The Ciompi Revolution

In 1377 the Parte Guelfa intensified its assault on the government, the new men, and the war party. Led by the pro-papal elite (Piero degli Albizzi, Niccolo Soderini, Carlo Strozzi, Lapo da Castiglionchio, Piero Canigiani, Stoldo Altoviti) and supported by some old magnate houses (Bardi, Rossi, Pazzi, Adimari), the core of the Albizzi faction (Ridolfi, Castellani, Strozzi, Rucellai, Guasconi) and at least one important member of the Medici family, the banker Vieri di Cambio who thus positioned himself at the opposite end of the political spectrum from his cousin Salvestro, the Parte leadership “warned” over ninety citizens between September 1377 and the spring of 1378, driving some from office and depriving others of eligibility. Most were new men who held key positions during the war (like Giovanni Dini). Scores, perhaps hundreds, of secret denunciations of alleged Ghibellines, probably originating from the Parte itself, kept the captains busy deciding the fate of citizens that winter. Accusations typically alleged the actions of a distant ancestor, angry words spoken against the Parte, or a generic intention to harm the Guelf cause. Florence now seethed with partisan and class antagonisms, as Parte extremists persisted even in the face of mounting public outrage. Their opponents became convinced that the Parte was trying to provoke a crisis in order to seize power, reshape the government, and expel the new men.

By the chance of the draw, the priorate of May-June 1378 included as Standardbearer of Justice Salvestro de’ Medici, who began his week as presiding chairman on June 18 and presented a proposal for the re-promulgation of the Ordinances of Justice “on behalf of the popolani, merchants, and guilds-men of Florence, and the poor and weak who desire to live in peace from their labor and possessions.”166 After eighty-five years, the Ordinances still carried emotional and symbolic weight; this was the guild community’s “warning” to the Parte to refrain from further provocations. But when the measure encountered opposition in the advisory college of the Twelve, Salvestro went in person to the legislative councils to announce his resignation in the face of this rebuff. An uproar in the councils persuaded the Twelve to reverse their position. On the 21st, members of the twenty-one guilds assembled in protest against the Parte, and the next day crowds of guildsmen and workers burned the houses of Parte leaders (including those of Lapo da Castiglionchio, Carlo Strozzi, Niccolo Soderini, the Albizzi, Canigiani, Pazzi, Cavicciuli, and Guadagni). According to Stefani (792), some thought it a spontaneous action, others that the order had come “from the palace.” On the same day the councils approved a balia, led by Salvestro and including one consul from each of the twenty-one guilds, which declared Piero degli Albizzi, Carlo Strozzi, and other

Parte leaders magnates, relegated some who were already magnates to a new category of “supermagnates” with even tougher penalties, and restored officeholding rights to scores of warned “Ghibellines.”

In early July, pratiche made repeated references to meetings, agitations, and disputes within the guilds. Some speakers urged the priors to warn the guilds to desist from excessive demands or precipitous actions, while others advised that they “listen to all the guilds” and act on their requests. “Regarding the agitations,” said one speaker, “the priors should convene the consuls, syndics [representatives], and up to four of the best members of each guild separately and make appropriate appeals for peace to each guild separately. They should tell the guilds that when they want something they should confer with the lord priors, who will see to the matter.” Resurfacing here were the basic assumptions of the guild republic: equality and autonomy among the guilds and the right of each to an independent voice. Even the Wool guild, caught between the desire of its non-elite majority to punish the Guelf Party and its fear that reviving notions of guild autonomy might push artisans and workers to demand their own guilds, decided to join the movement. Noting, on July 7, that “many of the twenty-one guilds, for the unity, defense, and preservation of all the guilds and guildsmen and for the welfare and liberty of the popolo and commune of Florence, have already appointed syndics and procurators for the defense of their guilds and their members, and not wishing to be in disagreement with the other guilds, but rather to come together as one with all the other guilds,” the Lana too selected syndics “for the defense and protection of the Wool guild and its liberty and rights.”167 On July 9-10 the legislative councils approved a petition drafted by representatives of all the guilds in the palace of the Mercanzia “for the liberty, security, and tranquility of the twenty-one guilds.” It transferred the powers of the June balia to a council composed of the priorate of July-August, the Seven of Mercanzia, and all the consuls and syndics of the twenty-one guilds; restored the consuls of all twenty-one guilds to key roles in communal and guild elections; terminated the Parte’s campaign of intimidation by giving the priorate and colleges a veto over accusations and warnings; annulled all elections within the Parte and gave the guild consuls a role in electing its captains; removed the Mercanzia’s authority to nominate candidates for guild offices; limited eligibility for the priorate to guildsmen actively involved in their professions or trades; and entrusted the certification of such active involvement to each guild’s consuls.168 This was in effect a reassertion of the guild republic of 1293 and 1343.

