Age of the Communes

AGE OF THE COMMUNES Rise of the Free Cities.—The final gainers, however, by the war of investitures, were the Italians. The antagonism of the popes to the emperors, which became hereditary in the Sacred College, forced the former to assume the protectorate of the national cause. And on the other hand, during the 47 years' war, the com munes grew in self-reliance, strength and liberty. The age of real autonomy, signalized by the supremacy of consuls in the cities, had arrived.

In the republics, government was carried on by officers called consuls, varying in number according to custom and according to the division of the town into districts. These magistrates were originally appointed to control and protect the humbler classes. But, in proportion as the people gained more power, the consuls rose into importance, superseded the bishops and began to repre sent the city in transactions with its neighbours. Popes and emperors who needed the assistance of a city had to seek it from the consuls, and thus these officers gradually converted an obscure and indefinite authority into what resembles the presidency of a commonwealth. They were supported by a deliberative assembly, called credenza, chosen from the more distinguished citizens. In addition to this privy council, we find a gran consiglio, consisting of the burghers, and a still larger assembly called parlamento, which included the whole adult population. Though the institu tions of the communes varied in different localities, this is the type to which they all approximated. The privileged burghers formed the aristocracy of the town, who by their wealth, usually derived from trade and industry, and birth, held its affairs within their custody.

Under their consuls the Italian cities rose to a great height of prosperity and splendour. It is also to be noticed that the people now began to be conscious of their past. They recognized the fact that their blood was Latin as distinguished from Teutonic, and the study of Roman law received a new impulse. The very name consul, no less than the Romanizing character of the best archi tecture of the time, points to the same revival of antiquity.

The rise of the Lombard communes produced a sympathetic revolution in Rome. A monk named Arnold of Brescia stirred up the Romans to shake off the temporal sway of their bishop. Rome, ever mindful of her unique past, listened to Arnold's preaching. A senate was established, and the republic was proclaimed. The title of patrician was revived and offered to Conrad, king of Italy, but not crowned emperor. Conrad refused it, and the Romans conferred it upon one of their own nobles. Though these institu tions borrowed high-sounding titles from antiquity, they were in reality imitations of the Lombard civic system. The pope was unable to check this revolution, which is now chiefly interesting as further proof of the insurgence of the Latin as against the feudal elements in Italy at this period (see ROME: History).

The division of the country between the pope's and emperor's parties inflicted upon Italy the ineradicable curse of party-warfare. Rome attempted to ruin Tivoli, and Genoa Pisa; Milan fought with Cremona, Cremona with Crema, Pavia with Verona, Verona with Padua, Piacenza with Parma, Modena and Reggio with Bologna, Bologna and Faenza with Ravenna and Imola, Florence and Pisa with Lucca and Siena, and so on through the whole list of cities. The nearer the neighbours, the more rancorous and in ternecine was the strife. Italy was, in fact, too small for her children. As the towns expanded, they perceived that they must mutually exclude each other. The pope's cause and the emperor's cause were of comparatively little moment to Italian burghers; and the names of Guelph and Ghibelline, which before long began to be heard in every street, on every market-place, had no mean ing for them. These watchwords are said to have arisen in Ger many during the disputed succession of the empire between 1135 and 1152, when the Welf s of Bavaria opposed the Swabian princes of Waiblingen origin. But in Italy, although they were severally identified with the papal and imperial parties, they really served as symbols for jealousies which altered in complexion from time to time and place to place.

Frederick Barbarossa.

Under the imperial rule of Lothar the Saxon (1125-37) and Conrad the Swabian (1138-52), these civil wars increased in violence owing to the absence of authority. Neither Lothar nor Conrad was strong at home ; the former had no influence in Italy, and the latter never entered Italy at all. But when Conrad died, the electors chose his nephew Frederick, surnamed Barbarossa, who united the rival honours of Welf and Waiblingen. Frederick immediately determined to reassert the imperial rights in his southern provinces. When he first crossed the Alps in 1154, Lombardy was, roughly speaking, divided be tween two parties, the one headed by Pavia professing loyalty to the empire, the other headed by Milan ready to oppose its claims. In reality Frederick came to supersede self-government by con suls, to deprive the cities of the privilege of making war on their own account and to extort his regalian rights of forage, food and lodging for his armies. The diet was opened at Roncaglia near Piacenza, where Frederick listened to the complaints of Como and Lodi against Milan, of Pavia against Tortona and of the marquis of Montferrat against Asti and Chieri. The plaintiffs in each case were imperialists ; and Frederick's first action was to redress their supposed grievances. Outside the gates of Rome he was met by a deputation from the senate he had come to supersede, who ad dressed him in words memorable for expressing the republican spirit of new Italy face to face with autocratic feudalism. Moved only to scorn and indignation by the rhetoric of these presump tuous enthusiasts, Frederick marched into the Leonine city, and took the imperial crown from the hands of Adrian IV. In return for this compliance, the emperor delivered over to the pope his troublesome rival, Arnold of Brescia, who was burned alive by Nicholas Breakspear, the only English successor of St. Peter. The gates of Rome itself were shut against Frederick; and even on this first occasion his good understanding with Adrian began to suffer. The points of dispute between them related mainly to Matilda's bequest, and to the kingdom of Sicily, which the pope had rendered independent of the empire by renewing its investi ture in the name of the Holy See. In truth, the papacy and the empire had become irreconcilable. Having obtained his coronation, Frederick was forced to withdraw by the citizens, while Milan prepared herself against the storm which threatened. In the en suing struggle the citizens of that great city rose to the altitude of patriotic heroism. They rebuilt Tortona, punished Pavia, Lodi, Cremona and the marquis of Montferrat. Then they fortified the Adda and Ticino, and waited for the emperor's next descent. He came in 1158 with a large army and sat down before the walls of Milan. Famine forced the burghers to partial obedience, and Frederick held a victorious diet at Roncaglia. Here the jurists of Bologna appeared, armed with their new lore of Roman law, and expounded Justinian's code in the interests of the German empire. Frederick placed judges of his own appointment, with the title of podesta, in all the Lombard communes ; and this stretch of his authority, while it exacerbated his foes, forced even his friends to join their ranks against him. The war, meanwhile, dragged on. Crema yielded after an heroic siege in 116o. Milan was invested in 1161, starved into capitulation after nine months' resistance, and destroyed. Frederick then withdrew across the Alps. But, in the interval between his second and third visit, a league was formed against him in north-eastern Lombardy. Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Treviso, Venice entered into a compact to defend their liberties; and when he came again in 1163, the imperial cities refused to join his standards.