IV.
For on all sides, if in diverse modes, we perceive that a long period of incubation was needed to form the Commune, which naturally owed its birth to pre-existing elements. The celebrated agreement or concordia made at Pisa by Bishop Daiberto, about 1090, or even, perhaps, a year or so earlier,[98] shows that the nobles were organised and waging fierce war against one another from their towers. The bishop induced them to partly demolish these towers, and solemnly vow never to carry them above the height of thirty-six braccia (about one hundred feet), as previously decreed by the patent of Henry IV. in 1081.[99] And the agreement proceeded to set forth that any man believing his houses to have been unjustly damaged was to bear his complaint ad commune Colloquium Civitatis; nor could the dwelling of the offender be demolished without the general consent of the citizens.[100]
MOUTH OF ROMAN FURNACE,
Discovered beneath the Mercato Vecchio.
CALIDARIUM.
Ibid.
[To face page 96.
The whole tenor of this document not only proves that the Pisan nobles were already an organised body, but that they also boasted a civic importance never attained by the nobles of Florence.[101] Evidently Pisa had no Consuls as yet, or they would have been certainly mentioned in the document. But all the elements destined to make it a far more aristocratic commune than that of Florence were already existent.[102] We see that there was a commune consilium of sapientes or boni homines, which was a species of senate, and a commune colloquium, a general assembly of all the citizens, afterwards developing into a parliament or arrengo. Five sapientes, whose names are given, sat in council with the bishop.[103] These were the immediate precursors or, as Pawinski rightly calls them, the vorbilder of the Consuls, who are actually mentioned shortly after this time, in 1094, in another agreement (concordia), also drawn up by Daiberto. He makes an explicit appeal to their authority (huius civitatis consulibus) in decreeing that all smiths engaged on work required for the Duomo should be left unmolested.[104] Thus the rise of the Pisan Commune was preceded by a conflict waged by belligerent nobles from their respective towers, and the Consuls of the town were first named as the protectors of the smiths.