grudged no pains either of war or diplomacy to keep at Pisa a free way out and in for her merchandise. Already in the twelfth century she received through that port the rough woollens of Flanders, which, after being skilfully dressed and dyed, were sent out at great profit to every market of Europe. At a somewhat later period the Florentines were to give as strong a proof of their financial capacity as this was of their industrial. It was they who first conducted a large business in bills of exchange, and who first struck a gold coin which, being kept of invariable purity, passed current in every land where men bought and sold—even in countries where the very name of Florence was unknown.[3]

In a community thus devoted to industry and commerce, it was natural that a great place should be filled by merchants. These were divided into six guilds, the members of which, with the notaries and lawyers, who composed a seventh, formed the true body of the citizens. Originally the consuls of these guilds were the only elected officials in the city, and in the early days of its liberty they were even charged with political duties, and are found, for example, signing a treaty of peace with a neighbouring state. In the fully developed commune it was only the wealthier citizens—the members, we may assume, of these guilds—who, along with the nobles,[4] were eligible for and had the right of electing to the public offices. Below them was the great body of the people; all, that is, of servile condition or engaged in the meaner kinds of business. From one point of view, the liberties of the citizens were only their privileges. But although the labourers and humbler tradesmen were without franchises, their interests were not therefore neglected, being bound up with those of the one or two thousand citizens who shared with the patricians the control of public affairs.

There were two classes of nobles with whom Florence had to reckon as she awoke to life—those within the walls, and those settled in the neighbouring country. In later times it was a favourite boast among the noble citizens—a boast indulged in by Dante—that they were descended from ancient Roman settlers on the banks of the Arno. A safer boast would in many cases have been that their ancestors had come to Italy in the train of Otho and other conquering Emperors. Though settled in the city, in some cases for generations, the patrician families were not altogether of it, being distinguished from the other citizens, if not always by the possession of ancestral landward estates, at least by their delight in war and contempt for honest industry. But with the faults of a noble class they had many of its good qualities. Of these the Republic suffered them to make full proof, allowing them to lead in war and hold civil offices out of all proportion to their numbers.

Like the city itself, the nobles in the country around had been feudally subject to the Marquis of Tuscany. After Matilda’s death they claimed to hold direct from the Empire; which meant in practice to be above all law. They exercised absolute jurisdiction over their serfs and dependants, and, when favoured by the situation of their castles, took toll, like the robber barons of Germany, of the goods which passed beneath their walls. Already they had proved to be thorns in the side of the industrious burghers; but at the beginning of the twelfth century their neighbourhood became intolerable, and for a couple of generations the chief political work of Florence was to bring them to reason. Those whose lands came up almost to the city gates were first dealt with, and then in a widening circle the country was cleared of the pest. Year after year, when the days were lengthening out in spring, the roughly organised city militia was mustered, war was declared against some specially obnoxious noble and his fortress was taken by surprise, or, failing that, was subjected to a siege. In the absence of a more definite grievance, it was enough to declare his castle dangerously near the city. These expeditions were led by the nobles who were already citizens, while the country neighbours of the victim looked on with indifference, or even helped to waste the lands or force the stronghold of a rival. The castle once taken, it was either levelled with the ground, or was restored to the owner on condition of his yielding service to the Republic. And, both by way of securing a hold upon an unwilling vassal and of adding a wealthy house and some strong arms to the Commonwealth, he was compelled, along with his family, to reside in Florence for a great part of every year.

With a wider territory and an increasing commerce, it was natural for Florence to assume more and more the attitude of a sovereign state, ready, when need was, to impose its will upon its neighbours, or to join with them for the common defence of Tuscany. In the noble class and its retainers, recruited as has been described, it was possessed of a standing army which, whether from love of adventure or greed of plunder, was never so well pleased as when in active employment. Not that the commons left the fighting wholly to the men of family, for they too, at the summons of the war-bell, had to arm for the field; but at the best they did it from a sense of duty, and, without the aid of professional men-at-arms, they must have failed more frequently in their enterprises, or at any rate have had to endure a greatly prolonged absence from their counters and workshops. And yet, esteem this advantage as highly as we will, Florence surely lost more than it gained by compelling the crowd of idle gentlemen to come within its walls. In the course of time some of them indeed condescended to engage in trade—sank, as the phrase went, into the ranks of the Popolani, or mere wealthy citizens; but the great body of them, while their landed property was being largely increased in value in consequence of the general prosperity, held themselves haughtily aloof from honest industry in every form. Each family, or rather each clan of them, lived apart in its own group of houses, from among which towers shot aloft for scores of yards into the air, dominating the humbler dwellings of the common burghers. These, whenever they came to the front for a time in the government, were used to decree that all private towers were to be lopped down to within a certain distance from the ground.

It is a favourite exercise of Villani and other historians to trace the troubles and revolutions in the state of Florence to chance quarrels between noble families, arising from an angry word or a broken troth. Here, they tell, was sown the seed of the Guelf and Ghibeline wars in Florence; and here that of the feuds of Black and White. Such quarrels and party names were symptoms and nothing more. The enduring source of trouble was the presence within the city of a powerful idle class, constantly eager to recover the privilege it had lost, and to secure itself by every available means, including that of outside help, in the possession of what it still retained; which chafed against the curbs put upon its lawlessness, and whose ambitions were all opposed to the general interest. The citizens, for their part, had nothing better to hope for than that Italy should be left to the Italians, Florence to the Florentines. On the occasion of the celebrated Buondelmonti feud (1215), some of the nobles definitely went over to the side of the people, either because they judged it likely to win in the long-run, or impelled unconsciously by the forces that in every society divide ambitious men into two camps, and in one form or another develop party strife. They who made a profession of popular sympathy did it with a view of using rather than of helping the people at large. Both of the noble parties held the same end in sight—control of the Commonwealth; and this would be worth the more the fewer there were to share it. The faction irreconcilable with the Republic on any terms included many of the oldest and proudest houses. Their hope lay in the advent of a strong Emperor, who should depute to them his rights over the money-getting, low-born crowd.

II.

The opportunity of this class might seem to have come when the Hohenstaufen Frederick II., grandson of Barbarossa, ascended the throne, and still more when, on attaining full age, he claimed the whole of the Peninsula as his family inheritance. Other Emperors had withstood the Papal claims, but none had ever proved an antagonist like Frederick. His quarrel seemed indeed to be with the Church itself, with its doctrines and morals as well as with the ambition of churchmen; and he offered the strange spectacle of a Roman Emperor—one of the twin lights in the Christian firmament—whose favour was less easily won by Christian piety, however eminent, than by the learning of the Arab or the Jew. When compelled at last to fulfil a promise extorted from him of conducting a crusade to the Holy Land, he scandalised Christendom by making friends of the Sultan, and by using his presence in the East, not for the deliverance of the Sepulchre, but for the furtherance of learning and commerce. Thrice excommunicated, he had his revenge by proving with how little concern the heaviest anathemas of the Church could be met by one who was armed in unbelief. Literature, art, and manners were sedulously cultivated in his Sicilian court, and among the able ministers whom he selected or formed, the modern idea of the State may be said to have had its birth. Free thinker and free liver, poet, warrior, and statesman, he stood forward against the sombre background of the Middle Ages a figure in every respect so brilliant and original as well to earn from his contemporaries the title of the Wonder of the World.