The Two First Centuries of Florentine History / The Republic and Parties at the Time of Dante. Fourth Impression.

by Pasquale Villari

[149] "Annales," i.; Otho of Friesland, vide Pertz, xx. 264, and the Annali Senesi.

[150] Sanzanome, Florentine ed., p. 129.

[151] This is related by an eye witness in the Passerini collection of documents (often quoted to us) at p. 389. The "Annales," i., manifestly err in assigning precisely this date of 1147 to the capture of Monte Orlando, which really happened in 1107. The erasures in the Codex just where the date and places of the event narrated are written—i.e., before the entry in Florence of Henry IV., 1111—also serve to prove that a blunder had been made.

[152] The above-quoted Passerini Documents make repeated mention of the reconstruction of the walls, both at p. 394 and p. 217. It records at the same point the subsequent destruction of Monte di Croce: "Et dixit quod sunt lx. annos quod fuit destructus Mons Crucis." Both Villani (iv. 37) and the pseudo Brunetto Latini give the date of 1154; the "Annales," ii., the Neapolitan Codex, and Paolino Pieri, that of 1153. Sanzanome, according to his frequent practice, gives no precise date even here (at p. 130). He merely says that the first attack on the castle took place in 1146.

[153] Santini, i. doc. iii. dated April 4, 1156.

[154] "Constituit etiam Teutonicos principes ac dominatores super Lombardos et Tuscos, ut de caetero eius voluntati nullus Ytalicus resistendi locum habere ullatenus posset. Vita Alexandri," in the year 1164. In the "Cronica Urspergense," of the year 1186, we read that: "Cœpit Imperator in partibus Tusciae et terrae romanae castra ad se spectantia, suae potestati vendicare, et quaedam nova construere, in quorum presidiis Teutonicos praecipue collocavit." Vide Ficker, vol. ii. par. 311, p. 227.

[155] "Nullus enim Marchio et nullus nuntius Imperii fuit, qui tam honorifice civitates Italiae tributaret, et romano subiceret Imperio." Vide the Annali Pisani, in Pertz's Mon^ta. Ger^ma. xx. 249. Ficker, vol. i. par. 137, p. 259.

[156] Ficker, vol. i. par. 122–4.

[157] Vide the Passerini Documents, pp. 208, 394–400.

[158] Some of these depositions have been printed before, but the whole collection is now given in Santini, i. doc. xlv. They are dated May, 1203, but naturally refer to a much earlier period. Vide Santini, pp. 115, 117–19.