The bankers, merchants, manufacturers, professional men, and skilled workers of Europe were organized in guilds. In Florence seven guilds (arti, arts, trades) were known as arti maggiori or greater guilds: clothing manufacturers, wool manufacturers, silk goods manufacturers, fur merchants, financiers, physicians and druggists, and a mixed guild of merchants, judges, and notaries. The remaining fourteen guilds of Florence were the arti minori or minor trades: clothiers, hosiers, butchers, bakers, vintners, cobblers, saddlers, armorers, blacksmiths, locksmiths, carpenters, innkeepers, masons and stonecutters, and a motley conglomeration of oil sellers, pork butchers, and ropemakers. Every voter had to be a member of one or another of these guilds; and the nobles who had been disfranchised in 1282 by a bourgeois revolution joined the guilds to regain the vote. Below the twenty-one guilds were seventy-two unions of voteless workingmen; below these, thousands of day laborers forbidden to organize, and living in impotent poverty; below these—or above them as better cared for by their masters—were a few slaves. The members of the greater guilds constituted in politics the popolo grasso, the fat or well-fed people; the rest of the population composed the popolo minuto or little people. The political history of Florence, like that of modern states, was first the victory of the business class over the old landowning aristocracy (1293), and then the struggle of the “working class” to acquire political power.
In 1345 Cinto Brandini and nine others were put to death for organizing the poorer workers in the woolen industry, and foreign laborers were imported to break up these unions.10 In 1368 the “little people” attempted a revolution but were suppressed. Ten years later the tumulto dei Ciompi— the revolt of the wool carders—brought the working classes for a dizzy moment into control of the commune. Led by a barefoot workingman, Michele di Lando, the carders surged into the Palazzo Vecchio, dispersed the Signory, and established a dictatorship of the proletariat (1378). The laws against unionization were repealed, the lower unions were enfranchised, a moratorium of twelve years was declared on the debts of wage earners, and interest rates were reduced to further ease the burdens of the debtor class. Business leaders retaliated by shutting down their shops and inducing the landowners to cut the city’s food supply. The harassed revolutionists split into factions—an aristocracy of labor consisting of skilled craftsmen, and a “left wing” moved with communistic ideas. Finally the conservatives brought in strong men from the countryside, armed them, overthrew the divided government, and restored the business class to power (1382).
The triumphant bourgeoisie revised the constitution to consolidate its victory. The Signoria, or municipal council of signori or gentlemen, was composed of eight priori delle arti— priors or leaders of the guilds—chosen by lot from bags containing the names of those eligible for office. They in turn chose as their executive head a gonfaloniere di giustizia—a “standardbearer of justice” or executor of the law. Of the eight priors four had to be from the greater guilds, though these arti maggiori included but a small minority of the adult male population. The same proportion was required in the advisory Consiglio del Popolo or Council of the People; popolo, however, meant only the members of the twenty-one guilds. The Consiglio del Comune was chosen from any guild membership, but its function was confined to assembling when summoned by the Signory, and to voting yes or no on proposals put before it by the priors. On rare occasions the priors called a parlamento of all voters to the Piazza della Signoria by ringing the great bell in the Palazzo Vecchio tower. Usually such a general assembly chose a balia or commission of reform, gave it supreme power for a stated period, and adjourned.
It was a generous error of nineteenth-century historians to credit pre-Medicean Florence with a degree of democracy quite unknown in that plutocratic paradise. The subject cities, though themselves fertile in genius and proud of their heritage, had no voice in the Florentine Signory that governed them. In Florence only 3200 males could vote; and in both councils the representatives of the business class were a rarely challenged majority.11 The upper classes were convinced that the illiterate masses could form no sound or safe judgment of the community good in domestic crises or foreign affairs. The Florentines loved freedom, but it was, among the poor, the freedom to be commanded by Florentine masters, and, among the rich, the liberty to rule the city and its dependencies without imperial or papal or feudal impediment.
The indisputable defects of the constitution were the brevity of its terms of office, and the frequent changes in the constitution itself. The evil results were faction, conspiracy, violence, confusion, incompetence, and the inability of the republic to design and execute such consistent and long-term policies as made for the stability and power of Venice. The pertinent good result was an electric atmosphere of conflict and debate that quickened the pulse, sharpened sense and mind and wit, stirred the imagination, and lifted Florence for a century to the cultural leadership of the world.
III. COSIMO “PATER PATRIAE”
Politics in Florence was the conflict of wealthy families and factions—the Ricci, Albizzi, Medici, Ridolfi, Pazzi, Pitti, Strozzi, Rucellai, Valori, Capponi, Soderini—for control of the government. From 1381 to 1434, with some interruptions, the Albizzi maintained their ascendancy in the state, and valiantly protected the rich against the poor.
The Medici family can be traced back to 1201, when Chiarissimo de’ Medici was a member of the Communal Council.* Averardo de’ Medici, great-great-grandfather of Cosimo, founded the fortune of the family by bold commerce and judicious finance, and was chosen gonfalonier in 1314. Averardo’s grandnephew, Salvestro de’ Medici, gonfalonier in 1378, established the popularity of the family by espousing the cause of the rebel poor. Salvestro’s grandnephew, Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, gonfalonier in 1421, further endeared the family to the people by supporting—though he himself would suffer heavily from it—an annual tax (catasto) of one half of one per cent on income, which was reckoned at seven per cent of a man’s capital (1427).12 The rich, who had previously enjoyed a poll or head tax merely equal to that paid by the poor, vowed vengeance on the Medici.
Giovanni di Bicci died in 1428, bequeathing to his son Cosimo a good name and the largest fortune in Tuscany—179,221 florins ($4,480,525?).13 Cosimo was already thirty-nine years old, fully fit to carry on the far-flung enterprises of the firm. These were not confined to banking; they included the management of extensive farms, the manufacture of silk and woolen goods, and a varied trade that bound Russia and Spain, Scotland and Syria, Islam and Christendom. Cosimo, while building churches in Florence, saw no sin in making trade agreements, and exchanging costly presents, with Turkish sultans. The firm made a specialty of importing from the East articles of little bulk and great value, like spices, almonds, and sugar, and sold these and other products in a score of European ports.