Through the Casentino with Hints for the Traveller

by Lina Eckenstein

COURTYARD OF CASTLE, POPPI (CASENTINO)

constituting a state or province in themselves. Moreover, he was a shining representative of knighthood. His contemporary, the Bishop Otto of Freysing, described him as the most powerful lord of Tuscany, and Tolosanus, the chronicler of Faenza, who knew him, spoke of him as holding the foremost place in honour and courtesy. “All Italy wept at his death and especially Faenza,” he tells us, for the city of Faenza had appealed to him for help on account of the encroachments made on its territory by the city of Forli, and had found in him a powerful protector. The acts of Count Guidoguerra argue in favour of his mental horizon being wide. He joined the crusade of 1147, he stood in high esteem with the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and the enterprises he led in Italy were invariably successful. It was only by taking advantage of his temporary absence that the citizens of Florence succeeded in destroying Montedicroce, a most important stronghold of his which had therefore become an object of hatred to Florence.

For the city of Florence, as it increased in importance, was bent on improving the conditions of its trade. Florence is surrounded by hills, and these hills in the twelfth century bristled with the strongholds of nobles, who were ready to swoop down and plunder the trains of passing traders on the slightest provocation. In the interest of its further development the city was prompted to make war on the surrounding nobility, attacks which went hand-in-hand with a policy that was productive of important and unexpected changes.

The first attempts of the Florentines to subdue their troublesome neighbours belonged to the lifetime of Guido il Marchese. Emboldened by success, and encouraged by the inactivity of the margraves, they attacked Fiesole, the ancient Etruscan city which towered high above Florentine territory, for here, as Villani related, the rural nobles, whom he designated as cattani, collected and harboured outlaws who did damage to the trade and the territory of Florence. The undertaking proved successful in the campaigns of 1123-1125, and large parts of Fiesole were razed to the ground. Its “destruction” was followed by attacks on Montegrifone, which belonged to the Ormanni, and on Monteboni, which belonged to the Buondelmonti. A special significance attached to the latter event. For the Florentines, intent on securing friendly relations with their neighbours, made it a condition of peace that the nobles they defeated should reside inside Florence during a stated part of the year. The first to agree to the arrangement were the Buondelmonti; they were followed by a number of others, including the Guidi, who were nothing loth to gain a foothold inside the city. To the older inhabitants of Florence, which included the greater citizens—the illustri cittadini of Dante—and the lesser citizens, a third element was now added in the form of the rural nobles, who soon contracted a taste for city life while they remained indifferent to its responsibilities. They came into Florence with crowds of retainers; they built themselves houses which were strongholds to all intents and purposes; they fought out their private feuds inside the city walls, and as soon as occasion offered they turned the balance of the constitution in their favour. And more than this. They brought with them a taste for display and splendour which subverted all accepted standards, and which put an end to the simplicity and soberness of the older Florentines.

In the eye of Dante the influx of these rural nobles was a reason of the city’s misfortune. “Ever was the confusion of persons the origin of the city’s ills,” are the words which he put into the mouth of his ancestor Cacciaguida. Cacciaguida in the Comedy compares the state of Florence as it was in Dante’s time with what it had been a century and a half before, and he deplores the increased luxuriousness of the Florentines. In those simpler days “Bellincion Berti went about in leathern belt with bone clasp, and his dame came from the mirror unpainted.”

This Bellincion Berti and his wife were the parents of the lady Gualdrada, through whom not the Casentino, as Villani recorded, but the valuable Ravignani property in Florence near the Porta San Piero came into the possession of the Guidi. Gualdrada was the second wife of Count Guido, surnamed il Vecchio, and the epithet buona which Dante bestowed on her she doubtless owed to her attempts to soften her husband’s fierceness. For Guido Vecchio in the eyes of the chronicler of Faenza was the direct opposite of his father; knightly dignity and pride with him took the form of wilfulness and overbearing.

The incidents which led up to the marriage and its outcome are worth recording. Guido Vecchio began as the loyal supporter of the Imperial cause; he entertained Frederick Barbarossa in his castle at Modigliana, in 1167, and with the Imperial troops he marched on Rome, where Frederick succeeded in establishing the anti-pope. But the desire for municipal freedom was awakening in the smaller cities of Italy, and in order to frustrate the Emperor’s influence they began to form alliances among themselves and supported Pope Alexander. A struggle ensued which lasted seventeen years and in which Guido sided with the Emperor, thereby finding himself repeatedly plunged into war with Florence, and into supporting her rival Siena. When the Emperor and the Pope finally made peace at Venice, the relations between the cities of Tuscany were readjusted. Among the representatives of Florence who arranged the peace between this city and Siena was Bellincion Berti, the father of Gualdrada. In what year Guido married her is unknown, but he divorced his first wife Agnes in order to do so. His attitude towards Florence underwent a complete change in consequence. Henceforth there was friendship between them.

In other respects Guido lost ground. In opposing the growing municipalities he was tempted to strain his authority, with the result that he was defied more than once. Thus on one occasion he ordered his vassals at Modigliana to pull down their houses and rebuild them on the hill for greater safety. For five weeks they resisted, then they destroyed their houses and went to Faenza, which was outside their lord’s jurisdiction. This led to a war between the Count and the city of Faenza which extended over years. On another occasion he went to Camaldoli and carried off all the weapons which he found there to Poppi. He restored them afterwards, but only in return for an enormous amount of grain. Again he disputed with the nunnery of Rosano and won his suit, but in this case Countess Gualdrada carried the decision in person to Rosano, and declaring it annulled she tore it up. The acts of Guido Vecchio were such that the Pope wrote to him in his old age urging him to reform his ways, but even the warnings of a Pope were defied with impunity by these barons.