From the end of the factional wars around 1310-12 until the crises of the 1340s, Florence’s elite enjoyed its first long period of political dominance without catastrophic internal divisions. This was the golden age of the merchant-banking elite, the generation in which the great companies made huge fortunes and controlled both domestic politics and foreign policy without much apparent opposition from the popolo. In fiscal and economic issues, electoral politics, the administration of justice and commercial law, the elite made government serve its interests. Coming after fifty years of challenges culminating in the guild federation of 1293, the Ordinances of Justice, and the anti-magnate laws, the popolo’s acquiescence in elite hegemony requires explanation. Part of the answer is that, while suppressing its old addiction to violent forms of factionalism, for the first time the elite assumed responsibilities of governance within the institutional framework established by the popolo (although naturally in pursuit of its own interests) and thus created conditions in which the popolo could choose cooperation over confrontation. A second factor was the elite’s gradual adoption of a collective identity defined by its commercial activities and an ethos of prudence, calculation, and profit. The galloping prosperity of the merchant companies in these decades also removed the incentive to challenge an economic leadership that benefited both classes.
Except for one last quixotic attempt in 1343, by the 1320s it was clear that the elite was not inclined to turn the clock back to the 1260s-70s, when first one, then the other, of its factions ruled unencumbered by the popolo and the guilds. Between 1310 and 1340, the popolo’s constitution remained in place even as real power concentrated in the hands of several dozen elite families. The decision not to dismantle popular institutions was critical, for it would certainly have brought guildsmen into the streets, as happened in 1343. But as it gradually became more disposed to work within a framework it had previously rejected, the elite also introduced new institutions (like the Mercanzia) in its own interests, sought to control the guilds from within, and revised electoral procedures for both the priorate and guild consulates.
Strategies for controlling the guilds varied in approach and degree of success from guild to guild and were perhaps most successful in the bankers’ and moneychangers’ guild. Until 1329 all the guilds governed themselves and conducted their elections autonomously, and their internal politics thus varied considerably. Contests for power in the major guilds between elites (who wanted smaller memberships, restricted leadership, ample authority for the consuls, and a weaker guild council) and non-elite members (who favored more inclusive membership, more representative procedures in consular elections, a wider distribution of offices, and greater balance between consuls and council) took a different form in each case and, except in the Cambio, yielded no decisive victory for either side until the elite began using the Mercanzia to dominate the guilds in the major reform of communal and guild elections in 1328-9.
In 1300 the Arte del Cambio had 355 members in 138 companies, all with a “tavola” or “banco” in the city (the criterion that distinguished the Cambio’s membership from the Calimala, whose merchant-bankers did not have a local operation). The Cambio included large elite banking firms like the magnate Pazzi with 17 investing partners, the Peruzzi with 15, the Canigiani (12), the magnate Abati (at least 11), the Macci (11), Sassetti (10), Bonciani (8), Dell’Antella (7) and magnate Visdomini (7), and many smaller non-elite firms: 95 of 138 companies belonged to two partners or a single investor. New members paid a fee to join, unless they had a close relative already in the guild. In 1300 a modest entry fee of one hundred soldi (then about two florins) facilitated access to the guild for many non-elite moneychangers without fathers, sons, or brothers among the members. Consular elections involved a significant portion of the membership in a two-stage process: the outgoing consuls selected forty-eight members, but no more than one per firm, which made it difficult for large elite companies to dominate elections. The forty-eight each nominated six guild members, for a total of 288 nominations, and the six receiving the most votes became the electors of the new consuls.1 Between a third and a half of the guild’s firms had some part in each election. 119
