For a long time after the epoch of the barbarian invasions the history of Florence is involved in great obscurity, and what little information we have on the subject is either entirely legendary or jumbled with legends.
In 405 Radagasius led a horde of Goths, mixed with other tribes, into Tuscany and lay siege to Florence. But the walls held out until the Roman general Stilicho came to the rescue, defeated the assailants, and put their leader to death. The resistance of Florence was greatly magnified, and Stilicho's victory attributed to a miracle. Tradition added that the battle having been fought on the 8th of October, the Feast of Santa Reparata, the Florentines inaugurated their Pallio races on that day, and founded the Church of Santa Reparata; but both these events were of later occurrence. The tradition merely serves to show how long Florence preserved the memory of its narrow escape from destruction.
Regarding the next century there is an absolute blank; but then comes the legend that even Villani accepts, relating how Totila, flagellum Dei, destroyed Florence and re-built Fiesole.[65] To this the chronicler appends a second tale to the effect that after the city had remained thus devastated and ruined for 350 years, Charlemagne summoned the Romans to join him in rebuilding the city in the likeness of Rome, and that it thus arose anew, adorned with churches dedicated, like those of Rome, to San Pietro, San Lorenzo, Santa Maria Maggiore, &c., and was also granted a territory extending three miles beyond the walls.[66] Here one sees that although the chronicler had already recorded, on the authority of the "De Origine," that Florence was rebuilt immediately after its pretended destruction by Totila, he thought that date premature, seeing that Florence really remained for long after in a very desolate and obscure condition, and therefore, to save trouble, he also jots down the posterior legend attributing instead the reconstruction of the city to Charlemagne, the saviour of the Empire.
What germs of truth can be gleaned from all this? Totila really entered Tuscany in 542, and sent part of his host to besiege Florence. Justin, the commander of the Imperial garrison there, then sought aid from Ravenna; and when the relieving force approached the city, Totila raised the siege and withdrew towards Sienna. Pursued by the Imperial troops, he succeeded in routing them, but instead of returning against Florence, directed his march towards Southern Italy. So at least runs the account given by Procopius, and also followed by modern writers.[67] The Goths, it is true, made another descent later, easily mastered Tuscany and Florence, and committed much cruelty there, though without destroying the city. These are the facts; all the rest was a legendary excrescence signifying that the Florentines endured a long period of obscurity and oppression, and only began to emerge from it in the time of the Franks.
In fact, the Longobard occupation of Tuscany took place towards 570, and we have two centuries of utter darkness. We find mention of one Gudibrandus, Dux civitatis Florentinorum, appointed by the conquerors; but nothing else is known to us. Amid the many calamities wrought by invasion, war, and harsh tyranny, not only was the trade, to which Florence owed its existence, entirely ruined, but many families escaped from the plains to safe places among the hills, and a good number accordingly took refuge in Fiesole, which city profited as usual by the ill fortune of Florence. And this to so great an extent, that during the latter half of the eighth century we find documents alluding to Florence as though it had become a suburb of Fiesole.[68] But soon, beneath Charlemagne's rule, times of greater order and tranquillity were inaugurated. Men began once more to forsake the hills for the valley; Florence began to prosper at Fiesole's expense. And as the Franks replaced the Longobard dukes by counts, so Florence too had its count, exercising jurisdiction throughout the territories of the bishopric that had been carved out of the old Roman division. This was the so-called contado fiorentino, stretching on the one side to a place called I Confini, near Prato, and thence towards Poggio a Caiano, sweeping round by the Empoli district, and conterminous with the borders of Lucca, Volterra, and the contado of Fiesole.[69]
Charlemagne halted in Florence, and celebrated Christmas there in 786; he likewise defended the property of the Florentine Church against Longobard aggressions. This gave rise to the legend that the rebuilding of the city was his work. Regardless of anachronisms, Villani not only adds that many imaginary privileges were conceded by him, but attributes to this period the birth of the Commune which only took place several centuries later. "Charles," he tells us, "created many knights, and granted privileges to the city by rendering free and independent the Commune, its inhabitants, and the contado, with all dwellers therein, for three miles round, inclusive of resident strangers from other parts. For this reason many men returned to the said city, and framed its government after the Roman mode, namely, with two consuls and a council of one hundred senators."[70] But this addition is made by the chronicler, and in a more arbitrary way than the legend itself.
