THE REPUBLIC OF FLORENCE.*
WHATEVER Professor Villari writes about Florence is sure to be valuable, but the value is unequal. In the present instance the distinguished historian seems to us to have been ill-advised in republishing a number of old lectures of various dates (some as ancient as 1866), most of which have already ap- peared in the Nuova Antologia or elsewhere. It is true he has revised them in the light of more recent research, and believes that "their dominant and fundamental notes still ring true, even after the numerous works produced by other hands," but it may be replied that a "dominant" may be true and yet other intervals may jar, and we confess we find a want of unity and cohesion, and a tendency to repetition, in these chapters which make us wish that the author had rewritten the whole work de novo instead of revising disconnected essays. The difference between amending statements in view of later documentary discoveries, and writing afresh from those documents, must be patent to all who are familiar with historical work. One obvious drawback of the method here adopted is that references in long footnotes have con- stantly to be made to books which have been published since the original composition of the lectures. The general result is patchy, and it must be admitted that the volume is heavy reading. It is too learned to be easily understood by the general, and yet not sufficiently detailed to add much that is important to the existing authorities with which specialists are familiar. For example, the long dissertation on Roman Law, the permanent influence of which upon the Italian communes is rightly emphasised, is necessarily full of Latin terms and phrases which will he stumbling-blocks to many readers; yet the conclusions present probably nothing that is not already known to the learned in this subject. No doubt it is something to have Professor Villari's critical examination of the results of other scholars, and one cannot ignore the views of so experienced a master of Italian history; but one feels that a consecutive history written directly from the
• The Two First Centuries of Florentine History. By Professor Pasquale Villari.- Translated by Linda Villari. Illustrated. London : T. Fisher 1.Tnwin. 17s. 6d.1
documents would be more satisfactory in all ways, and certainly better in a literary aspect.
The period selected for discussion, important as it is from a constitutional point of view, is not the great period of Floren- tine literature and art. Professor Villari deals with the first two (of course there cannot be "two first ") centuries of com- munal life, the eleventh and twelfth of the vulgar era, and breaks off just at the time when Florence becomes most captivating. He ends with the age of Dante, when Petrarch was just born, and Boccaccio was not yet in his cradle. It is a strictly historical line of division, but to most readers the period of growth will be less interesting than the age of maturity. Yet the complicated vicissitudes of parties in Florence, Guelphs and Ghibellines, Bianchi and Neri, Grandi and Arti, the constitutional questions, the statutes and enact- ments, the establishment of the Podesta in the thirteenth century,—all these have their commanding influences, and Professor Villari treats them with learning and insight:— •
"The eleventh century," he says, "witnessed the arisal [a 'nonce-word' that is not to be found in the Oxford Dictionary] of communes throughout Italy, and the joy of independence once realised, it was impossible to return to a state of vassalage, whether under bishops, counts, or the Empire itself. At first these communes were hemmed in on all sides by a vast number of dukes, counts, and barons of van-ions degrees of strength. inasmuch as the feudal order was still very powerful and still supreme in all country districts. Of German descent and trained to arms, these nobles fought in their own interest, although nominally for the Empire and its rights, against the new communal order that suddenly faced them with such menacing strength. They swooped down from their strongholds to bar the trade of the towns ; they levied tolls, threatened violence, and tried to treat free men as their vassals. Thereupon the indignant citizens were stirred to vengeance from time to time, and ofteh ended by razing great fortresses to the ground. On the other hand, the nobles still remaining in the cities became wearied of living among men who no longer respected the distinctions of class or race, and often departed to rejoin their friends. They frequently emigrated in such numbers that the citizens suffered injury by it, and issued decrees forbidding their exodus Thus the struggle of the working classes against feudalism finally began, and with it the real history of our communes. But it should not be thought that the Commune arose to champion the rights of man, or in the name of national independence. Nothing of the kind. The Empire was still held to be the sole and universal fount of right. Almost to the close of the fifteenth century, in fact, all cities, whether Guelph or Ghibelline, foes or friends of the Empire, continued to indite their state papers in its
name They only sought to be, as it were, their own dukes or counts Therefore, during the rise of the Commune, theocracy
and feudalism, Papacy and Empire, still subsisted together and always in conflict. The Commune had to struggle long against obstacles of all kinds ; but it was destined to triumph, and to create the third estate and people by whom alone modern society could be evolved from the chaos of the Middle Ages. This con- stitutes the chief historical importance of the Italian Commune."