In mid-July the workers and artisans emerged. Meetings and associations of workers were still illegal, and the balia, like the government of the mid-1340s, was caught in the contradiction of denying workers the same right of guild association on which it based its own claim to authority. Word reached the government of at least two secret meetings, one in the Oltrarno district, the other north of the river, in which workers exchanged ritual oaths and kisses sealing their intention, according to one chronicler, “to stay together to the death and defend themselves against anyone wishing to harm them.”169 The workers’ association that eventually resulted in three new guilds was born in this fraternal bonding and oath-taking. On July 20 workers and minor guilds-men, mostly from Belletri, filled the piazza in front of the palace of the priors demanding that the government, barricaded inside, release those who had been arrested and possibly tortured for information about the workers’ meetings. On the same day, thirty-two “syndics of the popolo minuto” (of whom at least a fourth were minor guildsmen), drafted and presented two petitions to the priors. Still on the 20th, however, huge crowds began roaming the city, as on June 22, burning the homes of some twenty Parte leaders, including that of the Standardbearer of Justice, Luigi Guicciardini. Under the cloud of this violence, on the 21st the priors received the petitions, the first of which demanded a guild for “the men of the popolo minuto” whose consuls would enjoy the same jurisdiction, authority, and power vested in the consuls of the twenty-one guilds, and whose thirty-two syndics would join those of the other guilds on the balia. The new guild was to have a fourth of the seats in the priorate and colleges, and a scrutiny was planned (in which their own syndics would have had the decisive voice) to determine eligibility among the “minuti.”

Together with these political demands came economic, fiscal, and legal ones, including the abolition of the Wool guild’s hated foreign official, who had long exercised police powers over workers and artisans; a six-month moratorium on forced loans; the cessation of interest payments on the communal debt; the debt’s amortization over a period of twelve years; and reinstitution of the estimo and direct taxation within six months. Amortization of the debt revived the initial aim of the popular government of 1343, but substitution of direct taxation for interest-bearing forced loans was a far more radical demand, intended to end transfers of wealth from workers and artisans to the already wealthy who profited from loans to the commune and to halt the diminution of workers’ wages from payments to employers who assumed their prestanza assessments. Although the petition says nothing about indirect taxes, implicit in the call for direct taxation was some relief in this area.

Chronic indebtedness among workers was addressed in the demand for a two-year moratorium for debts under fifty florins and the commutation of sentences threatening the loss of a limb to monetary fines.17

As the councils quickly approved the popolo minuto’s petitions, events were unfolding in the streets. Rebuffed in their demand for three seats in the priorate (as they had had in 1343-8), the minor guilds allied with the new workers’ guild. On the 21st a crowd of 7,000 workers and guildsmen from all guilds except the Wool guild, which was either unwelcome or refused to join, marched to the palace of the podesta (the Bargello). As many broke in to destroy the records of investigations and convictions of workers, a small band ascended the tower to unfurl the flag of the blacksmiths’ guild, on which was depicted a set of tongs. No source tells us why the revolutionaries selected this flag as their symbol, but tongs traditionally signified the application of force to achieve purposes against determined opposition. From the windows beneath they hung the flags of all the guilds, except the Wool guild, together with the Standard of Justice - the flag of the popolo of 1293 and official symbol of government, with its red cross on a white field - that had been seized by the crowd. As the flags announced, the revolution was the work of the entire guild community, minus the hated Wool guild, but with thousands of workers and artisans who now, for the first time, marched with the others under the banner of their own guild. As one chronicler described it, “They settled in for the rest of that day and night, to the honor of God. And there were many of them, rich and poor, each guarding the banner of his guild.”18 It was the high tide of the guild republic, now expanded to include workers and artisans. Sometime that summer an advisory committee recommended that the priors seek the advice of the guild consuls before implementing its proposals, so that “if some or all of them become law, let it be done with the agreement [concordia] and consent [or pleasure: contentamento] of the guild consuls; and their consent can truly be said to be that of the whole city.”19 Thus the revolution legitimated itself in the right of guilds to represent and express the consent of their members and in the idea that “the whole city” was equivalent to the community of its guilds.

The next day, July 22, the huge crowd moved from the podesta’s palace to the priors’ palace and demanded the incumbent priorate’s resignation. One of the syndics of the popolo minuto, Michele di Lando, a former corporal in the communal army and variously described as a comber, carder, and supervisor of textile workers, entered the palace with the Standard of Justice and declared himself, obviously by prior agreement with the syndics of the guilds, Standardbearer of Justice. “Some young men went up the tower and rang the [Falletti] Fossati, Tumulto, pp. 224-33.

