In the new political organisation, the central power, soon to be changed every two months, occupies a very feeble position compared with the high importance, permanence, and strength now assigned to the Podestà and the Captain. These officers are at the head of the Commune and the people; each of them presides over two councils: they are, as it were, the chiefs of two armed and hostile republics. But in that of the people, hitherto the weaker, no patrician is admitted; while in that of the Commune, the people has assumed a very important position relatively to that of the nobles, and therefore has legally obtained the casting vote in all decisions, notwithstanding the supremacy virtually exercised by Charles of Anjou in moments of the gravest emergency. It is easy to foresee the bitterness of strife to be engendered by this state of things. If we likewise remember that this Republic, as though foredoomed to civil war, included so important a magistracy as the Captains of the party, apparently created for the sole purpose of perpetuating discord, as an engine of war, serving to keep all these heterogeneous forces in continual agitation and promote ceaseless bloodshed and destruction, we can understand the course of coming events in Florence. We must be prepared for continual struggles, restless changes of institutions and laws, prepared to behold webs carefully woven one month pulled to pieces before the next moon begins to wane. Nevertheless, the whole machinery of the government was singularly fitted to compass the end that the Republic from the first had constantly in view.
IX.
Much more, however, remains to be said in order to give our readers a lucid and adequate idea of the Constitution and society of Florence in the latter half of the thirteenth century. So far we have dwelt too slightly on the most important detail of the new reforms—i.e., the organisation of the guilds. The measures suggested for this purpose by the Thirty-six from their first meetings in the Calimala Court, and against which the nobles had most strongly protested, were speedily approved by the people, and from that moment became the chief basis of the Florentine statutes. Associations of arts and trades had existed throughout Italy from a very early date, and had soon attained greater development in Florence than in other communes. For, as we have had occasion to note, the whole life of the people was concentrated in these associations when the Ghibelline tyranny, upheld by Manfred, excluded the lower classes from participation in the government of the city. Therefore all that was done now was to embody naturally evolved results in a more regular and legal shape. Only the greater guilds, seven in number, had risen to any really great political importance in 1260; the others had to wait much longer before being reorganised on the same footing. What was the position attained by the seven greater guilds at the moment we are now studying? By devoting our attention to the guild that was first and foremost in the race it will serve as a model, and enlighten us as to the others.
At the period of which we treat the fine arts flourished in Italy side by side with trade, and this was not only advantageous to the national culture, but already enabled our manufactures to dictate the laws of taste to all Europe. In those times Florence, Milan,[295] and Venice set the fashions, as Paris sets them now. The fine Italian taste helped to create the Calimala[296] trade, and secured its rapid prosperity. This trade was the art of dressing foreign cloths—from Flanders, France, and England—and dyeing them with colours known to Florence alone. Then, in their finished state, these stuffs were sent to all the European markets stamped with the mark of the Calimala Guild. This mark was highly prized as a proof of good quality, as showing that the exact length of the pieces had been scrupulously verified in Florence, and as a guarantee against any falsification of material. It is therefore easy to see why the Calimala merchants had trading relations with all Europe, and interests extending to every place where civilisation and luxury were known.
Hence the necessity, even in early times, of choosing directors of the guild, framing statutes, and appointing consuls abroad as well as at home, to protect its undertakings. Now, however, with the newly inaugurated reforms, the Calimala, together with the other greater guilds, was constituted on the lines of a miniature republic.[297]
Every six months, i.e., in June and December, the heads of warehouses and shops held a meeting, and this Union—exercising much the same function in the guild as that of the parliament in the Republic—chose the electors to be charged with the nomination of the magistrates. First came four consuls, who administered justice according to the statutes, acted as representatives of the guild, and ruled it with the assistance of two councils, one being a special council with a minimum of twelve members, and the other a general assembly often varying in number and sometimes limited to eighteen. With the consent of these councils the consuls were even empowered to alter the statutes. They carried the banner of the guild, and in emergencies the citizens assembled at arms under their command. Then there was the camarlingo, or chamberlain, holding office for one year, who administered the revenue and expenditure of the association. And even as the Republic had a foreign magistrate in the person of the Podestà, so the guild had one also in the person of its notary, likewise appointed for one year. He was chosen by the council-general, had to speak in both councils as the representative of the consuls; was often employed on missions for the guild, and was specially charged to enforce scrupulous observation of the statutes, with the power of inflicting severe punishment on all violators of the same, were they even the consuls themselves. All these officials were sworn adherents of the Guelph party. The notary's stipend was fixed from year to year. The consuls were bound to accept office if elected, and could not be re-elected under an interval of one year; their salary was first fixed at ten lire, and the product of certain fines; but was afterwards reduced to several pounds of pepper and saffron, and a few wooden baskets and spoons. The camarlingo, or camerario, was remunerated even more slightly, and much in the same way. Three accountants were chosen every year to investigate the actions of the outgoing consuls, camarlingo, and other magistrates. Twelve statutory merchants were similarly elected, with authority to revise and improve the statutes of the guild; but all reforms suggested by them had to be approved first by both councils, and then by the Captain of the people. The consuls who, under the title of capitudini, took part in the councils of the Captain and Podestà, were pledged to protect the interests of the guild and advocate laws in its favour. But what were these statutes for the good of the trade of which so many magistrates enforced the observance? They prescribed fixed rules and regulations for the exercise of the business. Very