No part of this history is more important than that which traces the growth of the merchant guilds of Florence. The rise of the greater guilds meant nothing less than the com- mercial supremacy of the Arno Republic, which became as it were a huge house of business, situated in the heart of Tuscany, and bound by the necessity of existence to fight its way through surrounding rivals to the wider trade beyond. How dexterously the Florentine merchants used polities to aid them in their commercial designs; bow they gradually ab- sorbed the neighbouring Ghibelline cities, Volterra, Sienna, and the rest ; how they contrived to grasp the trade of Lombardy and Romagna, and sent their travelling agents far away to the East, to Sarai on the Volga, to Urganj on the Sea of Azov, and even to Cambaluc in distant China, and all this at a time when Florence owned no sea-port, forms one of the most wonderful chapters in the history of mercantile enterprise. The immense expansion of the Eastern trade which followed the crowning triumph of 1406, when Pisa, which had hitherto persistently barred them from the sea, was finally conquered, does not fall within the scope of Professor Villari's work; but his careful. tracing of the development of the guilds enables one to understand the powerful energy which enabled the Florentine merchants to overcome seemingly invincible obstacles, and to take their place in the front rank of Mediterranean commerce, where previously Venice and Genoa had stood almost unapproached. At the same time it is curious to note the short-sightedness of these pushing merchants, who in their eagerness to acquire new openings for wealth were utterly careless of the hatred they aroused, and took no pains to win the loyalty of the cities they • annexed. The harshness invariably displayed by Florence to her conquered subjects, who enjoyed Co freedom of the - supreme city .nor any share of the goiernraent, was sure to react upon her in times of difficulty and stress :— "When Florence, by achieving the long-desired conquest of Pisa, at last became mistress of the sea, and witnessed the rapid increase of her commerce, she discovered that the annexation of a • great and powerful republic, full of life and strength, and possessed of so large a trade, brought her none of the advantages which • might have ensued from a union of a freer kind with an equal distribution of political rights. The chief citizens of Pisa and all the wealthier families left the country, preferring to live in Lombardy, Prance, or even in Sicily under the Ax-agonese, where at least they enjoyed civil equality, than remain in their own city subject to the harsh and tyrannous rule of Florentine shopkeepers. The commerce and industry of Pisa, her navy, her merchant fleet, all vanished when freedom fell ; while her Studio or University, one of the old glories of Italy, and afterwards reconstituted by the Medici, was done away with, and the city soon reduced to a state of squalid desolation. All conquered cities suffered this fate."
Naturally they seized the first opportunity to throw off the yoke of a Republic which was incapable of learning the wisdom of a new and liberal policy, and hence her very successes were among the causes of the decline of Florence. Her Commune did not possess the germs of the modern State, and when her trade decayed and her merchant burghers lost the power which they had misused, the people gladly accepted the rule of the Medici, and the republics of Italy were con- verted into principalities :— " Populations which had failed to establish equality by means of free institutions were now forced to learn the lesson of equality beneath the undiscriminating oppression of a despotic prince. Signories formed the necessary link of transition between the mediaeval commune and the modern state."
It is needless to add that Madame Villari has translated her husband's book with her usual ability, and such misprints as " Burgundioram " (p. 383) are rare. The illustrations are
poor, and since they represent antiquities and architecture on which the book is usually silent, their introduction is in- apposite. They do not illustrate the text, and were better omitted. The index is inadequate even more than most indexes.
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