of a great bell. Assembled in the square in front of the palace, the signory came out to them on the tribune, or ringhiera and asked them if they would like to grant power to a certain number of citizens to change the laws and constitution. The square being surrounded by armed men a refusal of this request was not to be expected. The select few, invested thus with discretionary power, nominated a second group to the task of naming citizens eligible for office. The privileges of these accoppiatori, as they were called, sometimes lasted for years, so that freedom of election to the magistracy and other offices became illusory in respect to many citizens who were eligible. It will presently be seen what resulted, in the second half of the fourteenth century, from the abuse of the Ammonire and the Balia. When the citizens of Florence reformed their constitution they had a twofold object in view. They wanted first to have the chief power in their own hands, and secondly to prevent internal dissensions by a wide distribution of places among the citizens, which was to be effected by short terms of office and frequent changes. The first of these objects was attained, but the endeavour to accomplish the second was not successful. The rigour of the suspensive laws augmented the opposition of the class who suffered by them, and the Guelf faction shook the city to its very foundations. The quarrel of the Neri and Bianchi, made famous by the greatest poet of the Middle Ages, induced consequences that were fatal to the Liberal and popular party, and restored for a time the nobles to power. But again the lapse of a few years was sufficient to show their weakness. This brought disorder and violence into the town, and led to the recovery of political power by the citizen class at the very moment when the efforts of the Imperialists to reconquer their old position in Italy more than ever demanded strength in the popular element of the governing power.
CHAPTER II.
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY—RULE OF THE ALBIZZI—GIOVANNO D’AVERARDO DE’ MEDICI.
The sanguinary conflict of Campaldino was fought, in 1289, in the plain on the Arno which is overlooked by Poppi, the principal place in the Tuscan valley of the Casentino, where stood the stronghold of those Counts Guidi, who were the protectors of the Guelf cause when brought to its lowest ebb by the war of the Vespers. Two years after the battle, in 1291, Ardingo de’ Medici first sat among the Priors of Florence, and in 1296, when the office was still a new one, he was appointed Gonfalonier, as also was his brother Guccio three years later. Of the last-named there exists a memento, the oldest relating to the family, in the sarcophagus that once held his bones and was immured in the outer wall of the Baptistery. This antique, which is carved in relief with a representation of the chase in Calydon, was placed in the courtyard of the Medici palace, and bears on its modern cover the arms of the family, as well as those of the Guild of Woolstaplers, to which the Medici belonged. Thus, at the end of the thirteenth century we see members of the family in a position of respectable burghers in the enjoyment of civic honours.
Nothing remarkable is heard of them until the middle of the fourteenth century. They formed part, in their numerous branches, of the large family of the people who were increasing more and more their trade and manufactures, and shared on an equal footing in the government of their city.
In the second half of the century two of them became remarkable in different ways, Averardo, called Bicci, son of Salvestro, called Chiarissimo, and Salvestro, son of Alamanno, two cousins in the fourth degree. Of the first we shall speak presently. Salvestro played the chief part in a transaction that shed a lurid light on the history of Florence of that period, but which was the beginning of that influence which ended in the sole supremacy of the Medici.
The heroic age of Florence terminated with the first decade of the fourteenth century. The city, at the head of the Tuscan league, which bound together the Anjous and the Guelfs of Rome and Upper Italy, had manfully resisted Henry of Luxemburg, but succumbed to Louis of Bavaria and the Ghibellines, spite of the aid of foreign auxiliaries. At the same time the rulers from Naples, as well as the foreigners who were appointed to enforce established ordinances, were in a certain measure above the law, and in the exercise of arbitrary power. Fortune smiled on none of their undertakings, nor was the State guided to any better state of things by what the poet of the ‘Divine Comedy’ called ‘the new people and the sudden gains.’ Strength in arms began to decline, and an undue preponderance of material interests to prevail. No period of Florentine history is so poor in men distinguished by arms or policy as that which followed the repulse of Henry VII. Material interests even were not adequately protected. For although the springs of gain had yielded copiously, and still continued partially to flow, the cost of war and the taxes pressed with proportionate weight; and in the third decade of the century began the failures of the great banking houses, from which they did not recover for a long time, if they ever did completely. To this must be added distressing losses occasioned by inundations and epidemics. Confusion in the government, due on the one hand to the resentment of the aristocracy, on the other to the ill-feeling of the lower classes, brought matters at length to a crisis in 1342. A foreign adventurer, closely connected with the house of Anjou, Walter de Brienne, Count of Lecce and Duke of Athens, was enabled by the assistance of the lowest class of artisans, and some adherents of the nobler families, to make himself for a short time absolute master of Florence. The tyranny, indeed, was overthrown in the following year by a union of the upper and lower classes, who were not, however, long in falling out again, to the great detriment of the nobility. On the pretext of purging the Guelf party the system of Ammonirism—i.e. exclusion from public offices—was put in practice. It was directed against the decaying nobility on the one hand, and on the other against certain suspected persons in the lower classes. In this way, some thirty years after the expulsion of the Duke, the supreme power was vested in an oligarchy, at the head of which was the Captain of the Guelf faction. They had the whole machinery of government under their control, and were mainly supported by a few families of the wealthier burghers.[4] Among these were the Albizzi, who, originally from Arezzo, having acquired great riches and a high position, stood first in the city of Florence.
Salvestro de’ Medici, who in 1370 had held the office of Gonfalonier, sought to put an end to the tyranny of party when he was again appointed Gonfalonier in the spring of 1378. The reigning faction, though mistrusting him, dared not oppose him, for fear of the multitude, who were in his favour. His attempt to diminish the authority of the Capitano and re-open the way to office to the excluded ones (Ammoniti) brought on a violent insurrection of the common people. This ‘tumulto dei ciompi,’ as it was called, placed Florence for a time under mob-rule, and would have degenerated into the wildest anarchy but for the energy of one poor man, Michele di Lando, the woolcomber, whom the infuriated populace had raised to the chief magistracy, and who, with remarkable instinct, steered the State safely through the storm which threatened its ruin. This state of things lasted three years, during which the all-powerful mob became the tool of designing men, who wreaked their vengeance on the party that had so lately been supreme. The latter, however, in their turn seized the opportunity when the better sort among the populace were disgusted with the tyranny of their fellows, and overthrew the mobocracy, setting up in its place a conservative government, formed of the Optimates, or better citizens, under the lead of the Albizzi. Salvestro de’ Medici, the original author of the revolt, contributed nothing to its suppression. It was, perhaps, beyond his power to do anything. He died in 1388, and the name of the Medici became identical with that of representatives of the interests of the people. Five years later, when the oppressions of the Albizzi had excited general discontent, an armed body of the people marched to the house of Vieri de’ Medici, and asked him to be their leader. He was of the same branch of the family as Salvestro, but he prudently declined the proposed honour, and appeased the revolters.
Averardo, styled Bicci, was the founder of the line that came to be talked of in the world. Little more is known of him than that in 1357 he was employed on behalf of the Republic in the Mugello. His grandfather, of the same name, was Gonfalonier in 1314, when Florence, to escape from the pressure of the Ghibellines, submitted to the Anjous. He was, it is said, the first of the family that amassed wealth by trade, and laid the basis of that prosperity which was a potent factor in the political transactions of his successors. The real splendour of the family, however, began with