Over the next two decades, the membership shrank and elections concentrated in fewer hands. In 1301 there were 321 members (10% fewer than in 1300), and the loss came entirely from the ranks of one - and two-man firms, which declined from 95 to 62, perhaps as a consequence of a five-fold increase in the matriculation fee. The fee increased again in 1313 and 1317, when it temporarily reached twenty florins, and settled back to ten florins thereafter. In 1313 the guild acknowledged that many persons wishing to join the guild refused to do so “on account of the great sum of money they must pay” and temporarily lowered the fee. But the membership continued to shrink. By 1314 there were only 110 members in 52 companies, and, after recovering to 154 in 84 companies in 1320, it sank in 1324 to 114 members in 61 companies and only 89 in 57 companies in 1329.120 Consular elections were now controlled by a more restricted group. The 48 were reduced to 24, then to 16, and in December 1313 the outgoing consuls appointed the 16 who then chose the six electors of the new consuls. Five of the six came from the committee of 16 and included a Strozzi, a Dell’Antella, and a Guicciardini who was a partner in the Macci firm. The new consuls chosen by them included a Strozzi (the son of the elector), an Unganelli, and a Da Panzano, who was also on the committee of 16. The names alone indicate the preponderant influence secured by the guild’s elite in these more tightly controlled elections. But a year later the consuls reported to the guild council that many were complaining that their election had violated the guild’s statutes, that the election records and oaths were nowhere to be found, and consequently that they could not legally exercise their office or adjudicate civil cases. The consuls asked the council’s advice, but also made a proposal of their own: “because there are many things that need to be done in and on behalf of the guild that the consuls cannot do except with the advice of the men of the guild, and because it is tedious and laborious to assemble all the members on account of the small number of them regularly present at their banks,” they requested that “by authority of this council they be allowed to deliberate, decide, and act on any pressing matters during their term of office and do whatever they deem useful and beneficial for the guild, on their own, with or without a meeting of the council, as they shall see fit.” Lapo Strozzi, a member of the council in session, rose to say that he believed the consuls did indeed have the full and legitimate authority of their office and that their appointment of other guild officials should be considered valid “as if [the consuls] had been elected according to the regulations contained in the statutes.” He also favored entrusting the consuls with full powers to “legislate, command, decree, carry out, and delegate in the aforementioned matters.”3 The council accepted Strozzi’s recommendation, confirmed the consuls in their office, and agreed to the requested expansion of their powers - all in the wake of what had begun as a challenge to their legitimacy, and without any denial of the charge that their election had violated the statutes. By 1319 Cambio consuls were practically naming their own successors, as the council’s powers gradually yielded to their expanding authority.
Eligibility criteria for the consular office also divided elite and non-elite in the Cambio, especially the requirement, first imposed by the Ordinances of Justice for the priorate, that officeholders be actively engaged in their businesses at the time of their election. The guild’s revised statutes of 1313 declared that only two of each contingent of four consuls would have to be regularly present at their banks, a modification that preserved the political eligibility of investing partners not directly involved in the daily operation of their firms and perhaps even of matriculated members temporarily unaffiliated with a firm. Thus, just when many active moneychangers were being excluded from the guild because of high matriculation fees, guildsmen who were not active participants in a firm had their access to the consulate preserved. Temporary ineligibility for former consuls (the divieto) was reduced from two years to one, a clear sign that a restricted group was dominating the consulate. But in 1318, when the one-year divieto was confirmed, it was justified by a renewal of the ban against electing members who were not “resident” at their firms. Such rapid changes in eligibility requirements are symptomatic of persistent disagreement between the guild’s elite, which sought to limit the membership and control the consulate, and the non-elite members who preferred a larger membership and wider distribution of offices. Over two decades the elite succeeded in transforming the guild from a large association with wide participation in elections to a much smaller body more tightly controlled by an inner circle. Yet, as it excluded many moneychangers and local lenders from membership, the guild claimed the right to regulate their activities and exercise jurisdiction over the growing numbers who now practiced their trade without the benefit of guild membership.
Similar developments occurred in the Wool guild. Villani reports (10.30) that in 1311 the guild broke into “great discord and factions” over the consulate, and that “the city was nearly in an uproar because of it.” This had been preceded by clashes in 1310 resulting in punishments that were described seven years later, when the consuls were authorized to review and increase them, as having “often given rise to protests that have not yet ceased and from which many scandals might still ensue.” In the earliest surviving statutes (1317), dyers, finishers, folders, and menders were, like the merchant-entrepreneurs (lanaiuoli), eligible to hold guild offices, and the guild’s council of forty-eight
ASF, Arte del Cambio 54, n. p.
