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Guelfs and Ghibellines

From a bare narration of events it is impossible to estimate the importance of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, or to understand their bearing on subsequent Italian history. The civil wars may be regarded as a continuation of the previous municipal struggle, intensified by recent hostilities between the burghers and the nobles. The quarrels of the church and empire lend pretexts and furnish war cries; but the real question at issue is not the supremacy of pope or emperor. The conflict is a social one, between civic and feudal institutions, between commercial and military interests, between progress and conservatism.

Guelf democracy and industry idealize the pope. The banner of the church waves above the camp of those who aim at positive prosperity and republican equality. Ghibelline aristrocracy and immobility idealize the emperor. The prestige of the empire, based upon Roman law and feudal tradition, attracts imaginative patriots and systematic thinkers.

The two ideals are counterposed and mutually exclusive. No city calls itself either Guelf or Ghibelline till it has expelled one-halt of its inhabitants; for each party is resolved to constitute the state according to its own conception, and the affirmation of the one programme is the negation of the other. The Ghibelline honestly believes that the Guelfs will reduce society to chaos. The Guelf is persuaded that the Ghibelline will annihilate freedom and strangle commerce. The struggle is waged by two sets of men who equally love their city, but who would fain rule it upon diametrically opposite principles, and who fight to the death for its possession. This contradiction enters into the minutest details of life; armorial bear ings, clothes, habits at table, symbolize and accentuate the difference. Meanwhile each party forms its own organization of chiefs, finance-officers, and registrars at home, and sends ambassadors to foreign cities of the same complexion. A network of party policy embraces and dominates the burghs of Italy, bringing the most distant centers into relation, and by the very division of the country augmenting the sense of nationality. The Italians learn through their discords at this epoch that they form one community.

The victory in the conflict practically falls to the hitherto unenfranchised plebeians. The elder noble families die out or lose their preponderance. In some cities, as notably in Florence after the date 1292, it becomes criminal to be sciopcrato, or unemployed in industry. New houses rise into importance; a new commercial aristocracy is formed. Burghers of all denominations are enrolled in one or other of the arts or guilds, and these trading companies furnish the material from which the governmerit or signoria of the city is composed. Plebeian handicrafts assert their right to be represented on an equality with learned professions and wealthy corporations. The ancient classes are confounded and obliterated in a population more homogeneous, more adapted for democracy and despotism.

In addition to the parliament and the councils, there is now a council of the party established within the city. This body tends to become a little state within the state, and, by controlling the victorious majority, disposes of the government as it thinks best. The consuls are merged in ancients or priors, chosen from the arts. A new magistrate, the gonfalonir of justice, appears in some of the Guelf cities, with the special duty of keeping the insolence of the nobility in check. Meanwhile the podesta still subsists; but he is no longer equal to the task of maintaining an equilibrium of forces. He sinks more and more into a judge, loses more and more the character of dictator. His ancient place is now occupied by a new functionary, no longer acting as arbiter, but concentrating the forces of the triumphant party. The captain of the people, acting as head of the ascendant Guelfs or Ghibellines, undertakes the responsibility of proscriptions, decides on questions of policy, forms alliances, declares war. Like all officers created to meet an emergency, the limitations to his power are ill-defined, and he is often little better than an autocrat.