older constitution, no feudalism and serfdom, little domination of the church. Everything grew out of commercial industry, out of the spirit of free adventure, yet nowhere in modern times has so close an aristocracy appeared. In deserting the principles of freedom and tolerable equality on which the foundations of the state were laid, the selfish magnates of Venice seem to show a clear comprehension of the dangers that threaten a commercial republic, from admitting a roving and uncertain populace of sailors to a share in the government; but there was no calculation beforehand as to the methods to be used to secure the power of the aristocracy. Council after council appears, each taking part of the affairs of an older one, so that there was no neatness about the constitution, no accurate division of powers. state of things at the time seems to have been apprehended with wonderful wisdom, and one cannot help thinking that more intelligence and practical sense was gathered here for centuries than anywhere else in Europe.

Still the

CHAPTER V.

Early Florence.

CONSTITUTION OF FLORENCE.

§ 183.

FLORENCE, a municipium of the later Roman republic or early empire, flourished as Faesulæ, three miles distant from it, declined, and it was the residence of magistrates of the province in the fourth century. Its destinies afterwards, under the Lombards and Franks, differed little from those of other cities of middle Italy. In the eleventh century, Beatrix, of Lorraine, governed Tuscany with her second husband, Godfrey, of lower Lorraine, and afterwards with her daughter Matilda, "the great countess. At the death of Matilda, by her will her land was to go to the pope, but the emperor, as her relative and feudal superior, refused to confirm her donation. cult to ascertain what was feudal, and what and so Henry IV. seized on the whole. gained from this strife in regard to their independence; they seem to have been drawn to the pope by their common interest with him against the imperial head; and they were probably more on the papal side than they would have been, if, like very many Italian towns, they had fallen under episcopal jurisdiction.

mune.

It was found diffiallodial property; The Tuscan towns

In the time of Matilda, if not before, Florence became a Florence a com- commune, which implies a certain amount of self-government and internal union under officers of its own, with rights either granted by the good-will of the seignor, or purchased, or usurped, or possibly wrested from him. The count's jurisdiction disappears at Florence,

*Comp., for this period, C. Hegel, prof. at Rostock, now at Erlangen, Städteverfass. v. Ital., ii., 44, 198, 206.

to the emperor.

and there remain the officers chosen by the town under the acknowledged supremacy of the emperors. This supremacy was in theory always admitted at Florence until the empire expired; the Guelphs and the Guelphic towns did not deny it in their strenuous resistance to the emperors and the Ghibellines. As late as 1354, when Charles IV. (of Luxemburg) made In theory subject his Italian expedition, the commune and people of Florence appointed syndics who should acknowledge him in their name as king of the Romans, and their true lord, and in their name take the oath of fealty to him. It was understood that the commune was bound to nothing else save that to which, with other communes of Tuscany and Lombardy, they had been bound of old; that the priors and gonfaloniers should be his vicars and no one else, that the commune and people should be exempt from all taxes, all ancient fines and the like, as well as from all jurisdiction but their own within their territory, etc. This was a kind of compromise; but the theory of the Guelphs, as we understand it, was that the Roman people created the emperors of old, and, acting through the church, conceded the election to the seven princes of Germany.. "The liberty of the Roman people was in no way subject to the liberty of the empire nor tributary, like the other nations who were subject to the people and senate and commune of Rome, and by the said commune made subject to their emperor."

Florence was in fact free and had room to expand itself and to perform various acts of sovereignty, nearly as much as if there were no suzerain over it at a distance. It appears with substantial liberty, first:

Under the magistracy of consuls, a name which some of Consuls at Flo- the towns in the Roman times gave to their chief municipal officer but which came in no direct tradition from the ancient consuls of the city. These

rence.

See Capponi, Stor. d' Ital., i., append. v., where the capitulation between Charles IV. and Florence is given with some remarks of Matteo Villani and of the author. The words cited are M. Villani's, iv, 77, in Muratori, R. I. Script., xiv., 291.

new consuls were variable in number, in some towns as many as twelve, and the word came to be applied to the chief official persons in the guilds, and in companies of merchants, both in Italy and in France. At Florence there were six of them, although one may have been the president of the board, a number corresponding with that of the wardssesti-into which the old town was divided. They were taken by election from the men of principal rank; administration and justice were in their hands and they were assisted by a council of a hundred good men, which had a voice in financial and other important matters. The councils and perhaps the consuls were chosen by the active citizens meeting in a parlamento-for by this word the assemblies in the Italian towns were designated before it travelled north and put on different meanings.

It is probable that for a time a divided jurisdiction existed at Florence, when the Countess Matilda was the feudal superior, between her officers and the city-magistrates. Prof. C. Hegel, ii., 188, expresses himself in regard to this transition period as follows: "For the Tuscan towns the government of the two women, Beatrix and Matilda, was about the same as that of the bishops was for many of the towns of Lombardy; it was a gently enclosing sheath of sovereignty, under which the freedom within gained room to unfold itself and acquire new vigor. Without doubt the margravines still held their courts with their counts or viscounts and the wonted judges and scabini of the towns; they also granted privileges, especially for the benefit of churches and convents; but this did not keep the town from acting with greater independence than before, from fighting out their quarrels undisturbed, as Lucca, for example, hers with Pisa, and finally they began to govern themselves by consuls of their own choice."

Thus in 1192, one of the Fifanti, and one of the Uberti held the office. (Ammirato, i., 62, ed. of 1647.)

Classes of persons.

The classes of persons who first had a share in the government of the towns differed in different places. In some, as Milan, there were three orders, capitanei, valvassores, and citizens; at Mantua appears only the order of citizens; at Florence, nobles without distinction of rank and citizens. The nobles were included in the commune if they had houses in the city, and this when they owned estates in the vicinity was a security against lawless attacks on the citizens when they went on commercial journeys. In fact, some of the cities took the measure of forcing the country-nobility into the towns, that they might get them more into their power. G. Villani says-although the account is suspected that the emperor Frederic I., in 1184, on complaint of the nobles of the county against the commune, that the latter had seized their castles, took from it all jurisdiction over the county and the villages it contained (v. 12).

Not long after this, on the death of the emperor Henry VI. in 1197, the towns of Tuscany chose a prior or president with a council of rectors to assist him, and bound themselves to accept of no emperor, duke or margrave without consent of the pope. This shows us the pope as aiming by an alliance with the free towns to secure to himself a support against the imperial authority.

The twelfth century is remarkable for compilations and reductions of statutes, owing in part to the reEarly laws. vived study of Roman law, and in part to the need of new provisions of law, caused by the increase of manufactures and commerce. Pisa among the Tuscan towns made the first code in 1161, the materials of which were derived from customary law, from the remains of Lombard law, and from Roman law, which did not come down from tradition but was added by the lawyers who compiled the collection. (Hegel, ii., 223.) The statutes of Florence, which were probably collected in the times of the consuls, were repeatedly revised by special commissioners to whom was given the name of arbitri, and in the course of time received many additions. The older corpus of statutes seems to be distin