Had to include finishers and dyers as well as merchant-entrepreneurs.121 But by 1333, artisans were being listed in a separate register and were prohibited from manufacturing cloth and holding guild offices, now reserved for the lanaiuoli. Although the Lana remained a very large guild throughout the fourteenth century, here too there was a notable reduction of the membership that may reflect growing elite influence. In 1332 the guild counted over 600 lanaiuoli, and unspecified numbers of brothers and sons among the partners suggest a membership closer to 700. Many came from elite families: Albizzi (twenty-one members in many different partnerships), Corsini, Ridolfi, Pitti, Peruzzi, Capponi, Alberti, Covoni, Valori, Orlandini, Rondinelli, Davanzati, Tolosini, Biliotti, and Ricci. But the majority of lanaiuoli were non-elite, many identified only by patronymics. By 1353, despite substantial annual additions of new members from the mid-1340s, Lana membership declined to just over 400. This is of course in large part attributable to the Black Death, but in the district of San Martino that specialized in the production of higher quality cloths from English wool, the numbers actually increased and included a particularly heavy representation of elite families who generally dominated the industry’s luxury-cloth sector.122
In elections of the communal priors, the elite gradually deprived the guilds of the influence they won in the 1290s. After 1310, elections were mostly conducted by the outgoing priors with grants of special, temporary authority, called balia, to appoint successors, sometimes for several future terms. On one occasion in 1323, the priors selected successors for twenty-one bimonthly terms. Such elections regularly produced elite-dominated priorates, but their weakness was that everyone knew who was responsible for electoral decisions, and thus who was in and out of favor with the ruling group of the moment. Resentments among excluded families or factions had easy targets, and complaints of favoritism and abuse of power led to the creation in 1321 of a second advisory college, the Twelve, which joined the priors in executive deliberations. Charles of Calabria and his vicar Walter of Brienne simply appointed the priors during their rule, but when Charles died in late 1328 the elite seized the opportunity to carry out far-reaching reforms of three central aspects of the Florentine political world: the elections of priors and guild consuls, and the configuration of the legislative councils.
The authors of the electoral reform were the incumbent priors of October-December 1328 and six citizens they appointed to assist them: thirteen men among whom the representatives of elite families dominated (Jacopo Alberti, Gentile Altoviti, Tinoro Guasconi, and Maso Valori among the priors; Donato
Acciaiuoli, Tommaso Corsini, Giotto d’Arnoldo Peruzzi, and Taldo Valori among the six). They invented the system of nominations, general scrutinies, and sortition (extraction by lot) that, in its essential features, remained in place until the late fifteenth century. Its purposes were to consolidate elite control of the priorate, reduce disputes over elections, and enhance their legitimacy through complexity, impersonality, and secrecy, thus making it impossible to attribute the results to particular persons, committees, or factions. Unlike all earlier Florentine elections, the procedures devised in 1328 did not select priors for specific future terms; instead, they declared the eligibility of a much larger group of citizens, all of whom would sooner or later, depending on the chance extraction of name-tickets, take their turns in office. The names of approved citizens remained secret until they were gradually revealed in the bimonthly extractions of the tickets.
In this earliest version of the procedure, candidates were nominated by three committees: the incumbent priors, the six Guelf Party captains, and the Five of Mercanzia, who here made their first appearance in communal electoral politics. Particularly striking is the absence of the guild consuls, a sure sign of the elite’s desire to reduce guild influence in these elections. Equally remarkable is that only eighteen men were responsible for making nominations. Although there were no numerical limits, control of nominations by so few probably did not result in the many thousands nominated some decades later. The second step was the scrutiny: nominees were put to a vote, one by one, by a scrutiny council that included the incumbent priors, the nineteen district standardbearers, the Five of Mercanzia, two consuls from each of the twelve major guilds, and thirty additional members selected by the priors. Thus, only twenty-four guild representatives, from only the twelve guilds, were included among the eighty-five voting members. The names of nominees receiving two-thirds of the votes were written on tickets that were placed in pouches and drawn by lot every two months. New nominations and scrutinies were to be held every two years, and for all subsequent scrutinies nominations were also requested from the priorate’s advisory colleges of Twelve and Nineteen. A crucial feature of the 1328 reform, which remained in place only until 1339, was that the name-tickets of those placed in office were not eliminated from the pouches (as they subsequently would be), but were transferred to the same pouch into which the names of those approved in the next scrutiny were also placed, and from which extractions continued when no names remained in the first pouch. Thus, citizens approved in the first scrutiny who served terms in office were automatically placed in subsequent pouches and made indefinitely eligible for the priorate, even if they were not approved in later scrutinies. Restricting nominations for the first scrutiny to the small elite committees of priors, Guelf Party captains, and Five of Mercanzia established the elite core of the office-holding class for the next generation.