severe punishments were enacted when the merchandise was of bad quality, defective, or counterfeit. Every piece of cloth was bound to be labelled, and any stain or rent unrecorded by this label entailed punishment on the merchant concerned. Above all, there was great strictness as to exactness of measure. The officers of the guild frequently inspected the cloth, and made a bi-monthly examination of the measures used in all the shops. Models of the prescribed measures were exhibited to the public in certain parts of the city. Nor was this all. The consuls sent delegates to every counting-house to verify the merchants' books and accounts, and punished every deviation from established rules. Every guild had a tribunal composed either solely of its own members, or jointly with those of another, for the settlement of all disputes connected with the trade, and enforced severe penalties on all who referred such disputes to ordinary courts. It may be asked how the consuls were enabled to give effect to their verdicts? The punishments were generally fines, and persons refusing to pay them, after receiving several admonitions and increased fines if still recalcitrant, were excluded from the guild and practically ruined. From that moment their merchandise, being unstamped, was no longer guaranteed by the guild; they also lost many other notable advantages, and were finally unable to continue their business in Florence, and not often elsewhere. In fact, as we have seen, the consuls chosen in Florence guarded the interests of the guild even outside the State by deputing vice-consuls for that purpose to other parts of Italy and Europe, and increasing their number in proportion with the increase of their commercial relations. The two more important consuls abroad were those in France. All these delegates were charged with even the choice of the inns to be frequented by the members of the guild. Whenever, according to the usage of the day, any state exercised reprisals on the members' goods, the consuls were bound to assist and defend them. Thus, wherever he might be, a member of the guild was sure of protection from every sort of injury or loss. The guild was a jealous custodian of its members' rights, and, in order to defend them in foreign countries or to obtain justice for injuries received, often despatched ambassadors to the governments concerned.[298] This was an invaluable help at a time when no international law existed for the protection of foreigners, and reprisals were continually used. Accordingly merchants found it better to submit to any penalty rather than be dismissed from the guild; no worse threat was needed to enforce obedience to the statutes. The six other greater guilds were all governed on the same principle as the Calimala. Their united body of consuls formed the capitudini, and these were afterwards headed by a proconsul, a magistrate held in the highest esteem.
Putting aside the immense commercial and industrial advantages that this organisation of the guilds afforded to the Republic during the thirteenth century, we shall see that they were equally useful from the political point of view. All these merchants, constituting a large majority of the citizens, were continually engaged in directing great undertakings, settling commercial disputes, discussing statutes and laws; they maintained relations with all parts of the known world, and travelled to all parts on special missions in defence of their common interests. We see that they all took a continuous and eager share in political life, inasmuch as every guild was an independent, self-ruling institution, with separate magistrates, laws, statutes, and councils, and that it became a centre of industrial, intellectual, and political activity. Thanks to this freedom of circulation, the pulse of the Florentine people was quickened to redoubled strength, and every faculty of the human mind, all moral and political energy of which man is capable, suddenly rose to a prodigious height in Florence. Choosing any one of these merchants almost at random, one might be sure to find him capable of governing the Republic; a man to be trusted with the most delicate of diplomatic missions, and honourably acquit himself of it; one able to command a respectful hearing from Pope, king, or emperor, without allowing himself to be duped, yet without failing to conform to the requirements of court ceremonial. Thus the Florentines rose to great fame throughout Europe for their shrewdness and subtlety, and as in the midst of all this extraordinary commercial and political activity Italian art and literature also developed, the small mercantile Republic soon shed its lustre over the whole world.
The greater guilds also achieved another good result in Florence. At a time when the State organisation divided the city in two halves, as it were; at a time when the strife of factions was about to be fiercely renewed, when party leaders excited men's passions by nourishing the flame of discord, and the continual change of the supreme Council of Twelve transferred the direction of the government to citizens of all tempers, and all devoted to their respective parties, then the decentralisation of the government in a large number of small associations was indeed an inestimable benefit. If nobles or people rebelled against their rulers in order to change the Twelve, or the Podestà, the Captain, or even the statutes, the suspension of public business that inevitably ensued produced much less real than apparent confusion. Being split up into so many small associations, the Republic could exist without a government even for several months; since the armed, disciplined, and strongly constituted guilds, were now even better prepared than in past times to seize the reins, and prevent the troubles which would have certainly befallen the city had it been left without guidance. Thus the constitution of the guilds, as established in 1266, likewise serves to explain how it was that poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture were enabled to flourish among a people of traders; even as it explains why so much progress was possible amid such, apparently, enormous confusion, and how democracy succeeded in destroying every relic of feudalism in Florence, and in achieving absolute equality together with the highest degree of freedom known to the Middle Ages. The Florentine Commune was the centre of so much culture because it was also the seat of the largest freedom compatible with the times. Of this culture the best and loveliest fruits are owed to the democracy; for we find in Arnolfo's towers and churches, in the paintings of Cimabue and Giotto, as also in Dante's verse, the special stamp and characteristic of the Florentine people. During the Middle Ages in Provence, France, Germany, and England, many nobles rose to literary fame, and indeed nearly all the poets of those lands were of patrician birth. But Florentine art and letters, constituting the most fertile seeds of art and letters in Italy, were essentially republican; many writers, and most of the artists, of Florence were the offspring of traders or labouring men.
