Part 29 (1/2)

[Footnote 601: Machiavelli, however, had special schemes of const.i.tutional compromise (see Burckhardt, p. 85, and Roscoe, _Life of Leo X_, ed. 1846, ii, 204, 205); and there were many framers of paper const.i.tutions for Florence (Burckhardt, p. 83).]

[Footnote 602: See Gibbon, ch. 70. Bohn ed. vii, 398, 404.]

[Footnote 603: Cp. Burckhardt, pp. 6, 7.]

[Footnote 604: Lea, _Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy_, 2nd ed.

pp. 145-47, 212-20, 224-36, 242-43.]

[Footnote 605: Sismondi, _Short History_, p. 20.]

[Footnote 606: Trollope notes (_History of the Commonwealth of Florence_, i, 31) how Dante and Villani caught at the theory of an intermixture of alien blood as an explanation of the strifes which in Florence, as elsewhere, grew out of the primordial and universal pa.s.sions of men in an expanding society. Villari (_Two First Centuries_, p. 73) endorses the old theory without asking how civil strifes came about in the cities of early Greece and in those of the Netherlands.]

[Footnote 607: Which, however, was probably already being weakened by the silting up of the Pisan harbour. This seems to have begun through the action of the Genoese in blocking it with huge ma.s.ses of stone in 1290. Bent, _Genoa_, pp. 86-87. Sismondi notes that, after the great defeat of 1284, ”all the fishermen of the coast quitted the Pisan galleys for those of Genoa.” _Short History_, p. 111. As to the Pisan harbour, whose very site is now uncertain, see Pignotti, _Hist. of Tuscany_, Eng. tr. iii, 258, _note_.]

[Footnote 608: After destroying Ugolino, the Pisans chose as leader Guido de Montefeltro, who made their militia a formidable power.]

[Footnote 609: Pignotti, as cited, iii, 283-84.]

[Footnote 610: Heeren, as cited, pp. 69, 120, etc.]

[Footnote 611: Cp. Trollope, _History of Florence_, i, 105; Villari, _Two First Centuries_, pp. 95, 100.]

[Footnote 612: Cp. Sismondi, _Short History_, pp. 88-90.]

[Footnote 613: _Podesta_, as we have seen, was an old imperialist t.i.tle.

In Florence it became communal, and in 1200 it was first held by a foreigner, chosen, it would seem, as likely to be more impartial than a native. Cp., however, the comments of Villari, _First Two Centuries_, p.

157, and Trollope, i, 84, 94; and the mention by Plutarch, _De amore prolis_, -- 1, as to the same development among the Greeks. In the memoirs of Fra Salimbene (1221-90) there is mention that in 1233 the Parmesans ”made a friar their _podesta_, who put an end to all feuds”

(trans. by T.K. L. Oliphant, in _The Duke and the Scholar_, 1875, p.

90). The Florentine inst.i.tution of the _priori delle arti_, mentioned below, is traced back as far as 1204 (Cantu, as cited, viii, 465, _note_). The _anziani_, during their term of office, slept at the public palace, and could not go out save together.]

[Footnote 614: Thus Dante and Lorenzo de' Medici belonged to the craft of apothecaries.]

[Footnote 615: See Trollope, ii, 179, as to the endless Florentine devices to check special power and to vary the balance of the const.i.tution.]

[Footnote 616: Two years before a feebler attempt had been made to set up a military tool, named Gabrielli.]

[Footnote 617: Machiavelli, _Istorie_, end of 1. ii and beginning of 1.

iii.]

[Footnote 618: According to Giovanni Villani, in the fourteenth century there were schools only for 8,000 children, and only 1,200 were taught arithmetic.]

[Footnote 619: Details in Perrens' _Histoire de Florence_, Eng. trans.

of vol. viii, pp. 268, 284-88, 291, 307, 310.]

[Footnote 620: Cp. Perrens, trans. cited, pp. 276-80.]