A few weeks later, in January 1329, a version of the same plan was adopted for the election of guild consuls. For each of the twelve major guilds, nominations were requested from the priors, each guild’s consuls and twelve other members, and the Five of Mercanzia with six of each guild’s members. Nominees of the seven major guilds were put to a vote in a single scrutiny council of eighty members consisting mostly of the priors, their colleges, and members of these guilds selected by them. For the five middle guilds, the same procedures yielded a scrutiny committee of sixty-eight. Guild elections were thus dominated by the priors and colleges, whose own election had just been brought under the control of the elite. A separate law for the nine minor guilds gave full control over the election of their consuls to the Five of Mercanzia. Nominations came both from the consuls and their advisers within each guild and from the Five and their handpicked advisers in each guild. The scrutiny council consisted of the Five and two members from each of all twenty-one guilds, all selected by the Five, which made the representatives of the minor guilds a minority in their own scrutiny. For all guilds, as for the priorate, those approved in the first scrutiny of 1329 were made permanently eligible by having their name-tickets recycled into subsequent pouches (a practice discontinued in this case in 1337). This was a watershed moment in the history of the guilds, which here lost the autonomy they had enjoyed for a century and more in electing their own consuls.
Reshaping the legislative branch of communal government followed on the heels of the electoral reforms. By the 1320s there were no fewer than five councils, all of which had to consent to initiatives from the priors and often rejected them (particularly concerning forced loans and expenditures). When, in February 1329, the priors proposed abolishing the estimo (and burning its records, thus removing written evidence of direct taxation!), the councils, whose popular majorities obviously considered the estimo a more equitable form of taxation, defeated it. A week later, the next priorate presented a bill for restructuring the councils themselves. The law of February 20, 1329, reduced the cumbersome cluster of legislative councils to just two, the Council of the Popolo and the Council of the Commune. To the former’s 140 regular members, the law added as ex officio participants the priors, colleges, and consuls of the twelve guilds, the latter now chosen in tightly controlled elections. Nine days later, on February 29, the Signoria re-presented to the newly configured councils the proposal for abolition of the estimo, and this time it passed (although still with notable opposition: 128-47 and 178-62).6 Further fine tuning of the councils came a few months later when another law authorized the priors to make up to twenty-five substitutions in the Council of the
Barbadoro, Finanze, pp. 190-4.
Popolo and forty in that of the Commune, which gave the ruling elite a way of neutralizing or at least reducing popular opposition whenever it surfaced.
The reforms of 1328-9 consolidated elite power without discarding the popolo’s institutions and produced a decade of stable oligarchic government and a restricted office-holding class recruited from (or allied with) the elite. Between 1329 and 1342, 302 citizens from 207 families shared the 584 available positions on the priorate. Almost three-fifths of them held office more than once: 89 twice, 75 three times, 13 four times, and 1 five times. Although non-elite citizens were among those most frequently elected, the elite families cumulatively dominated. Seven families had between nine and fifteen priors (14% of the seats): Strozzi (15), Ricci, Albizzi, and Rucellai (12 each), Altoviti and Baroncelli-Bandini (10 each); and Acciaiuoli (9). These and another six families (including the Ardinghelli, Bordoni, and Peruzzi) held a fifth of the posts. In these fourteen years, only thirty-eight families reached the priorate for the first time, compared to 104 new families between 1312 and 1325.123 At least 70% of the priors were from the Calimala, Cambio, or Lana,124 and the priors from the minor guilds were no more than a handful.
Within the major guilds the results of the new system of consular elections were mixed. Small elites dominated the Cambio and Calimala. Only forty-six individuals (two-thirds of them Mercanzia merchants and bankers) held 156 available posts in the Cambio between 1329 and 1341; twenty-four held the office four or more times and collectively held 74% of the posts. Taddeo di Donato dell’Antella was a Cambio consul seven times in thirteen years. In the Calimala, sixty-six individuals held the 143 posts whose occupants have been identified; at least 70% were Mercanzia merchants. Although the magnate Bardi were ineligible for the consulate, their partner Taldo Valori was the Calimala’s most frequent consul with five appearances. But in the Wool guild 141 members shared 311 available posts, partly because of the eight-man consulate, partly also because of the Lana’s non-elite majority: only 36% of Lana consuls were Mercanzia merchants. In Por Santa Maria eighty-five members shared 143 posts, although more than half were Mercanzia merchants. In the Medici, Speziali, e Merciai, 207 seats were held by ninety-nine members, of whom only a quarter were Mercanzia merchants. Although the electoral controls imposed on the guilds contributed to the general quiescence of the popolo, the potential for a popular resurgence clearly existed in these three large guilds.
For the first time, Florentine electoral procedures widened upper-class consensus by promising the whole of the elite (minus the magnates), and much of the upper ranks of the popolo as well, a steady collective monopoly of power in which at least some members of most of the important families would see their names come up sooner or later in the electoral lottery. The results overwhelmingly favored the elite and did so while muffling its internal divisions and helping it become (or appear to become) a unified ruling class whose power was legitimated by the apparent impersonality of electoral institutions.
World History