Cronaca prima d’anonimo, in Cronache e memorie, ed. Scaramella, p. 75. Najemy, “Audiant omnes artes,” in Tumulto, p. 93.

Bells for their victory in taking the palace, to the honor of God.” Michele and the guild syndics appointed new priors and colleges (only five of the total of thirty-seven belonged to families previously represented in these offices,20 most being minuti or minor guildsmen); replaced the two legislative councils with one consisting of the consuls of all the guilds; and cancelled the proscriptions of alleged Ghibellines since 1357. As a chronicler sympathetic to the revolution put it, “This was done to give a share of offices to more people, so that everyone would be satisfied, and the citizens united, and poor men would have their share, because they have always borne the cost, and no one but the rich has ever profited.” Somewhere in these days, the revolutionary government divided the new workers’ guild into three guilds: one for dyers, washers, carders, and other skilled artisans of the woolen cloth industry; a second for shirtmakers, tailors, stocking makers, and other artisans in the clothing trades (including many who had previously belonged to the subordinate membra of Por Santa Maria); and a third for unskilled textile workers, including sorters, shearers, and beaters, and poor artisans like weavers - those whom contemporaries called the Ciompi. Although there certainly had not been time to compile membership lists, one chronicler estimated that the third guild represented 9,000 workers and all three a total of 13,000.21 This was probably a rough guess, but even 10,000 new guildsmen, added to 4,000-5,000 members of the twenty-one guilds, meant that just about every male of working age (in a population of 55,000) was a guildsman in the remarkable summer of 1378.

On July 31 the revolutionary government destroyed the old electoral pouches and on August 4 announced regulations for a scrutiny, based on the drastically altered political realities, which reinterpreted the principle of equality among the guilds along class lines. With two-thirds of all guildsmen in only three guilds, the revolutionaries divided the federation into three groups of seven, fourteen, and three guilds and gave each group an equal share of the priorate and colleges. Moreover, the requirement that seven votes among the priors would henceforth be needed to approve any measure ensured that the three minuti priors could not be outvoted by the established guilds. Each group of guilds was to have exactly the same number of approved candidates. Of nearly 6,000 nominations (by far the most in any scrutiny to this point, and 70% more than in the much larger population of 1343), approximately 2,800 were major guildsmen, 1,400 minor guildsmen, and at least 1,700 minuti. A large scrutiny council of 220, two-thirds of whom were either consuls or syndics of the twenty-four guilds, approved approximately 1,000 citizens and placed their names into separate pouches for the three groups of guilds. When the scrutiny was completed on August 21, bells were rung, Te deums sung, G. Brucker, “The Ciompi Revolution,” in Florentine Studies, ed. Rubinstein, p. 330. Cronaca prima, in Cronache e memorie, pp. 76-7.

And a festive dessert and drink enjoyed by the scrutiny council, one of whose members, the chronicler recently identified as a notary,170 called it “the good scrutiny, which satisfied the many people who had never held any office but who had always been burdened by taxes.”171 At the end of August, the unskilled textile workers, mostly from the Oltrarno, broke ranks with the rest of the guild community and elected a committee of Eight, two from each quarter, claiming city-wide authority from their meeting place in Santa Maria Novella. In demanding that name-tickets drawn from the pouches be subject to final approval by the consuls of all the guilds, they mistakenly assumed that the rest of the guild community shared their view that the August scrutiny had not gone far enough in depriving the enemies of the revolution of eligIbility. Although this was never put into effect, on the 29th, when the priorate for September-October was drawn, a large crowd of Ciompi insisted that each name be read aloud and rejected several of them. This interference from the piazza in the sortition process and the demand that the government ratify the Eight’s decrees destabilized the precarious coalition of old and new guilds. The challenge was met and defeated in the streets. When, on August 30, two Ciompi went to the palace demanding veto power for the Eight over all communal legislation, Michele di Lando had them arrested. The next day he rode out of the palace with the Standard of Justice, cleared the piazza of a militia from the three new guilds, and allowed the older guilds to occupy it. The workers’ militia returned, followed by the Oltrarno Ciompi carrying their own flag of the angel. When they refused to surrender it, a battle broke out for control of the piazza: the Ciompi under the flag of the angel against the militias of the other guilds under the Standard of Justice. It may seem ironic that, even as the government called upon the twenty-three guilds to assist in suppressing the Ciompi and driving them from the piazza, the Ciompi met the assault with cries of “long live the popolo and the guilds” (Stefani 804). But that irony was built into the origins of the confrontation, with each side grounding the legitimacy of its cause in the century-old guild republic.