CHAPTER IV

.

THE REPUBLICS.

The different Physiognomies of the Italian Republics--The Similarity of their Character as Municipalities--The Rights of Citizenship--Causes of Disturbance in the Commonwealths--Belief in the Plasticity of Constitutions--Example of Genoa--Savonarola's Constitution--Machiavelli's Discourse to Leo X.--Complexity of Interests and Factions--Example of Siena--Small Size of Italian Cities--Mutual Mistrust and Jealousy of the Commonwealths--The notable Exception of Venice--Constitution of Venice--Her wise System of Government--Contrast of Florentine Vicissitudes--The Magistracies of Florence--Balia and Parlamento--The Arts of the Medici--Comparison of Venice and Florence in respect to Intellectual Activity and Mobility--Parallels between Greece and Italy--Essential Differences--The Mercantile Character of Italian Burghs--The 'Trattato del Governo della Famiglia'--The Bourgeois Tone of Florence, and the Ideal of a Burgher--Mercenary Arms.

The despotisms of Italy present the spectacle of states founded upon force, controlled and molded by the will of princes, whose object in each case has been to maintain usurped power by means of mercenary arms and to deprive the people of political activity. Thus the Italian principalities, however they may differ in their origin, the character of their administration, or their relation to Church and Empire, all tend to one type. The egotism of the despot, conscious of his selfish aims and deliberate in their execution, formed the motive principle in all alike.

The republics on the contrary are distinguished by strongly marked characteristics. The history of each is the history of the development of certain specific qualities, which modified the type of municipal organization common to them all. Their differences consist chiefly in the varying forms which institutions of a radically similar design assumed, and also in those peculiar local conditions which made the Venetians Levant merchants, the Perugians captains of adventure, the Genoese admirals and pirates, the Florentines bankers, and so forth. Each commonwealth contracted a certain physiognomy through the prolonged

## action of external circumstances and by the maintenance of some

political predilection. Thus Siena, excluded from maritime commerce by its situation, remained, broadly speaking, faithful to the Ghibelline party; while Perugia at the distance of a few miles, equally debarred from mercantile expansion, maintained the Guelf cause with pertinacity. The annals of the one city record a long succession of complicated party quarrels, throughout the course of which the State continued free; the Guelf leanings of the other exposed it to the gradual encroachment of the Popes, while its civic independence was imperiled and enfeebled by the contests of a few noble families. Lucca and Pistoja in like manner are strongly contrasted, the latter persisting in a state of feud and faction which delivered it bound hand and foot to Florence, the former after many vicissitudes attaining internal quiet under the dominion of a narrow oligarchy.

But while recognizing these differences, which manifest themselves

## partly in what may be described as national characteristics, and partly

in constitutional varieties, we may trace one course of historical progression in all except Venice. This is what natural philosophers might call the morphology of Italian commonwealths. To begin with, the Italian republics were all municipalities. That is, like the Greek states, they consisted of a small body of burghers, who alone had the privileges of government, together with a larger population, who, though they paid taxes and shared the commercial and social advantages of the city had no voice in its administration. Citizenship was hereditary in those families by whom it had been once acquired, each republic having its own criterion of the right, and guarding it jealously against the encroachments of non-qualified persons. In Florence, for example, the burgher must belong to one of the Arts.[1] In Venice his name must be inscribed upon the Golden Book. The rivalries to which this system of municipal government gave rise were a chief source of internal weakness to the commonwealths. Nor did the burghers see far enough or philosophically enough to recruit their numbers by a continuous admission of new members from the wealthy but unfranchised citizens.[2] This alone could have saved them from the death by dwindling and decay to which they were exposed. The Italian conception of citizenship may be set forth in the words of one of their acutest critics, Donato Giannotti, who writes concerning the electors in a state:[3] 'Non dico tutti gli abitanti della terra, ma tutti quelli che hanno grado; cioè che hanno acquistato, o eglino o gli antichi loro, facultà d'ottenere i magistrate; e in somma che sono _participes imperandi et parendi_.' No Italian had any notion of representative government in our sense of the term. The problem was always how to put the administration of the state most conveniently into the hands of the fittest among those who were qualified as burghers, and how to give each burgher his due share in the government; not how to select men delegated from the whole population. The wisest among their philosophical politicians sought to establish a mixed constitution, which should combine the advantages of principality, aristocracy, and democracy. Starting with the fact that the eligible burghers numbered some 5,000, and with the assumption that among these the larger portion would be content with freedom and a voice in the administration, while a certain body were ambitious of honorable distinctions, and a few aspired to the pomp of titular presidency, they thought that these several desires might be satisfied and reconciled in a republic composed of a general assembly of the citizens, a select Senate, and a Doge. In these theories the influence of Aristotelian studies[4] and the example of Venice are apparent. At the same time it is noticeable that no account whatever is taken of the remaining 95,000 who contributed their wealth and industry to the prosperity of the city.[5] The theory of the State rests upon no abstract principle like that of the divine right of the Empire, which determined Dante's speculation in the Middle Ages, or that of the divine right of kings, with which we Englishmen were made familiar in the seventeenth century, or that again of the rights of men, on which the democracies of France and America were founded. The right contemplated by the Italian politicians is that of the burghers to rule the commonwealth for their advantage. As a matter of fact, Venice was the only Italian republic which maintained this kind of oligarchy with success through centuries of internal tranquillity. The rest were exposed to a series of revolutions which ended at last in their enslavement.

[1] Villari, _Life of Savonarola_, vol. i. p. 259, may be consulted concerning the further distinction of Benefiziati, Statuali, Aggravezzati, at Florence. See also Varchi, vol. i. pp. 165-70. Consult Appendix ii.

[2] It must be mentioned that a provision for admitting deserving individuals to citizenship formed part of the Florentine Constitution of 1495. The principle was not, however, recognized at large by the republics.

[3] On the Government of Siena (vol. i. p. 351 of his collected works): 'I say not all the inhabitants of the state, but all those who have rank; that is, who have acquired, either in their own persons or through their ancestors, the right of taking magistracy, in short those who are participes imperandi et parendi.' What has already been said in