Florence

Type of Government

The city-state of Florence rose to prominence in the 1300s through its position as one of western Europe’s wealthiest centers of commerce. Florence was a self-governing commune (municipal corporation) after 1115. Its government was made up of representatives from both the Florentine noble class and the city’s powerful mercantile and banking families via the Signoria, or city council.

Background

Florence’s urban grid was laid out by Roman soldiers in the first century BC. The city was strategically located on the official route from Rome to northern Europe and was also bisected by the Arno River. Over the next millennium Florence grew in population and size, and the fertile lands that surrounded it provided the resources that helped it become a center of textile manufacturing quite early in the medieval era. It became part of the feudal margrave of Tuscany, one of the military-governed territories established during the Carolingian era, and declared itself a self-ruling commune in 1115. Political power was initially concentrated in the hands of the local landowning families, but a serious conflict arose among the nobles of northern Italy late in the twelfth century. Their dispute centered on the power of the Holy Roman emperor and dated back to the Investiture Conflict of 1059, when the College of Cardinals was established to eliminate secular influence (that is, influence from outside the church) from the election of the pope. Over time, two powerful factions with their own armies arose on the Italian peninsula: the Guelphs, who were loyal to the papacy, and the Ghibellines, supporters of the Holy Roman Empire. Armed conflicts between them ensued across Italy for the next century, and in Florence the Guelphs emerged victorious in 1289. Because the Florentine Guelphs also included a sizable number of merchants and burghers in addition to nobles, in Florence this commerce-focused faction came to control the political power in the city.

Government Structure

An earlier system of government, with a podestà (unofficial mayor) elected by representatives of the noble families, had emerged after 1115. Meanwhile, the tradesmen and artisans of Florence began to organize themselves into guilds known as arti, and these grew in authority during the chaos of the Guelph-Ghibelline strife. Once the new system was fully implemented after 1289, the twenty-one major and minor guilds held political power. The Ordinances of Justice, enacted in 1293, barred Ghibellines and most nobles from holding office. The new rules also specified that Florence’s Signoria (city council) was to consist of eight members elected from the guilds; a ninth served as the gonfaloniere (guardian of the city’s banner), which symbolized its independence and sovereignty.

An electoral commission known as the accoppiatori vetted candidates for the Signoria. To be eligible, the guild officer had to be a male over thirty, free of debt, and have no relatives already currently serving on the Signoria. The candidates’ names were drawn from slips of paper placed in a leather bag, a system that was deemed fair for its randomness. The Signoria officeholders were required to live at the Palazzo della Signoria, built in 1314, during their two-month terms. They introduced legislation, which needed a two-thirds majority vote to continue: the bill would pass to two more bodies for approval, the Council of the People and the Council of the Commune, each consisting of about three hundred Florentine men. In time, nobles returned to political power by bribing the accoppiatori.

The Signoria came to an end with the rise to power of the Medici banking family in the 1430s. While they were periodically ousted—and various incarnations of the Signoria and other councils arose to replace their authority—the Medicis eventually prevailed and came to rule the surrounding countryside as well. This was formalized as the Duchy of Florence. By the sixteenth century all pretense of representative government had disappeared, and the Medicis ruled as near-autocrats, sharing power with a four-member council called the Magistrato Supremo (supreme magistrate).

Political Parties and Factions

Florence’s Guelphs eventually split into two factions, known as the Blacks and the Whites. The Blacks still supported the papacy, while their White foes came to oppose the authority of the church in Rome. When the Blacks seized control of the government of Florence in 1302, they exiled the Whites, and this practice would continue for the next few centuries as various families sought to eliminate their political opponents. Blacks, Whites, and aristocratic families allied with the powerful trade guilds that dominated Florentine politics in the fourteenth century.

Over time, however, the nobles came to hold the reins of power, particularly the Albizzi family, but the struggle for control continued and reached such a crisis point that finally in 1434 an exasperated Signoria invited one of the city’s wealthiest citizens, the banker Cosimo de’ Medici (1389–1464), to return from exile to lead the city. His wealth came from the Medici Bank, founded by his father in 1397, and this institution’s assets grew so enormous that it soon came to provide loans both to governments elsewhere in Europe and to popes. The Medicis would control both the city and an increasingly expanding Florentine power in northern Italy until the 1730s.

Major Events

In 1348 more than half the city’s residents died when the Black Death swept through northern Italy. Thirty years later, in 1378, the Revolt of the Ciompi began, led by the ciompi (wool carders), who were barred from membership in the Arte della Lana (wool guild). The ciompi and other working-class Florentines banded together and formally petitioned the Signoria for more rights, but soon took a more forceful stance and seized the Palazzo della Signoria outright. Their brief rule, lasting just five weeks, is nevertheless notable for being the first time in European political history when all classes of society were represented in a government.

Aftermath

The wealth originating from Florence’s flourishing mercantile and financial services industries placed it at the vanguard of the Italian Renaissance, a period of great artistic and cultural achievement extending from the end of the fourteenth century to about 1600. The city—along with the Medicis, the church, and noble families—emerged as a generous patron of the arts, and many Renaissance treasures are located in the city. These include its Duomo (cathedral church) and Michelangelo’s sculpture of David, which was commissioned for the square in front of the Palazzo della Signoria to honor Florence’s continued independence despite threats by its more powerful neighbors. The city-state’s perennial leadership crises were eventually overcome by the Medicis through a shrewd concentration of political power, a method illustrated by the Florentine council member, diplomat, and writer Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) in his 1513 work The Prince.

Hale, J. R. Florence and the Medici: The Pattern of Control. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1983.

Najemy, John M. A History of Florence, 1200–1575. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2006.

Trexler, Richard C. Public Life in Renaissance Florence. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991.