Italian Cities

Geographical conditions of the Italian Cities

Venice-The Doge's Palace

Development of the Italian Cities

The development of the Italian cities was assisted by the evolution of the guilds. In Venice, their condition was greatly improved by changing the way the guild leader, the gastaldo, was elected. Formerly an appointee of the doge, sometimes without being a worker in the craft, he was now elected by the gild from among its own members. Venice was, however, mainly a city of great merchants rather than of small artisans and its government naturally remained oligarchical in character.

Venice had extensive relations with the Byzantine Empire, made commercial treaties with the sultans of Iconium and Aleppo and with the Christian rulers of Little Armenia and Trebizond. Venice had early monopolized the distribution of salt in her immediate neighbourhood, and she largely controlled the fur, grain, and slave trade by way of the Black Sea. To protect the local industry, the navigation laws required that all vessels used by Venetian merchants had to be built in Venice and manned by either Greeks or Venetian subjects. The city government built and armed the ships and rented them to the merchants.

Lucca-The Old Town

While Venice was becoming a great sea power, the Italian cities on the mainland had also developed at a fast pace. In Lombardy, the townsmen have abolished the rule of the bishop and have taken the reins of government into their own hands. They formed communes, and their governments comprised both highly positioned townsmen, as well as the nobles residing in the cities.

The social classes of the Italian Cities

The nobles in the Lombard cities were divided into the two classes of capitani and valvassores. The "captains" had originally been those who held great fiefs directly from the bishop or the emperor, while the "valvassors" were subordinated to the captains or great landholders. As most Italian cities controlled considerable domains, a significant number of nobles were connected with each city. By the12th century nobility had ceased to depend exclusively on the possession of large estates, and wealth acquired by commerce became also a road to nobility.

Below the two classes came the ordinary citizens, or popolo. Together with the captains and knights, they had the privilege of electing and being elected to town offices. This class did not include all the inhabitants of the city, but only those freemen who had participated in the formation of the original commune and their descendants.

The Government of the Italian Cities

The first Doge of Venice was elected in 697. In 1032 the doge was forbidden to associate his son in the government, instead he was to be advised by two ducal councillors and a senate. The following year the number of ducal councillors grew to six and an indirectly elected and aristocratic assembly of four hundred and eighty members was added to the previous senate. The doge was nominated by a committee appointed by the assembly of four hundred and eighty, and then presented to the people for formal confirmation.

The Lombard Italian Cities

Although liberal enough compared to feudalism, the Italian cities were still rather aristocratic , as their governments included mostly the influential rich merchants. Militarily, their position was secured by their foot fighting militias, a very successful force in fighting the mounted knights.

At the head of the town government now appeared a varying number of "consuls," who were elected annually, theoretically from all three classes of the commune, but with a real tendency to elect members of the upper classes. The consuls were assisted by an advisory council, a Grand Council or senate of the commune, which often had several hundred members and represented the entire citizen body. On great occasions, a parlamento or mass-meeting was held in the public square, which sometimes resulted in street fights between rival political parties. At the bottom of such factions and parties were the consorterie, or family unions of the nobles, and the arti or trade gilds of the burghers.

Tuscany had been pursuing a similar development. Cities set up communes with consuls similar to those of the Lombard towns. Within the towns, there were the same social classes and political parties, the nobles of the towers and the men of the gilds. Chief among the medieval towns of Tuscany were Florence and its rivals, Pisa, Siena, and Lucca.

About 1200 almost every commune in Lombardy or Tuscany made a remarkable change in its government. The commune still had the board of consuls and the podestà, named like the governors appointed by Barbarossa, after the Diet of Roncaglia in 1158. The podestà had supreme executive power, and was elected annually. But now, he was elected not from the local citizens, but from a foreign city. The purpose was to secure an impartial judge, and a leader with no personal interest in the rivalries between local political parties.

The Italian Cities at war

The Italian cities were going to battle almost as often as their feudal counterparts. The cities fought against the feudal lords who tried to maintain their high privileges at the expense of the cities. They also fought with one another, disputing boundaries, water rights, roads, or because general trade rivalry. Many nobles were forced to give up their castles and live in the city. Once within the walls, they built stone towers in the city streets and behaved as being on their former domains. From here, sharp family rivalries ensued. Very often, the defeated parties were send in exile, from where they were plotting for their restoration with the help of a rival town.

In trying to obtain a complete independence from the Holy Roman Emperor, the cities of Lombardy entered a bitter conflict with Frederick I Barbarossa. After years of conflict, a league formed by thirty-six towns defeated the Emperor in 1176 at Legnano, keeping their privileges in exchange for a formal oath of allegiance, and an obligation to supply his army with provisions when passing through Lombardy. Despite all the conflicts, the trade, wealth, and arts continued their progress, and the Italian cities were the envy of their enemies.

Italian Cities and banking

The prosperity of the Italian cities led to a large supply of capital, and they began to found banking houses, to exchange foreign money or transmit sums from one part of Europe to another. The transportation of money was often difficult and dangerous, so the bankers charged a fee for this service. The Papacy, which drew its revenues from all parts of western and central Europe, was the leading employer of the Italian bankers in collecting and transmitting sums of money. Among all the Italian cities, Florence was the main banking centre, due to the proximity to Rome and the Papacy.