Nor was this all. Not Charlemagne only, but likewise Otho I., the regenerator of the German Empire, must be necessarily the patron of Florence, "because," continues the chronicler, "it had always appertained to the Romans and been faithful to the Empire."[71] In the year 955 the emperor halted in Florence on the way to Rome for his coronation, and on this occasion the chronicler makes him grant the city a territory of six miles in extent, that is, one as big again, but no less imaginary, than that bestowed by Charlemagne. Villani goes on to relate how Otho established peace in Italy, overthrew tyrants, and left many of his barons settled in Lombardy and Tuscany, the Counts Guidi and Uberti among the rest. He fails to reflect that some of these Tuscan families were of much earlier origin, and that even in his own day the leading nobles of the contado bore the name of Cattani Lombardi, in remembrance of their Longobard descent. Also, he again forgets that Florence was not then a free city to whom the emperor could concede a portion of territory, which, as we have seen, already belonged to his own jurisdiction, and, towards Fiesole at least, could not possibly be of six miles in extent.[72]
Another fabulous narrative, also given by Villani, is that of the destruction of Fiesole in 1010. On the day of St. Romolo's feast the Florentines, bent on revenge, are supposed to have entered the rival city with arms concealed under their clothes, and suddenly drawing their weapons and summoning comrades hidden in ambush, to have rushed through the streets, seizing everything and destroying all houses and buildings excepting the bishop's palace, the cathedral, two or three churches, and the fortress, which refused to surrender. After this, safety was promised to all disposed to migrate into Florence, and many profited by the offer. Thus the two peoples were made one, and even their flags united. That of the Florentines bore the white lily on a red field, that of Fiesole a demi lune azur on a white field; and thus was formed the red and white banner of the Commune.[73]
According to Villani this union of two separate peoples proved the chief cause of the continual wars by which Florence was harassed, together with the fact of the city being built "under the sway and influence of the planet Mars, the which always leads to war and discord." Then again, as though forgetting he had already made the same statement regarding the times of Charlemagne, he repeats the almost equal anachronism that the Florentines "then made common laws and statutes, and lived under the rule of two consuls and a council of senators, consisting of a hundred men, the best of the city, according to the custom introduced in Florence by the Romans."[74] It is plain that he does not know how the Commune arose, but feels persuaded its origin was derived from Rome, and therefore records the fact as having occurred at the moment suiting him best, or seeming least improbable. But it is hard to see why he assigned the war and destruction of Fiesole to the year 1010 when aware that those events occurred, on the contrary, in 1125, as he afterwards relates in due place. The most probable explanation is, that finding the legend gave an account of the war and overthrow of Fiesole more than five hundred years after the destruction of Florence by Totila, whose invasion occurred five hundred years after the city was founded, the chronicler described the destruction twice over, namely, in 1010 and 1125; thus following first the legendary account, which had retraced its steps in a very vague fashion, and next the historical account, commonly known in his day. As for the causes of civil war being derived from the forced junction of two hostile nationalities, it may be observed that the diversity between the Germanic strain in the nobility and the Latin blood of the people, really constituted a strong element of discord, and this may have been felt, if not understood, by the chronicler.
It is certain that from the Frankish times downward the prosperity of Florence slowly but surely increased. Nevertheless it is true that, as Villani says, its whole territory bristled with the castles of feudal barons of Germanic descent, all hostile to Florence, and many of whom, safely ensconced on the neighbouring hill of Fiesole, were always ready to swoop down on Florentine soil.